Shopify hires new Chief Technology Officer and General Counsel
Canadian e-commerce platform giant Shopify has appointed Allan Leinwand as Chief Technology Officer.
Leinwand’s CV includes stints as SVP Engineering at Slack, and Chief Technology Officer at both ServiceNow and Zynga.
He has also been a Venture Partner at Panorama Capital (previously JPMorgan Partners), focusing on network and systems technology investments.
Jessica Hertz
Shopify has also hired former White House Staff Secretary Jessica Hertz as General Counsel.
“I'm thrilled to be joining the Shopify team, and honoured to play a part in making the tools of entrepreneurship available to as many people as possible,” she said in a LinkedIn post.
“It has been a privilege to serve in the White House and on the Biden-Harris Transition Team, and I'll always be #teamjoe. I'm looking forward to a short break and getting started in November.”
Shopify Party
Shopify has built an internal game that aims to make virtual hangouts more fun.
Shopify Party is pitched as an investment and experimentation in the future of remote work.
Daniel Beauchamp, Principal AR/VR Engineer, tweeted this month: “There are many tools for virtual hangouts, but most focus on using video chat to recreate the office experience.”
“We wanted to give people a break from video fatigue, and make a space designed for social play and being silly.”
He added: “It’s entirely browser based. Each game is designed to let people hop in & out at any time, and to encourage free play over specific rules.”
“It's made in Unity + WebGL, with the amazing Nomcore library powering all the networking functionality. The core experience was built over 3 months by @byrondelgado (Byron Delgado, UX Lead, AR/VR at Shopify) and myself. Big shout out to our culture tools team who helped with integration & rollout!
Hundreds of games are played each week for one to ones icebreakers, standups, and other team events
“My favourite feedback is from the people who say they feel more comfortable and less anxious participating in this playful setting than in a large video call,” Beauchamp said.
