Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke: It’s impossible to make great products if you don’t give a sh*t

Every product in the world. The quality at the end of the day is simply a reflection of how much the people who created it gave a shit about the product. And it is not possible to make great products if the people who work on it do not give a shit about the product. And I actually think this is a very important role for product leaders to make sure that the team gives a shit. And I think this is something that can be done with building empathy for people using it, but also it can be done infectiously by the product leader. The product leader has to give a shit. Do not engage in product work on products that you don't care about because you cannot produce the thing that the person who give you a task is looking for. It just isn't about the brief document. It isn't about the aligning stakeholders. It isn't sometimes in some places, some of those things are aspects of it. And I think they correlate sometimes with people. But I think the higher order bit is if you are in product, you have basically free roles. You just have to understand this thing that's being done better than everyone else. The second is you got to be exothermically infectious with actually caring about this thing because just that one thing alone will make a 10 times better product. It's crazy how much of it of change this makes.