Shopify has laid off scores of employees across several rounds of redundancies in the past two years, The Logic has learned. 

The layoffs, which have largely flown under the radar, happened often and at a steady consistency, according to 13 people with knowledge of the cuts. The Logic is not naming the people as they did not have permission to speak to the press. The small but regular layoffs follow two headline-grabbing cuts in 2022 and 2023 when the e-commerce giant shed first 10 and then 20 per cent of its workforce. “People are being laid off all the time,” one source told The Logic, adding that in a mostly remote workplace, it can be hard to work out how many people have been let go—or when.

The regular drumbeat of cuts has had a damaging impact on morale as staff become accustomed to the ever-present threat of losing their jobs, sources said. Co-workers regularly vanished from Slack without much, if any, explanation, sources said, with staff often only finding out when former colleagues post about being let go on LinkedIn. Shopify did not respond to a request for comment.

The layoffs in 2022 and 2023 came off the back of a pandemic-era e-commerce boom. Since then, Shopify has said it has maintained the right number of staff to support its operations. On recent earnings calls and at conferences, executives have also said that AI is helping the firm keep headcount stable while also making its workforce more efficient.

Internally, sources said Shopify has also made it clear that it wants to use AI to keep staff numbers under control. In April, CEO Tobi Lütke sent a memo to staff explaining the importance of using AI in their work. “Teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI” before they ask for more employees or resources, he said.

With constant cuts, one source said they kept a list of the names of their closest friends who worked at Shopify to check their Slack status each time they learned of a new round of layoffs, typically on the last Thursday or Friday of a month as co-workers started to notice a Slack channel’s numbers drop suddenly. Shopify’s Slack account would grey out profiles and mark them as deactivated when people left. “I would check every single time to see if they were still with us,” they said.

On LinkedIn, a number of recently departed Shopify employees have explained their exits as being part of layoffs, reorganizations and restructuring. Hundreds of Glassdoor reviews from the past three years address layoffs at the firm.

The most recent batch happened in mid-November. Shopify spokesperson Ben McConaghy confirmed to The Logic at the time that Shopify laid off “a fraction of a percent” of staff on Nov. 19, but did not disclose further details. As of the end of 2024, Shopify had roughly 8,100 staff. The Logic identified at least 20 who had been let go that day. “We removed layers that created complexity without additional merchant value,” McConaghy said.

Sources told The Logic that the November layoffs hit revenue operations, including go-to-market operations, and learning and development. The revenue operations team has been in a state of transition since chief revenue officer Bobby Morrison “parted ways” with the company in October. One source said people working in the division were awaiting big changes, and one of those ended up being a restructuring that eliminated some roles. Those layoffs also hit people working in marketing.

A number of staff were also let go in October. Shopify did not respond to The Logic’s request for comment at the time.

Another round of layoffs had happened in September. Before that, one in February. In January, at least 13 people were let go. There were “some reorganizations in my department,” one person wrote on LinkedIn at the time. In addition to those moves, Shopify also cut the team responsible for its social impact initiatives, with around a dozen people being laid off.

A number of people were let go in late 2024. “Along with many of my colleagues, my role at Shopify was eliminated last week,” one former employee wrote on LinkedIn in December. The Logic identified more layoffs throughout 2024, at a nearly monthly consistency.

Throughout the layoffs, some employees were told they were losing their jobs as part of a restructuring and others due to performance issues. “It was a pattern a lot of us started to notice,” one source said. “These small-batch layoffs do happen frequently,” said another, pointing to two rounds of layoffs within the last year that resulted in people from their team leaving the company.

Shopify’s support team has been trimmed significantly, sources said, despite being one of the hardest hit during the mass layoff in July 2022. The team, which is partly based in Ireland, has experienced significant layoffs on an almost monthly basis, sources told The Logic.

The scale of the layoffs across Shopify is hard to quantify. Unlike the big cuts in 2022 and 2023, the company has rarely made internal announcements about these smaller layoffs. Sometimes there would be a standardized message in Slack from a manager to a team, explaining that people had to be in the “right job” and staff exits are a part of business, one source said. At times, middle managers mentioned cuts in team meetings and quickly moved on to other subjects.

“They’re very quiet about layoffs,” one source said. After the mass layoffs in May 2023, “it became pretty clear that they weren’t making a big show of it anymore,” said another.

Sources said they would often hear about layoffs through social media posts or conversations with current and former staff. Several sources said they’d learn of others laid off at the same time as them through this grapevine. Another recalled considering moving to another team within Shopify, only to later learn that the team had been gutted.

The impact on morale has been stark, sources said. “There’s really no job security,” one person said. Another described staff “feeling really beat down” with more work and fewer people to tackle it. 

The consistent layoffs have led to people worrying about their long-term prospects at the company. “Everyone is thinking about an exit plan,” one source claimed.