Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke is going all in on hardcore tech messaging.
In a memo to employees that he posted on X on Monday, Lütke wrote: “In a company growing 20-40% year over year, you must improve by at least that every year just to re-qualify.”
“This sounds daunting, but given the nature of the tools, this doesn’t even sound terribly ambitious to me anymore,” Lütke wrote, referring to artificial intelligence.
The memo — titled “AI usage is now a baseline expectation” — directed employees to ramp up their AI usage at the Canadian e-commerce firm.
Lütke said using the technology is “now a fundamental expectation of everyone at Shopify” and that AI usage would be gauged in performance and peer review questionnaires. He added that the expectations apply to himself and all executives as well.
The CEO appears to be reversing his reputation as a founder who values work-life balance.
Last month, in response to an X post that touted him as an example of balancing work and family, Lütke wrote: “I’m at home for dinner but I work at least 10 or so hours a day and a lot of the weekend. I don’t want people to get misguided by this meme.”
Lütke has since deleted most of his 2019 tweets, including one that said: “I’ve never worked through a night. The only times I worked more than 40 hours in a week was when I had the burning desire to do so. I need 8ish hours of sleep a night. Same with everybody else, whether we admit it or not.”
In 2023, Lütke restricted Shopify employees from having side hustles, saying the company required their “unshared attention.”
The company did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
‘Scrappiness and frugality’
The Shopify CEO’s remarks reflect a broader cultural crackdown on Big Tech workers, who have enjoyed a work culture known for office perks, top-line pay, and job security, sometimes without grueling hours.
Across the industry, free massages and football tables have been replaced with messaging around “efficiency” and “scrappiness and frugality.”
At tech giants like Amazon and TikTok, pandemic-era work-from-home luxuries have been replaced by strict return-to-office mandates. At nearly every company, layoffs have taken a wrecking ball to the industry and AI adoption has cut hiring, making job security a thing of the past.
“We want to operate like the world’s largest startup,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote in his RTO memo in September. “That means having a passion for constantly inventing for customers, strong urgency (for most big opportunities, it’s a race!), high ownership, fast decision-making, scrappiness and frugality, deeply-connected collaboration.”
Workers who spoke to Business Insider said they are feeling the pressure to work longer hours, go beyond what is asked of them, be highly visible, and evaluate other options beyond full-time work.
