A laid-off Shopify employee was willing to break their NDA to shed light on the company’s actions, revealing it is replacing workers with AI.

Shopify laid off 1,000 employees in July 2022, with CEO Tobi Lütke saying it was a necessary step after a “bet didn’t pay off.” According to The Deep Dive, however, it appears there is much more behind the company’s layoffs than just a bad bet on the economy.

According to an employee willing to risk legal repercussions to shed light on the matter, Shopify is quietly replacing employees with cheap contract labor and AI. Customer service teams in the US, Canada, and Ireland seem to be especially impacted.

The company’s actions have also cast doubts and raised questions about how much it can be trusted, with both employees and customers alike concerned. Employees wonder if the company’s promise that the layoffs are over can be trusted, while customers wonder if the shift to AI is contributing to the company behaving like other Big Tech companies rather than empowering ‘the little guy.’

Whatever is going on at Shopify, if trust in the company continues to erode, misjudging the economy may not be the last bad bet its leadership is guilty of.