Shopify laid off at least two high-ranking engineering leaders this month, according to people familiar with the matter.
The two employees were VP of Infrastructure Mike Lents and VP of Engineering Ravi Byakod. Lents had joined Shopify in May after more than nine years at ServiceNow, and Byakod joined last February after stints at Adobe, eBay, Flipkart, and Google, according to their LinkedIn profiles.
Lents and Byakod did not return Insider's requests for comment. A Shopify spokesperson confirmed the departures.
"We thank them for their contributions to the company and our merchants," the spokesperson said. "The rapid pace of change in commerce often necessitates organizational adjustments to help ensure Shopify and our merchants are best supported to succeed over the long term."
Lents and Byakod are not the only senior executives to depart Shopify so far this year. Brandon Chu, the VP of product acceleration, announced his departure on LinkedIn earlier in January, as did Shimona Mehta, Shopify's managing director for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
The departures came as Shopify made a series of changes to emphasize productivity and efficiency among its workforce. In a move it called "Chaos Monkey 2023" internally, Shopify shut down public Slack channels and deleted all meetings with more than two people.
Rumors have also been swirling internally that more layoffs could be on the way, two employees said. The spokesperson said that the company has no additional layoffs planned.
Shopify has been adjusting to a new normal as its growth has normalized following the early days of the pandemic.
Shopify laid off about 10% of its workforce, which included more than 1,000 people, in July 2022. At the time, CEO Tobi Lütke said the cuts were being made because the company had overinvested while betting that the e-commerce bump fueled by the Covid-19 pandemic would continue.
But the company also quietly laid off smaller numbers of employees both before and after that large round of layoffs was announced. In some cases, those employees received less severance pay than in the public layoff. Several former employees accused the company of falsely citing performance issues as the reason behind what the employees argued were actually layoffs of several dozen workers earlier this year. It continued to lay off dozens of employees following July's mass layoff, the Globe & Mail reported in September.
If you're a Shopify employee with a story to share, contact this reporter at mstone@insider.com or on the encrypted messaging app Signal at (646) 889-2143 using a nonwork phone.
