Alex Grigoryan

VP of Eng @WalmartLabs. Focused on Customer Experience. Fan of moving the needle forward.

[Alex Grigoryan @lexgrigoryan]

It's easy to get lost in the day to day of work. But the key is to keep your eyes on the boulders and make sure those are moving. They move slowly, and it takes a while, but that's how you bring organizational benefit and multiply value.

[Alex Grigoryan @lexgrigoryan]

Lesson of the day: Software is an uncountable noun, it doesn't have a plural form.
Had to look it up, because "When deciding whether to use is or are, look at whether the noun is plural or singular. If the noun is singular, use is. If it is plural or more than one noun, use are."

[Alex Grigoryan @lexgrigoryan]

When you have a particular area of strength, you will tend to focus in on that area. It makes it easy to fall into the trap of "I can't believe that person is not focusing on X". It's good to be aware of your strengths and focuses.

[Alex Grigoryan @lexgrigoryan]

@marwen_a and how do leaders best enable that other than show casing it themselves? This is going to be on my mind for a while to unravel.

[Alex Grigoryan @lexgrigoryan]

I was working with a team and I just felt so comfortable working with this particular team. It was just so easy to reach out and connect, to discuss, to be open, etc.

I was trying to think through why this was, and what I think I'm landing on is absence of ego.

[Alex Grigoryan @lexgrigoryan]

@_ohall I definitely think this can be a learned behavior/culture enabled. I'm wondering how do we best enable that? Obviously step one is to hire leaders with that perspective (which is a whole other question), but after that, what next? The more I realize, the more questions I have.

[Alex Grigoryan @lexgrigoryan]

@joelchen19 The ideal to me is a lunch where the candidate gets to hang out with a fellow peer and ask them questions. A chance for them to meet a possible buddy and understand the environment.

[Alex Grigoryan @lexgrigoryan]

The job titles at an organization and it’s structure tell you a lot about its values, struggles, history, etc.

Developer or engineer?
Producer or product?
QA or QE ?
End to end teams?
Release managers?
Eng report to product?

*caveats apply

Always ask and understand the org.

[Alex Grigoryan @lexgrigoryan]

I suddenly got a bunch of followers. What happened ?

Thought of the week:
Should we build orgs around capabilities and then fill in people or build orgs around people’s strengths?

Interesting philosophies come into play to answer what’s best. Fun interview question for managers

[Alex Grigoryan @lexgrigoryan]

@markdalgleish Feel this recently, especially for the agile-fall and I think the “project intake process” is important along with roles/responsibilities.

- use cases is under product.
- UX done before sprint
- all stories done before project start

Anything else and eng is squeezed.

[Alex Grigoryan @lexgrigoryan]

@dshaw @nodejs WalmartLabs in San Bruno might be able to help. Let me know if you want me to look into it.

[Amal Hussein @nomadtechie]

On point message from @lexgrigoryan on aligning engineering teams to collaborate when working on transformational projects. Parallel teams are not structured to collaborate but to compete. So don't do that.

#NodeJSInteractive

[Alex Grigoryan @lexgrigoryan]

RN = React Native.

Checkout "Electrode Native" for integrating React Native and Native in a seamless way.

[Alex Grigoryan @lexgrigoryan]

Having a great time at #NodeSummit . Just finished my talk about our useage of RN and the highs + lows. Big thank you to the teams behind the scenes ensuring everything is going smoothly.

[Alex Grigoryan @lexgrigoryan]

Please come check out my talk on our story of RN. It's going to be a fun story of my learnings and missteps. https://t.co/Y9izg40oyf

[Node Summit @NodeSummit]

Shall we continue? #ReactJS anyone? "React Native Case Study (cleverly misspelled in the card, doh!) with Alex Grigoryan (@lexgrigoryan) @walmartlabs

https://t.co/mw6egra0Li #nodejs

[Alex Grigoryan @lexgrigoryan]

I've been on a long hiatus from speaking or writing. I felt that gave me time to collect a lot of new thoughts and learnings about team building, culture, leadership, transformation, and of course technology. Will start sharing soon.

[Alex Grigoryan @lexgrigoryan]

Big thank you to #amex for hosting my talk on "Avoiding the ivory tower as a platform / core team" it's wonderful to see the talk resonating with so many people. I need to turn this into a blog post.