Carl Rivera
@postcarl
Chief Design Officer at @Shopify. previously launched and led @shop. Write about family, BtS Shopify, and sometimes shit post. quality stuff - do follow 🤝
I am the ”Cursor for my kids”. Currently raising 4 Growing like crazy
I am extremely lucky to have been born a happy person. I was born into good circumstances and I have had the opportunity to build a very blessed life. But over time I’ve come to see that the state of happiness - the felt experience of contentment - has less to do with my…
🚨💚🤙 BREAKING: Jhey Tompkins to Shopify, here we go! Agreement in place between all parties involved
My late night complaint turned into a free for all to air grievances to the only PM at X. Class act to invite the feedback 🙏🏻. Focused on structure - not buggy features or UI finish. The vision to become a super-app has perhaps become a permission-slip to add anything, anywhere?
Tell me what you would change or areas of friction and I’ll have our team look into it.
X takes the price for the worst design. Funny it’s where all designers seems to have decided to hangout. Kind of like your favorite dive bar — the shit interior makes for better conversation
As a next generation search engine of sorts they will be optimizing for full inventory, which is completely orthogonal to commissions. Subscriptions and ads will be the way. The valuation will force them to try all the other things too, but it will just have been distractions…
the business model of chatgpt is slowly but surely emerging.
This deserves distribution beyond our slack. 🐐 @katarinabatina
Be careful around companies that obsess about their "company culture". It happens when the thing a company is supposed to do is not going well or is no longer the main thing. Companies that are winning don't do this because "winning" defines what it feels like to work there.
The human desire to peter principle themselves into a position just to have a bigger title or more people to manage is how many promising careers go from thriving to surviving. Ironically the promo you so badly want might be the worst thing for your career.
Weekly roundup: • Follow @ObsoleteSony for memories of a time when products had personality • Brain rot Banshee on Max • Read Hillbilly Elegy (wanted to better understand JD Vance but learned something about America instead) • Follow @jsngr for an inspiring and optimistic…
Having been secular my whole life I’ve come to consider “signing up for religion”. If not for me then for my kids. I now believe the grounding of religion might be the best way to establish that we’re all part of something bigger, something greater
That em-dash became synonymous with AI writing is very problematic for me — I use it extensively even when I shouldn’t
This is very true. I always love seeing agency years in designers; the number of reps you get in and the breadth you have to cover working across multiple clients is so much more valuable than having been stuck on [Instagram sharing settings] for 2 years…
some of the most versatile designers I've worked with come from digital agencies, not big tech. they're hungrier, scrappier and less expensive. they can jump between product design, branding, motion and illustration. big tech usually boxes you into one specialty. there's…
How t’f is this real? What an embarrassment for this country
FIRE UP THE DEPORTATION PLANES!
The first thing I establish when taking on a new team is that I will not tolerate presentations in product reviews. The closer to the work we can get is always better. The furthest away you get is a slide with words. The closest you get is a live prototype with real data.
Most design reviews at Shopify now showcase a fully vibe coded prototype, using our design system Polaris to create a true view of what we’re building — we’re fully embracing AI; both in how we work and in the products we create.
“Teamwork makes the dream work,” but rarely admit that a single standout is often, not always, what make the whole team work. It’s just easier to downplay outliers than to acknowledge that talent is very unevenly distributed —tall poppy syndrome in action
Just celebrated Swedish Midsummer and America’s 4th of July back-to-back, and they perfectly capture the togetherness and individualism that set these countries culturally apart. In Sweden, gatherings are all about shared experiences. You arrive on time. You sit down together.…
