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Best summary of a colossal waste of time:
Insert important question here"__________________________"
Answer: We think this is important too, and we are working on it, we can't say exactly when we will DO it though...
Important question here"__________________________"
Answer: We think this is important too, all we can say at this point is we are starting something (can't tell you exactly WHAT) and it is coming soon. (although we can't tell you how soon).
Important Question here"__________________________"
Answer: Oh yes, we agree this is something that needs work. And we are working on it...night and day, in fact we never sleep or eat...really. We love etsy as much as you do and we want this site to survive and thrive but we really can't tell you how or when we will make any changes or anything. Just keep the FAITH and KEEP ON LISTING, we promise you we will do something at some point in time but we can't tell you anything right now because it's top secret.
Thank you all for coming...
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27 Comments:
Right on, EB. Yeah, I started to read that transcript and had to quit. Forcing a rainbow down my throat will only make me puke it back up.
BTW, it pisses me off when they call those things minutes--they ain't minutes, dammit!
haha-
is that really a quote from the forum?
good thing I didn't even bother.
The best part of that whole thing was when Maria had that little Freudian slip and wrote that she finds it amazing that Etsy "*talk*[s] to its customers and suers".
That little slip-of-the-tongue has left a grin on my face all day.
I am kind of horrified that Rokali plans to spend more time in the forums. Big mistake! He is not a good communicator. See Martha Stewart tapes. He doesn't mix well with the common folk. He radiates discomfort. He makes more work for Matt and others to clean up and soothe ruffled feathers. He and Revolving Dork should be kept away from direct contact with customers, not unleashed on the forums.
Matt makes a much better public spokesman for Etsy. He has a natural, sincere style and makes people want to trust him. He appears to be from the same planet as most people I know.
I'm so glad I didn't bother - and my sympathies to those who attended. After all, we ~were~ led to believe that ~something~ was going to happen at this meeting. Bleah.
Now I know why I read EB first thing....and love the banner.
Let's see a transcript of the "turned off" questions. Now, that would be interesting.
Lectures are not meetings. It's Hammer Time, and not for mixing....
3 years of refusing to communicate with sellers is really paying off, don't you think?
It was a maddening waste of time of shop owners who actually conduct business, listening to two talking avatars with cupcakes shoved up their pipelines.
If you were there, how many times did Maria f*cking say we have solutions in the pipeline?
Did they put the half pipe back up?
Surprised to hear me talk like that? Here's the short version:
I spent two days with high hopes, collecting questions from my fellow sellers in an excel spreadsheet for the Town Meeting.
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5701418
Mary compiled her own, but similar version and I added the questions people sent via convo and e-mail. I was thanked for all my hard work.
So what happened? Not one thing, not one question answered, not one.
Next time you engage me in an exercise in futility please let me know.
I'm a big girl, I can take it.
I think a "match the question with the answer Rob and Maria gave" would be equally appropriate, but I'm deciding how to format it.
Let me get some coffee and whatnot and may submit it to the bitch aux.
The fact that Maria is on board with all of the cloak and dagger makes me think something more than people, process, product is going on.
It's all quite simple Etsy. Either keep things as they are and actually communicate your intentions with your business or stop fucking asking for everyones input.
I wish everyone with an idea or suggestion just stopped posting and let Etsy hang in the breeze. Then when they post "What are your ideas for blah blah blah" everyone could say:
"We think this is important too, and we are thinking on it, we can't say exactly when we will POST about it though..."
The ONLY question they answered directly and fully was "do you have any Portugese workers?" or some crap like that.
WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT QUESTION EVEN **DOING** THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE??????
This is the first time that I've actually seen the meeting minutes of anything.
Oh, my. I expect a company to maintain professionalism. With online communication, that is done best by grammar and spelling.
I wouldn't be able to type like that on my job...
*bangs head on desk*
We think this is important too, and we are thinking on it, we can't say exactly when we will POST about it though..."
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
OMG! That is hilarious!!!! I think we all should answer that way.
I just read the "minutes". What a waste of time. Just more words with no details. Etsy - the place for people with commitment issues.
Cloak, dagger--maybe.
It's a crappy position to be in though--even if she's really thinking the same things we are, she still has an obligation to help Etsy present a unified face.
I'm not saying answers wouldn't be nice, and I'm not saying it wouldn't be nice to see proof that Maria isn't drinking the same kool-aid as the rest of them...just that she may feel that it's part of her job to participate in the facade for the moment.
When you're the new person in a totally dysfunctional work environment, unless you truly have the authority to make heads roll at will, there is often quiet groundwork to be laid before leverage is possible.
That said, I'm glad I skipped it. I'm sick of the flying cookies and insularity.
"It's a crappy position to be in though--even if she's really thinking the same things we are, she still has an obligation to help Etsy present a unified face."
