Hello, I'm Ilya Grigorik.
I am a Distinguished Engineer and Technical Advisor to the CEO at Shopify, on a mission to make commerce better for everyone.
I work at the intersection of technology, product, and platforms. Technology shapes design space for product. Product shapes technical architecture. Carefully engineered interactions and incentives enable thriving platforms.
I was the founder and CTO of PostRank, acquired by Google. I worked on Google Analytics, Chrome, and Search, where I built products and developer programs. I am passionate about improving user experience on the web: author of High Performance Browser Networking (O'Reilly), past co-chair of the W3C Web Performance WG, speaker at 100+ events. Also dad, photographer, and an aspiring cook.
Absorb, Accelerate, Act as a Risk Sponge
Good leaders absorb risk to optimize learning rate, unblock teams, and break through indecision. A well-functioning team applies this fractally.
Guide to effective meetings
Separate social, info-sharing, and decision-making meetings. Effective meetings require a process owner, agenda, preread, and curated attendees.
Good decision-making is good process
Define the problem in own terms, take perspectives, validate signal, decide when to decide, and execute.
The Principal Engineer's Handbook
Leadership without management: the what, the how, the tools, and how to measure success as a Principal+ engineer.
Professional Aptitude vs. Tenure
Aptitude is the ability to perform a type of work. Tenure is the length of time in job. Their correlation degrades rapidly.
Making Good Group Decisions, Effectively
Good decision-making is good process, used intentionally. Key lessons and principles to apply in your practice.
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