The archive · Work & Ways of Doing · Operational decision · 2023
Shopify's 'calendar purge' deletes 10,000 meetings, reclaiming 76,500+ hours of focus time
Shopify wiped recurring meetings with more than two people, cleared Wednesdays, capped big meetings — deleting 10,000 events and 76,500+ hours in one move.
Shopify
What it had to solve
After two years of remote work, Shopify's calendars were full of recurring meetings; COO Kaz Nejatian called meetings a bug and wanted employees' heads-down time back.
How it works
On the first working day of January 2023, Shopify employees returned from the holidays to a 'calendar purge.' COO Kaz Nejatian told staff the company was eliminating all recurring meetings with more than two people, keeping Wednesdays free of events, and limiting large meetings — anything over 50 people — to a six-hour window on Thursdays, one per week.
Nejatian called the move 'useful subtraction' and said the company was choosing 'fast and chaotic' over slow and deliberate: employees were told not to add meetings back to their calendars for at least two weeks, and to be 'really critical' about whether each meeting deserved to return. CEO Tobi Lütke framed it as subtraction — 'the best thing founders can do.'
The scale was the point: a company spokesperson said the changes deleted nearly 10,000 company events, equivalent to more than 76,500 hours of meetings. The policy was aimed at reclaiming heads-down time after the pandemic tripled time spent in meetings across remote workforces.
Experts were split on whether such policies work — some warned that cutting meetings without providing alternatives could push coordination into even more fragmented tools. But the purge became a widely covered reference point for companies trying to reverse meeting bloat.
Why it lands
- Recurring meetings compound: one recurring event multiplied by thousands of employees becomes tens of thousands of hours, so deleting them once has outsized leverage.
- The two-week 'don't re-add' rule changed the default — meetings returned only by explicit re-justification.
- Hard constraints (empty Wednesdays, capped big meetings) made the change enforceable rather than a suggestion.
- Public framing as 'useful subtraction' gave employees language and permission to decline meetings.
What it did
The purge deleted 10,000 company events — the equivalent of more than 76,500 hours of meetings — and became a widely reported template for meeting reduction in the remote-work era.
What you can take
Subtraction scales: cutting a recurring commitment once frees thousands of hours across a company — but only if people must re-justify before adding meetings back.
Since then
The calendar purge was covered by Fortune, CNN, HR Dive and others, and became a reference point in the wider movement to cut meetings after pandemic-era Zoom bloat. Shopify continued to evolve its meeting culture, and other firms cited the move when trimming their own calendars. Debate continued over whether blanket cuts help or simply move coordination elsewhere.
Sources
- Shopify is axing all meetings involving more than two people in a remote work twist that the company itself calls 'fast and chaotic'
- Shopify thinks canceling meetings will boost productivity. Experts are split.
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