_______
I was in a similar work environment once and when they hired new management they kept quiet and observed for a while but they never let on that the way things were was OK. Everything Maria says that echos the way Etsy is right now, validates it. What good can that possibly do?
*hopes EB moderating will be off soon*
they lost my business and support after that lab.
I can't really add much more to the sentiment than has already been expressed. But since I cannot respond in the forums, I'll bore you all here with what I would have written there.
I actually (like damned fool) held out hope that this meeting might have been different, that there might have been something we could sink our teeth into. But no, once again more Etsy-speak, smoke and mirrors. I really hate the word pipeline.
I wanted to scream when Maria spent the first 20 minutes 'reiterating' her state of the union address from the storque. Why couldn't she have just linked to it and get on with things? I hung on every typed line waiting for something, anything, I didn't already know. What a frigging disappointment. It sounded like pure PR bullshit.
And because I can't ask in the forums, I will ask here. What the hell good is making the flagging more streamlined for tag abuse and resellers shops anyway? It's not the flagging that needs to be streamlined, it's the process of proactivity on the part of Etsy to start monitoring them themselves and stop relying on users to point them out.
Etsy needs to start weeding on their own and I want to know that they are going to work on that rather than the flagging. We already have an adequate flag system, what we don't seem to have is a team of dedicated etsy employees whose job is to actively search, contact and rid the site of abuse. Among all the other crap that they aren't doing, I mean.
And for what it's worth, I get a distinct, in my gut feeling that there is unrest and discontent on Gold street. I feel a certain lack of sincerity between Rob and Maria. I just hope the internal problems don't interfere with the site function any more than has already been done.
After reading the transcript a few days ago:
Rob and Maria
Sitting in a tree
B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T-T-I-N-G
This comment I found especially disturbing "Rokali: yes, we think Supplies & Vintage can fit in, and that they're also useful to crafters." Huh? Sure, supplies are useful to crafters. But vintage??? An Etsy shop should list a 100+ year old photo so that some crafty Etsian can use it in a collage? Cut it up for a scrabble tile pendant? No. Just. No. I am all for repurposing items which are damaged or too worn to use for their original intended purpose. But an older item in excellent condition is not a supply for the Etsy version of 'trash to treasure'. Or maybe I have that bass ackwards?
thanks, EB, for saving the rest of us from wasting our time, and thank you to the anonymous bitch who wrote this post, you continue to inspire me with your bitchin' crafty ways with words and other things.
PS does any body know what an "Etsy" is? I mean, what does "etsy" mean?
I see what you're saying impetuous...I guess I just meant to say that I could see why SHE might feel that part of her job right now is to participate in the unified face of Etsy. In her first "address" I felt like she was doing exactly what you're talking about impetuous--disagreeing in a veiled way, not giving permission...as things go on it seems that maybe that will be less the case...as she drinks more of the Kool-Aid :)
I love a good critique...
She talked about new hires but the staff is already bloated with people who don't really contribute to any necessary function or produce any revenue. I think several people were hired just to reward them for being supportive or to help them out in life, not to really benefit the company. I hope the personnel changes include some hard, cold practicality.
For every new hire, please lose 1.5 people in dead weight.
They have painted themselves into a corner in terms of firing people. They hired friends/family who are now covered under labor laws. That means there are specific procedures the company must follow to terminate employment.
Etsy is clearly not capable of implementing and following proper systems and procedures at this time.
I suspect Maria will need to install "supervisors" - gasp! people who will be the boss of other people - who will then have to monitor employees, gauge performance, share evaluations, issues warnings, etc.
It could take months to fire a person no matter how useless/abusive they are.
Maria has her hands full and frankly I suspect there is a good 18 months of clean up and installing processes and procedures just on the employee situation.
She can streamline the tech processes more quickly. The human element will be tricky and probably require a disproportionate amount of time and resources.
What a mess.
If the position itself is cut, then it's not a firing, it's a layoff or a budget cut, etc. There are entire positions which are unnecessary at Etsy, regardless of who is doing the job or how 'hard' they work. And Etsy wouldn't need to provide any 'cause' for that type of termination. It's theoretically unrelated to performance.
(although they would have to pay unemployment on laid off employees, unlike firing for cause)
Another possibility is that if a company is sold, the new owners can replace everyone if they want to. Often they just make the old staff reapply and reinterview for their old positions. The qualified ones are kept and the unqualified are not.
Yes, eclipse, your scenario would allow them more leeway, but since they have hired friends and family I have my doubts that would happen.
Who knows, maybe rokali built in protections for existing employees when he accepted the VC and everyone who works there now is safe.
That would be sad since there are a few people who should be put out unceremoniously, but it wouldn't surprise me.
Then, only a buy-out and complete change in management would allow them to deal properly with certain employees.
I dream of the day.....
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