While you were downvoted for being negative about this and your style of message, I think there is a kernel of truth, and I don't think we should be so eager to dismiss the experiences of people who have actually worked at a place, versus what is essentially a form of PR for the company.

I suspect the problem is the lack of specificity: it's hard to judge from the comment whether there are likely to be legitimate grievances or not.

Indeed, reading their post history shows this, however:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24878130

Sorta fits inline with the fact that the CEO still spends time writing code (half-joke)

Interesting perspective, I have talked to two very seniors engineers there who love the place(one worked there 7 years, other I am not sure). One of the things they like(and I would agree) is that Shopify does rewrite old stuff when they move to something new, so there are no leftover unmaintainable untouchable .

BTW what it shows is that, he loves to code. He already built an incredibly successful company. Whatever is that he does works. I love writing code too been doing it since I was 14. One of the reason I do not want to move to Engineering Management is the expectation of abandoning it.