Farhan Thawar is VP of Engineering at Shopify, angel investor, and entrepreneur. Shopify is a public company with thousands of employees, and one of the very few companies of its scale to be remote-first. While other big tech quietly issued RTOs, Shopify doubled down on processes and culture that allowed it to stay remote, or, in their own words: digital-first. So, today, Shopify has ports instead of offices, does VR meetings, has a unique collaboration culture, and completely embraced AI for productivity. Here is everything we covered in the chat: (00:00) Introduction (05:49) Balancing Remote & IRL (09:20) Remote Communication (15:15) Remote vs IRL culture (21:30) Using VR for meetings and work (26:53) Pair Programming (39:57) The role of managers (46:20) Be an AI Centaur (51:23) Engineering Productivity Metrics (58:33) Q&A — You can also find this at: 📬 ⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠ 📺 ⁠⁠Youtube⁠⁠ 📱 ⁠⁠Apple⁠ — For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email [email protected]