I don't work at Shopify, but I've been grateful to them for allowing many of the local dev meetups here in the Ottawa area to use their fantastic space for our meetings. So I am glad to see things going so well for them.
Definitely. When I moved here two years ago people complained that the government town image of Ottawa was reflecting on the startup scene and how there were no outlets for those that wanted to talk about their work or the industry.
But, in addition to the organizers that run these awesome events, Shopify actually did something about it. AFAIK they will be keeping the lounge after they move to Elgin, which is a nice gesture; it has become a hub to many people outside the company.
Another Ottawa developer here. I went to a few OCLUG meetings a decade ago (when they were still at the Main library branch) but I've been meaning to check it since they moved it to Shopify's offices. I think it might be fun going to OCLUG meetings again. :)
They're a paragon of the developer community and they host a variety of developer-related events on a regular basis, for example the recent Random Hacks of Kindness[1] event.
I've been dabbling in Go lately and Shopify seems like the only place in Ottawa that's using it to support their bottom line.
My experience with Ruby and RoR is fairly limited, and I have no experience with unit testing (very embarrassing). I'm not sure I'd be a good fit for Shopify. :(
That said, I've recently had a dire need for concurrency on a personal project and Go fits the role very perfectly. It's also a very "clean" language to work with, and I distinctly get the impression that doing things "the Go way" leaves very little opportunity to do "dirty" things.
The Go language designers did a very nice job at creating something quite robust without making it excessively verbose.
I love how the CEO of Shopify is on HN getting talent the day he closes the $100m round. Thanks for Active Merchant, btw, it is awesome. Liquid is cool too.
Feel free to reach out to me (email in profile) – I have previously organized a bunch of events and meetups in Ottawa and am fairly connected to the scene. Can probably point you in the right direction.
If you need some help with developer events in the Ottawa area feel free to get in touch. I typically do Ottawa Javascript, Ruby Tuesday and sometimes the ArtEngine Modlab as well.
I go to some of these meetups for OPAG (Ottawa Python Authors Group) and have had a blast. One night a table of us were there chatting away until 2AM. Fantastic hosts and a fantastic space in an easy-to-reach area right downtown.
