Shopify, which powers around 25% of online commerce in Australia with customers including JB Hi-Fi, LSKD, and July, and was also recently working with The Good Guys in the rebuilding of their website, will now take an AI-first approach when it comes to hiring.

It will therefore assess whether a potential job can be undertaken by AI agents, and then hire a person only if AI automations cannot fulfil that role.

Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke has reportedly sent a memo last month to employees saying that before they ask for more headcount or resources, teams must show why they “cannot get what they want done using AI,” reported CNBC.

“What would this area look like if autonomous AI agents were already part of the team? This question can lead to really fun discussions and projects,” Lutke said in the memo, which he posted on X.

Shopify (Image: Sourced from Unsplash)

 

The memo was broadly about how “reflexive AI usage” is a “baseline expectation” at the company.

In the X post, Tobi said that the context of him sharing the internal memo publicly was because “it was in the process of being leaked and (presumably) shown in bad faith.”

In the memo, Lütke reiterates about how AI has been “the most rapid shift to how work is done that I’ve seen in my career” and that “using AI well is a skill that needs to be carefully learned by… using it a lot.”

He adds that using AI effectively is “now a fundamental expectation of everyone at Shopify.”

 

AI usage questions will also be added to the company’s “performance and peer review questionnaire.”

“What we need to succeed is our collective sum total skill and ambition at applying our craft, multiplied by AI, for the benefit of our merchants,” said Lütke.

Shopify’s total headcount reportedly fell to 8,100 at the end of December from 8,300 a year earlier, according to its annual filing. The company also eliminated 14% of its workforce in 2022 and 20% in 2023.