Key Takeaways
- Shopify COO Jess Hertz said the company looks for what she calls “X-shaped people” who know a lot about a lot of different sectors.
- Rather than “T-shaped” employees, who have broad skills plus one deep specialty, Hertz sees greater value in people with several distinct areas of expertise.
- Shopify recently reported $3.58 billion in second-quarter 2026 revenue, a 34% increase from a year earlier.
Jess Hertz, COO of the $185 billion e-commerce platform Shopify, says that employees have to stand out to survive the AI era.
On a recent episode of the Rapid Response podcast, Hertz discussed the kind of talent the company is increasingly seeking. She said that Shopify is now looking for what she calls “X-shaped people” or people who have “multiple spikes of expertise.”
These X-shaped employees are “much faster” at “being able to absorb complexity,” Hertz said. The ideal employee has multiple areas of knowledge, can learn rapidly and work effectively across disciplines.
Hertz previously looked for a “T-shaped person” or someone with broad skills and deep expertise in just one area. Now, she is “really moving away” from that expectation, she said. Instead, AI is changing the way people work and requiring employees to know more about more than one field, in greater depth.
Hertz has watched Shopify’s AI ambitions take shape from inside the company. She joined the e-commerce platform as general counsel in 2021 and moved into the COO role in 2025.
She said that AI’s impact will extend beyond individual job descriptions. As companies bring together people with different skills and perspectives, leaders will need to think more deliberately about how those employees collaborate.
“The other part is really how do those different shaped people actually intersect with each other?” she said. “The idea of team composition and the different constellation of people will only become more and more important as we enter this AI world.”
The AI push comes from the C-suite
Shopify’s push into AI attracted attention last year when CEO Tobi Lutke publicly posted a memo he sent to employees on X. He made AI a prerequisite for growing a team and said that using AI effectively was a “fundamental expectation” across the company.
His policy had direct implications for hiring and budgets. Before requesting additional headcount or resources, Shopify teams must first show that AI cannot accomplish the work they are trying to accomplish.
Lutke said that he had watched some Shopify employees use AI to dramatically expand their capabilities and “get 100x the work done.” He encouraged employees to experiment with the tools available inside the company, including Microsoft Copilot and Anthropic’s Claude.
Lutke also said that the company added questions about AI use to performance and peer-review processes. He embedded the expectation into how employees are evaluated.
Lutke, Daniel Weinand and Scott Lake founded Shopify in 2006. The company provides software and services that let merchants launch and run online or in-person businesses. It offers tools for creating storefronts and managing products and payments.
Last month, Shopify reported $3.58 billion in second-quarter 2026 revenue, a 34% increase from a year earlier. Merchant sales volume and demand for its commerce tools continued to rise and contribute to growth.
Key Takeaways
- Shopify COO Jess Hertz said the company looks for what she calls “X-shaped people” who know a lot about a lot of different sectors.
- Rather than “T-shaped” employees, who have broad skills plus one deep specialty, Hertz sees greater value in people with several distinct areas of expertise.
- Shopify recently reported $3.58 billion in second-quarter 2026 revenue, a 34% increase from a year earlier.
Jess Hertz, COO of the $185 billion e-commerce platform Shopify, says that employees have to stand out to survive the AI era.
On a recent episode of the Rapid Response podcast, Hertz discussed the kind of talent the company is increasingly seeking. She said that Shopify is now looking for what she calls “X-shaped people” or people who have “multiple spikes of expertise.”
These X-shaped employees are “much faster” at “being able to absorb complexity,” Hertz said. The ideal employee has multiple areas of knowledge, can learn rapidly and work effectively across disciplines.