Meet our Frontend Engineer, Byron — Introducing the Koala Digital Team
Our next interviewee is Byron Buckley, our Frontend Engineer. It’s a special day for Byron today as it’s his one year anniversary at Koala. Byron is our resident Shopify and Contentful guru, an inquisitive developer and a member of our ‘Koala Dropbears’ basketball team. Over the last year he’s participated in the development and release of Koala Bundles, several product page builds and iterations, product cross-sell widgets, and a range of AB tests for the Digital team’s ‘Experiments Squad’. Known for the most ergonomic desk setup at Koala, Byron is a part-time foodie and organiser of Grub Club, a monthly dinner for Koala foodies.
What exciting project(s) are you working on at the moment?
Late 2018 was spent developing the first iteration of Koala Bundles, an initiative designed to reduce consumer purchase friction and increases our average order value, a metric we actively grow and measure.
While 2019 has started with evaluating and improving the way we talk about additional delivery options on the Koala website.
I’ll also be supporting changes to our email capture strategy with the goal of reducing costs and enhancing our lead nurturing process to better align with this quarter’s OKRs.
What do you like about working for Koala?
I think the marriage of tangible brick and mortar products with creative marketing and tech is very appealing. Koala has a great brand familiarity — which makes it easy to talk about where I work. In fact, I’ve been told I turn into a veritable salesman when asked about Koala.
“… let me tell you about Koala’s tool free, easy-to-assemble, steel frame sofa…” — Byron in salesman mode.
There’s something energising about participating in offering physical products customers love.
I also like the opportunity to learn and absorb experiences from cross-functional, talented and often passionate team members; as well as opportunities to diversify and experiment with career paths and responsibilities. Koala has previously shown their support of career exploration by encouraging and sponsoring attendance to an “Introduction to Product Management” course.
This year, my renewed interest in UX will have me will work alongside our Senior UX Designer on research tasks.
Describe what a typical day looks like for you in the digital team?
We have a good balance between work and play at Koala. Most of the time, there is a focus on promotional work and product launches as they are usually deadline based activities and often take priority. During the “off-seasons”, I split my time between business-as-usual (BAU) tasks, bug fixes, Contentful integrations (Contentful is our api driven content management system), a bit of Growth Engineering, and UX research tasks. I balance these tasks with play; either having a game of pong against my fellow peers, or basketball practice with the Koala Dropbears at a nearby park.
How is Koala different to the previous places you’ve worked?
Koala is the first non-digital product startup I’ve worked at. Task longevity/continuity is different and often more engaging than an agency or consultancy setting. The company is rather young, and small in size so the founders and leadership team are pretty approachable. Interacting with early stage product ideas and participating in product testing makes it a little more interesting.
What motivated you to join Koala?
I had largely sworn off agencies and consultancies for my next role, and wanted to work on something that had a greater opportunity for continuity over the long term, Koala fit the bill. Koala also shared my affinity for VueJS. While most of my job applications went unanswered until January or February, Koala had a unmatched sense of urgency during the Christmas holiday season. This gave me the impression that Koala is a fast paced and efficient company. Ultimately, I had a hunch Sydney would be a great strategic move, so when Koala’s co-founder made it clear I’d need to relocate I considered the opportunity a bit of providence.
What do you do to get to know your team better?
I started Grub Club for Koala folks who prefer a plate over a schooner; it’s a monthly gathering for foodies at the office to grab a bite together at a new restaurant or share an old favourite.
Koala hosts weekly ‘Friyay” talks led various team members, it’s a great opportunity to chat with individuals about what they do and catch up on life over junk food, ciders and pong.
Lunchtime one-on-one’s with my “work homies”, Todd and Amina is also something I look forward to each week.
Koala is an Australian startup based in Sydney with a passion for changing the furniture buying experience online because life’s too short to worry about dumb stuff like wasting a whole day waiting for the delivery guy or whether 20 minutes in a showroom was enough to make an educated decision…
Try Koala today at koala.com.
