Steve

Steve Buckley is someone who constructs companies. He started out as a web developer in Ireland and has held recruitment and sales roles in the UK and NZ. Most recently he helped to develop a company of 25 into a team of 100 as Head of Talent at Lyst. Steve possesses a remarkable willingness to put himself out there on behalf of others in order to make change, regardless of whether he himself is directly affected by the issue. I think, beneath his wicked frankness, he genuinely cares about people and it’s this that makes him so good at what he does. We spoke just as his time at Lyst was wrapping up.

Tell me about Lyst.

Lyst is without question the best job I’ve ever had. There was the obvious challenge of selling a fashion orientated company to hardcore engineers which was lots of fun. Internal recruitment is a million times better than agency recruitment. Everything is aligned. Your focus can be completely on hiring people who are right for that company and where the company is right for them. I also had an opportunity to educate myself about marginalisation in Tech. There was an opportunity for Lyst as a business to affect these issues in a positive way but I realised there was also an opportunity for me being a loud aggressive Irish bloke to have an impact too.

How do you mean?

For example, when I sit up and say “You should read about this blog posts about having a Tampon Club at work” other people like me tend to go “oh, okay, I’ll read this thing”. And that’s what I’m aiming for . I want people like me to say “Oh wait. We probably shouldn’t talk like that / We should start thinking about stuff like this”. They are the ones that can affect most of the change as they are the ones who have caused many of the problems in the first place.

What are you proudest of achieving?

I’m proud about getting more women and juniors on board . It was a big achievement for me to learn how to convince the right people that these things are worth it both from a personal and a commercial perspective. If you can get passed the commercial sense then the rest is easy. Seeing us go from having zero female applicants to a significantly healthier percentage was big and you can see the cultural impact that’s now having.

Why do you care about things like this? What’s it to you?

The thing that effects me the most is being excluded. I hate that feeling, especially when I am being excluded unfairly. What I try to do in a tiny way is to level the playing field a bit. I generally believe that the world needs to be a bit more friendly, so I shout at the world until it gets friendlier.

What was the commercial angle?

We know from surveys that the majority of Lyst’s customers are young females with a high disposable income. If you a building a product or service that is targeting a particular demographic and not one person on the team fits the profile of your typical user, how can you be building the best thing? You need to get different perspectives from all angles.

You mentioned Juniors?

Yes. I felt that hiring more junior people was going to pay enormous dividends in the long run. I worked a lot on convincing the senior people on the team that investing time and taking risks on very very junior people would be worth it. There were big doubts around taking on people with only 12 weeks experience from places like Makers Academy. Getting them to believe that these people could become great developers was a very big deal for me.

You wanted those people to have a chance or you thought it made commercial sense?

Both. It goes back to the whole inclusion element. It’s about giving people the opportunity to get started . But also in the long run if you want to have a big established team you have to factor in being able to hire, train and mentor good juniors so that they can be the ones to carry on that business.

What are your thoughts on experience stipulations?

It’s nonsense!

You meet a lot of people. How do you identify who’s good?

We have a simple set of things that we look for when we receive a CV. Do they show some consistency in their career - have they held down a permanent job? If so that is probably a positive indicator because it means that they weren’t terrible. If I come across an engineer who has worked on somethings that look interesting, regardless of language that is enough to warrant a conversation. The first thing that I always ask is ‘Why are you looking to leave your current job?’. Assuming that their motivation for wanting to move on is healthy I will consider that a positive and keep going. If they start bitching and moaning about everyone they work with that is not a good sign. Then I tend to ask them what they like to do, how they like spending their time.”Are you a freak when it comes to wanting to refactor code? Are you desperate to work with bleeding edge tech? Do you only want to work on greenfield projects?”

What does your ideal job look like is my favorite question.

If it’s someone who is quite junior I try to dig into how much they care about this sort of work. In some cases people are doing it because it is just a job which I can’t fault but at the same time we want people who give a shit about their work and how they impact the people around them. After that I step back and let the engineers speak with them. My job isn’t to decide who works for Lyst, my job is to find enough people for the rest of the business to decide who should work at Lyst.

Be selfish. The word selfish has so many negative connotations but being selfish in certain areas doesn’t have to be a negative thing. If I was an entirely selfless person my career wouldn’t be were it is and my family wouldn’t have the opportunities that they have. I don’t think a lot of people are selfish enough for the right reasons.

How does that manifest?

If you are sitting there worried that your colleges are getting paid more than you, you need to address that. If you are waking up in the morning and thinking “Ffs i’ve got to go to work again, you are in the wrong job”. In some cases it means doing something different and in some cases it means going out of your comfort zone and asking for more money, or more personal time or if you don’t like someone on your team, asking to work with a different team. The worst thing that someone can stay to you is “No” and if that’s as hard as it gets, there is nothing to be afraid of. Ask. It never hurts to ask.