Lyst Reviews

I wouldn’t recommend anyone take a job at Lyst. The product is laughable, not even the employees use it to use up their free clothing allowance. There is absolutely zero commitment to diversity (there’s a diversity council with no say and no HR buy in other than to say ‘diversity isn’t a priority to us right now’. It’s a particularly terrible place to be a woman or minority in tech - you get spoken over in meetings and undervalued. There’s no appetite to fix technical debt or make any large scale changes to the product as the engineers who built the product (with limited experience elsewhere) are now in very senior positions. There’s no product roadmap at all other than to make tiny insignificant A/B tests and see what makes metrics improve - they never do. Data science team don’t have enough decent data to make meaningful impact because user retention is nonexistent. The exec team are out of touch with the employees, particularly the CEO wears headphones all the time and never acknowledges anyone in the building despite being only around 100 employees. Company structure changes constantly with more and more bizarre team layouts causing low morale. Honestly as soon as you start you realise everyone is either planning on leaving, actually leaving, just going through the motions and completely disinterested or in a position that they are under qualified for so cannot move companies.

The company doesn’t set you up for success. It’s incredibly top down for a startup. In a company of 100, there are about 8 levels on the hierarchy, and the CEO doesn’t talk to anyone below a certain pay grade. Senior management (bar a few) have no people skills and lack the leadership skills to run a company. Meetings are stifling and confrontational. Some huge egos. They say they don’t tolerate ‘brilliant’ jerks which is one of the biggest running jokes in the company. It’s a B2C company where no employee actually uses the product, let alone believe in it. A lot of people with zero understanding or respect for the fashion industry. There is no commitment to diversity. It’s a real shame because there are some very talented people there, but the turnover is ridiculous - probably for reasons listed above.