Shopify's CEO Tobi Lutke has announced a significant shift in the company's approach to human resources in light of AI advancements. Staff are required to justify new hire requests by demonstrating tasks that cannot be automated with AI. This reflects Shopify's view of AI as a productivity tool that must be integrated into daily work. Performance evaluations will now consider how effectively employees leverage AI, emphasizing its growing importance in the workplace alongside a trend of job cuts within the tech industry.
"There's a fundamental expectation that employees are using AI in their day-to-day work," Lutke said in the message, which he later shared on X. "What would this area look like if autonomous AI agents were already part of the team?"
"I've seen many of these people approach implausible tasks... with reflexive and brilliant usage of AI to get 100X the work done," he said.
Shopify is now factoring AI usage into performance evaluations. Those who integrate AI tools effectively are outperforming their peers, highlighting a growing divide in productivity based on AI adoption.
Shopify's approach mirrors a broader trend in the tech industry: massive AI investment paired with workforce cuts. In 2024 alone, over 152,000 roles have been cut across nearly 550 tech companies.
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