Tech’s New Executive Perk: Working From Home Forever

When Cathy Polinsky was the chief technology officer at online clothing company Stitch Fix Inc. in San Francisco, her friend Dan Debow would often bug her about switching jobs. Debow, a vice president at e-commerce platform Shopify Inc., had long tried to persuade her to come work with him.

But Polinsky, 43, had family commitments keeping her in the Bay Area, so she always said no to moving to live near Shopify’s headquarters in Ottawa. Then, in May, Shopify went “digital by default,” letting all 7,000 employees work from anywhere indefinitely. “Dan told me about Shopify’s new initiative late last summer, and that’s what really kicked off the conversation,” Polinsky says. In January she joined Shopify as vice president for engineering, working from her home in California. One of her first steps was launching a recruiting drive to hire more than 2,000 engineers in 2021. They’ll all be able to work from home permanently, too.