Shopify is pushing the envelope for getting AI use into a company
Should AI be a baseline skill for your work?
Last week, Tobi Lutke, the CEO of Shopify, published an internal memo (it was going to be leaked) about how Shopify will use AI in the future. It went somewhat viral, especially because one of the points of the memo was interpreted as saying that no one would be hired without considering AI and determining if AI could do the job instead. Queue all of fear and doubt about AI taking over your job.
That misses a lot of context, though. In this newsletter, I will explain what was in the memo, what companies need to provide to foster AI use in their company, and what knowledge workers should do to ingratiate themselves with a new tool for their work.
This newsletter focuses on helping knowledge workers navigate corporate America. From searching for jobs, working in the role, having employment security, and helping you become a Cubicle Warrior.
Navigating Corporate is a reader-supported publication. There are no investors. No sugar daddies. Just me. And the cats.
To receive new posts, become a free or paid subscriber.
What was in the memo
After explaining his desire for Shopify to become much more oriented towards using AI as a work tool, he provided what that means.
Using AI effectively is now a fundamental expectation of everyone at Shopify. Just like you need to understand and use the tools in Microsoft Office, you will need to understand and know how to use AI tools. Straightforward.
AI must be part of your GSD Prototype phase. This is specifically for Spotify, but AI should be used if you do any prototyping in your work because it is much faster.
We will add AI usage questions to our performance and peer review questionnaire. Nothing like making part of your performance review to get someone interested in using the tool. He notes specifically that you must show real work, not an assumed knowledge of the tool
Learning is self-directed, but share what you learned. This is nebulous, but he provides examples of more than just saying something on Slack: “We’ll dedicate time to AI integration in our monthly business reviews and product development cycles.” Adding tangible deliverables that AI provides during a business review is sharing and providing a place to show measurable results from the work.
Before asking for more Headcount and resources, teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI. This is the “AI is coming for my job” point. This depends on the job. If you are asking for more people to process insurance claims, you’ll get lots of pushback if AI isn’t already being used to speed up the claims process. Or the ordering process. If you’re coding, are you using AI enough to not have to hire another engineer? In short, managers need to deploy AI tools extensively in their departments to optimize the work as best they can.
Everyone means everyone. That includes the Executive team. Well, it better. Including the hiring part.
In short, this is a major push to dramatically increase the use of AI for work.
What companies need to provide to foster AI use in their company
It appears that Shopify offers easy access to AI tools. Most companies have not. Even if AI is used in some parts of the business, many if not most areas do not use AI at all.
Companies need to provide and support:
Company-wide licensing is provided for employees to access and use the tool. Yes, start small and build, but don’t waste six months doing a pilot. Shopify is going wide with AI, and small groups are interesting, but you can’t learn fast enough and get bigger results with a small group.
Initial training would be part of the company-wide rollout. What is AI? Some people don’t even know how to pronounce it. What is a prompt? How best to structure your prompts? What is an AI Agent?
Companies must lock down AI privacy settings so that AI doesn’t learn from company proprietary data. For AI to shine as a tool to help enhance or streamline work, AI must have your company processes, data sources, project plans, PowerPoints, and more to build good solutions and recommendations for improving the work. If you want AI to help build a PowerPoint about a company merger - a terrific use case - you must have the privacy settings right.
Managers need to document and understand the department's business processes. Take an order process, for example. You have to document where the order originates, how it is generated, how it is fulfilled, and how it is billed. You must also document the systems and data used to do that process. That information gets fed into the AI tool to be analyzed. It would be hard for a manager to request a position in Shopify’s world without understanding how AI can improve the department.
What knowledge workers should do to ingratiate themselves with a new tool for their work
Whether your company requires AI or not, Cubicle Warriors need to understand and use AI to become a tool that can deliver results in their work.
That means:
Have an AI account. Whether it is a work or personal account, you can’t practice using an AI tool without an account.
Set your privacy settings. Just as companies must set these privacy settings so proprietary information is not available for the AI to learn or be available to others, your personal information also needs protection. For example, a good use case for AI is uploading all of your medical records to AI and then asking it to analyze the information and provide feedback on trends and questions to ask your doctor about treatments. You don’t want your medical information in the wild, so privacy settings are necessary.
Learn how to set up your prompts. Best practices for setting prompts exist; using them will give you higher-quality answers from the AI tool.
Practice. Nothing beats practice, using prompts, getting answers, refining the prompt, and getting better answers.
Set up an AI Agent. This usually requires a paid account. They are powerful tools:
(They) are enabling systems of agents to plan, collaborate, and complete tasks—and even learn to improve their own performance. As agents become more accurate, companies can increasingly use them to automate organizational processes and help make employees’ day-to-day work more efficient.
Rather than a general tool, an agent can be set up specifically to work on your department's processes and data, making AI much more useful for your work.
You know AI is here. But are you using it as a tool for your work?
Spotify’s situation is not unique. Other companies will rapidly push the use of AI in the workplace because AI capabilities are rapidly increasing. AI is not perfect. Treat them like a summer intern coming into your life. Interns can learn the work and have great ideas, but they need to be managed and their recommendations verified. Getting started with AI now and practicing will help your intern become a great supervised coworker.
Be a Cubicle Warrior,
Scot