
ALT In an internal memo in 2023, Lütke compared Shopify to a video game and framed recently laid-off employees as having distracted the company from its “main quest” (gamer parlance) to pursue “side quests,” namely, a failed foray into logistics. In the first round of layoffs, Lütke publicly apologized and took responsibility for overhiring and miscalculating growth targets. This time, his robotic callousness

ALT This time, his robotic callousness reflected what Shopify’s one-time head of communications, Darrell Etherington, referred to, in TechCrunch, as Lütke’s “basic inability to empathize with the situation of many employees under his company’s charge.” Etherington sees Lütke as reducing employees to non-player characters (NPCs): people who can’t think for themselves and blindly follow others. But, per Etherington, “all the various side quests that Shopify has invested in heavily over the years, including logistics, are bets made either directly by or with the full-throated endorsement of its CEO and founder—Lütke himself.”






































