On Tuesday morning I sat down at my laptop to begin my workday like any other in my 4+ years at Shopify. I woke my computer up from sleep and the tab that was open was a co-worker's 3 year anniversary card that I needed to sign. Except I couldn't sign it, because I no longer had access to it. I quickly discovered that I no longer had access to anything, as I had been laid off. I then soon learned that it wasn't just me but over 1000 of my colleagues, including members of the team that I led, that were abruptly and without warning laid off.

I want to tell a quick story. This past April a group of us from my team went to NAB in Las Vegas. NAB bills itself as the cutting edge technology conference in our field. We toured the floor, listened to keynotes, talked shop with the engineers and sales people at their booths.

I didn't feel like I was at a cutting edge technology conference. I felt like I was walking through a museum. It became clear to me very quickly that what we were building everyday at Shopify was miles and miles ahead of the curve. I'm incredibly proud of what we put together in a relatively short time, especially considering the disruption of the pandemic. We were putting out streams that were better than TV broadcast while working entirely remote. We streamed in 4K, we had full accessibility, we were entirely cloud based and doing this all on an agile budget with a small team. Most importantly though, we had an absolute blast every day doing it. I desperately wish we could keep this group of people together, we were just getting started.

We built the roadmap for what the future of remote collaboration should look like in a modern company. I'd be happy to share what that road map looks like with anyone who's interested!