The Shopify AI memo is the future

Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke recently sent a memo to his employees mandating the use of AI tools. The capitalistic logic behind this mandate is irrefutable and will become the norm, especially if economic conditions worsen in the near-term.

Here are some key quotes:

Using AI effectively is now a fundamental expectation of everyone at Shopify. It's a tool of all trades today, and will only grow in importance.

What we have learned so far is that using AI well is a skill that needs to be carefully learned by… using it a lot. It's just too unlike everything else.

We will add AI usage questions to our performance and peer review questionnaire. Learning to use AI well is an unobvious skill. My sense is that a lot of people give up after writing a prompt and not getting the ideal thing back immediately. Learning to prompt and load context is important, and getting peers to provide feedback on how this is going will be valuable.

Before asking for more Headcount and resources, teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI. What would this area look like if autonomous AI agents were already part of the team?

This memo urging adoption of AI tools is quite sound. "Cybernetic teammates" help knowledge workers do their jobs significantly better. This memo is like a bank CEO in the 1980s urging the adoption of computers.

The difference is that the effective adoption of AI tools will be different for everyone. There are many different tools, different working styles, neurodiversity, difference in taste, difference in domain expertise, difference in soft skills, etc.

This, I think, is what's really behind this memo: knowledge workers have to go a bit out of their way at this point to fully get a "10x" benefit from AI tools.

The headcount point is especially interesting. I see this as an early articulation of the coming consensus of reluctance to introduce new white collar jobs.

Yet another reason to commit to a company of one.