Really Enjoying Your Weekends
When you are going to work at a competitive company like Shopify 5 days a week, you really need to forget about work over the weekends. So lets do a quick recap of this relaxing weekend that had nothing to do with work. Friday night began at 9:00 exactly when Kaitlyn came to the office and we packed up and went to the three brewers for the end of the sens game and well...beer. We got home after 11 and were ready to call it a week and get to bed to be ready for the Panda Game (Carleton vs ottawa U football) on Saturday. I decided to do a last few tickets (delaying actually starting my weekend being back in the flow of work right before bed) and then went to bed exhausted.
Saturday morning we went to the Panda game at Ottawa U. The atmosphere was threatening at best, with a few hundred/thousand Ottawa U students drunk as they may be, giving me death stares for my Carleton shirt. We lost, we knew we would, but the game was really fun. I would say that without the drunk college girls yelling about being so mad at a game I knew they didn't understand, the game would have been less entertaining.
Saturday night ended the way that every saturday has for the last month, with Grand Theft Auto until the dark hours of the night. Sunday was basically the same thing. I am not writing this to sound like an interesting person, just to emphasize how awesome it feels to enjoy your weekends. On that note, I will continue enjoying sunday night football and steamwhistle.
Dylan
Week 4
Looking back on week 4, my goal was to hit 70 interactions a day every day, and I was pretty amazed with the result. I believe the lowest I hit was 82, and the highest was 111. Really took the opportunity to use other Guru's as resources without being invasive with questions (I don't think) and the master class apps really helped a lot. If it wasn't for the csv video by Sami I would have wasted a few more hours on Csv's that I was able to breeze through.
This coming week is my last week of 8 hour phones, and I will be able to go down to 4 hours required phones and a bit more versatility for the other hours. I will probably stay on phones for most of the time that I am working because it is such an efficient use of time, but it will be nice to have the option.
Dylan
Best call so far
Thought this call deserved its own post. Received a call today from someone asking us to stop shipping him paper. Then proceeded to ask to speak to a manger because that is how staples works. We were like "Excuse me?" and it turns out he thought he was talking to staples, and was frustrated when we told him we weren't. Overall a strange and awesome experience about asking the right questions as early as possible.
First Day on Phones and 70
Started phones today. Right after lunch Liz came in and asked three of us to take some calls to help out and get the cue down. This was my first try on phones and was actually a lot of fun. I had no one yell and me and was told by a number of people how much they love Shopify and the Guru's. Made me realize how incredible this team is and how much we support our massive customer base. Since it seems that only the new stores call in (mostly) they get a good vibe about us right off the bat. Then, as they learn to support themselves further down the road, they still love the Guru's, but don't need them as much anymore.
I ended up hanging around the office for an extra two hours today, which allowed me to hit 70 for the first time. 70 is the magical number that all of the Guru's are expected to hit on a regular basis, 70 interactions. I was encouraged to push through and hit 70 in my second week, which is exciting, and also sucks because there is no record of it as I am not yet on reporting.
I am very excited to get setup with reporting so I can hit 70 properly and know that i actually did it. A personal goal I guess.
Dylan
The Bonanza
When I came into work this morning at 10am, there were 30 potential Guru's talking away in the lounge, sadly blocking the way of the coffee machine. Not a huge problem for me, but I was slightly in need of a pick-me-up.
When I got to my desk we were all asked to spend our morning interviewing the Guru's. Such an awesome surprise. I remember being on that end of the interview only three weeks ago, so this is awesome.
I got to talk to about 9 people, which for me is really fun. I accidentally asked some people questions that were a bit too hard at first, but then I got the hang of it, and met some great potential gurus.
They were pretty dumbfounded when they realized that we have lunches like that every day, and today was especially good with the chicken and BLTs.
After lunch we started doing some emails, which is starting to go really well. I think I got 15 done throughout the day, which is an accomplishment because I did 9 on friday.
We got to have our intro-session with Tobi today as well, which couldn't be a cooler experience. I really think the opportunity for us to get to do spend an hour talking to him is exciting. Even more exciting was the walk back when I got to have a one-on-one (well kind of 3 of us but still) about snowboarding and Whistler. Pretty fun if I do say.
Around 5 the interviews died down and the beer fridge opened. Overall, it was an awesome day, and there are now 30 more people that are dying to get a job at this incredible company.
Dylan
The Rest of Week 1
Due to my lack of pictures taken throughout the past week, I am going to consolidate everything into one post, and be a bit better at keeping a good record moving forward.
We did our first real emails on Friday. It was day 4 due to the short week, and I was very pleased to hit my 9 interactions for the day. After learning about so many new tools like Text Expander, and Alfred, my life has become much more simple.
Friday night we had our office party celebrating the launch of Shopify POS, Shopify Payments, and Reporting. I won't go in depth about it, but it was my first real office party, and as I would expect, Shopify did not disappoint.
Over the next week, we are being thrown into the pit for some fast paced chats, followed by a week of just phones. I am looking forward to actually being able to help these merchants as opposed to asking for help every time.
Hack Days is also coming up in a week and a half, which I am trying to get in touch with a few people about. I am looking forward to my meeting with the marketing team tomorrow morning to talk about it, because I would love to make a successful Hack Days project that is actually used by merchants. More details to come.
Dylan
Related articles
- Shopify Enters Mobile POS Market with Shopify POS (marcomamari.wordpress.com)
- Shopify Launches Shopify Payments (prweb.com)
- Shopify Launches Point-Of-Sale System To Unify Online And Brick-And-Mortar Retail (techcrunch.com)
The first day of the rest of your life
Today was the first day i can proudly say that I walked into the Shopify office, through the glass doors, and did not feel incredibly overwhelmed by the interview I was about to face. After 8 interviews total, I started my new job as a Shopify Guru today.
There are 13 of us starting this week, 6 of us being Guru's. A Guru is the type of person that can deal with chats, emails, and phone calls, from our amazing customers, all at the same time. We are the front line, the support team. We make sure that any store that is looking to succeed on Shopify is able to do so, and do it well.
We walked into the Protoss Boardroom (and there are also Zerg and Terran rooms) and were immediately given our most powerful tool to succeed, the MacBook air I am writing this on. We were also given a large quantity of things, including a sweater, t-shirt, Shopify Hot Sauce, Mac Keyboard, Mac Trackpad, 7-year pen, Moleskine notebook, and more. I can say that any nerves I had starting here slowly diminished as I began unpacking my loot bag of sorts.
For the rest of the morning we dealt with the necessary paperwork, then it was off to Guruland, my home for the foreseeable future. I met more people that I was able to remember the names of, and we began learning about what is expected of us, which is a lot.
Not to get too much into the nitty-gritty details, today was amazing, the Indian Lunch was amazing (catered lunches every day) and I am very excited for the coming week.
Dylan