Mastering Developer Experience at Shopify | Eytan Seidman, Director of Product

**Eytan Seidman** (0:00)
It's really critical that that champion that I mentioned has a strong perspective on where this thing should go, and is really the person who should be taking charge on driving what might be very controversial decisions, and not just kind of agreeing on, oh yeah, we'll just take some of this and some of that. And so that champion role has a really critical thing, which is like, hey, I have a certain thing I have in mind, so here's the outcome I want to achieve, here's why that outcome matters, and I'm gonna work like heck to make sure it happens.

**Conor Bronsdon** (0:29)
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**Eytan Seidman** (1:22)
Thanks, Conor. It's great to be here today, and I would like to be looking forward to this.

**Conor Bronsdon** (1:27)
Yeah, Eytan, you have an amazing background here. You've been a founder and VP of product at oyster.com, which was acquired by TripAdvisor, your ex-head of product at Compass, and now you're doing some amazing stuff at Shopify. And I want to hear all about what Shopify is doing for developers. You're a new additions.dev. But first, we should give our listeners some background about how Shopify is approaching development. Pretend I'm an engineering manager and like many of our listeners, maybe I'm looking for a new role and considering taking a role at Shopify. What sets your engineering and product orgs apart?

**Eytan Seidman** (2:01)
Yeah, it's a great question. I'll give you the slightly long way to answer, which I definitely give to candidates when they're interviewing, because I find it's the best way to answer and I think it works pretty well. So I think first and foremost, it starts with being a mission-oriented, founder-led company. And that really cuts through a lot of BS on its own. So I think all companies have missions, but I think Shopify is probably better than most in a lot of ways. Our mission is to make commerce better for everyone. We're here to really build phenomenal software for anybody who was looking to get started selling online or really anywhere in the world. So it's kind of first and foremost as being mission-led, founder-led is a key part of it. The second thing is we hire people who are well-aligned to that mission and who are really awesome at their craft. So at the core, it's a company for craftspeople. If you are amazing at your craft, whether it's design or UX or product, data science, every crafter is led by a manager who is also a craft and excellent at that craft, and all the way up to Toby is really the case. Let's get into the second thing I'd say. It's also a very high agency, high context culture. It is not a culture where there's lots of process, there's lots of bureaucracy. We try and really limit the number of policies we have in general or anything of that nature. We're really treating people like adults, counting on them to show up every day, do their craft really well, and to come with ideas. Then lastly, it's a culture that really thrives and expects people to think from first principles. Anytime we approach a problem, we try and understand what is true about the world today, and what are key principles that are going to guide us as we go out and build this next piece of software or go and build this feature. And so I think when you take all those things together, it's a mission company. We care a ton about having phenomenal crafters who are really great at what they do. We give them a lot of agency, give them a lot of context. It creates an environment where people can do phenomenal work, where you can come and say, hey, I want to go and fix this thing, and here's why it's really important, and here's why it matters to Shopify, and we go off and do those things.