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Since I know many people do not get Etsy emails, I am posting this, hot off the presses as it were:
Dear Friends,So they are eliminating Sara's job to replace her with... the same job... only in Brooklyn. Where was she? Etsy has 27 million but too cheap to pay relocation? And more importantly WHY THE FUCK DOES DANIELLEXO HAVE A FUCKING JOB??? WHY does the CLUELESS NIMROD that many many sellers despise still manage to keep her job and the one most seemed to like, one that seemed to try at least to be helpful, gets cut?
Etsy Teams are part of Etsy’s foundation, and we are committed to working more closely with all of you to help promote our joint goals. Since I created the Teams idea three years ago, over 450 Teams with 20,000 members have formed around the globe. It’s time for Etsy to take a closer look at how we can better support Teams and your needs.
Over the past few weeks, I have spent a great deal of time speaking with Teams and working with Maria to look at what Etsy is and isn’t doing with the Teams program. As part of this examination, I recently made the difficult decision to discontinue the role that Sara Selepouchin currently holds at Etsy. (For those of you who do not know Sara, she is the friendly lady who has been running the Teams program.) This decision is in no way a reflection of our commitment to the Teams program.
On the contrary, I see it as a first step to better aligning Etsy’s resources to meet growing needs of Teams. I will be creating a new Brooklyn-based position to work closely with me to develop and implement new tools, collaborative promotional, and branding opportunities for Etsy Teams. New Team profile pages, private forums, and more are among the top priorities for the first part of 2009 as mentioned in Maria's Storque article.
Sara will continue working with Etsy until the end of the year. She will be meeting with a couple other admin, including me, to pass on her tasks, information and ideas so we can continue to provide support to Teams without any interruption. In the new year, Danielle (Etsy admin daniellexo) and I will be available and actively involved in handling Team page changes, questions, and content. We now share the teams@etsy inbox and are committed to keeping your Team information up to date and helping to facilitate your Etsy Teams in any way possible.
Organizational change is part of the natural, sometimes painful, process of building a great and lasting business, and with it comes great potential but also some hard choices. It is never easy when someone loses her job, and I can assure you that this decision was not made capriciously. We are all very grateful for Sara’s contributions to Etsy. I thank Sara for her one and a half years at Etsy, and I wish her the very, very best luck in her future endeavors.
I remain more committed to Etsy Teams than ever. I see the incredible role they play in our communities and want to make sure that Etsy Teams receive the attention and resources they deserve.
I appreciate your understanding and compassion in this matter.
As always, I am available at matt@etsy.com
Please address all Teams related inquiries to teams@etsy.com
Thanks,
Matt Stinchcomb, VP, Communications- Etsy.com
24 Comments:
New team profile pages and private forums are NOT top priorities. NOT top priorities!! Stats, a search that doesnt bring shit up from other left hand catagories, and for Christssake, staff members smarter than goldfish- THESE ARE PRIORITIES!
/faints from sheer exhaustion
Sara lives in Philadephia and was willing to relocate unlike Maria.
And we all know what good people skills Dxoxo has.
You're too nice to fire, we'd feel bad about firing you... so let's just make it a layoff, mkay?
DXO is going to be there but Sara gone
Etsy Teams=FAIL
Why didn't Matt get rid of idiot Danielle instead of Sara? Doesn't he realize Danielle is the WORST person to have work with Teams? She's impolite; has no idea how to properly communicate with Team leaders and members; shows up late if at all for Team events then leaves early if she does show up; goes off doing other things when she should be paying attention in Team meetings and events. I could go on but don't want to bore anyone.
Danielle has proven time and again that she is NOT a PR person by any definition of the word.
Getting rid of Sara and keeping Danielle is another BIG Etsy mistake.
Your summary is brutally accurate. daniellexo is probably the most apathetic toward the customer base of all the admins. Some will say not "apathetic" but "antipathetic" but I'll go with the nicer term.
She also shows the least problem-solving skills and the least comprehension of our marketing activities.
Sara may not have been perfect, but she was responsive, forward-thinking, and diligent.
Etsy, now that you've confessed to even more asshattedness, go say a 10 Fail Maria's as your penance.
OK sellers, here is your proof!
If you though Etsy wasn't listening to sellers, have turned away and turned them off completely, laugh at the forums, and laugh their way to the bank every time you click on PAY MY ETSY BILL, then HERE YOU ARE!!!!!
PROOF not only how little Etsy thinks about sellers, but how they take the employee who has a proven record of complete disdain for sellers as the TEAM contact, oh boy, Etsy has done it again!!!!!
I'd like to take all those personal contacts DXO has had with sellers over the last 3 years and take THAT TO THE BANK. Maybe everyone should just mail them direct to Maria.
Or make Maria sit and watch clips of DXO doing all those cutey pie Labs that have everyone making the same things to sell on Etsy for $15 or less..............since DXO holds "handmade" in such high regard.
Let your stores do the walking!
Dear Matt, I have no knowledge at all of teams, other than what I have read here on EB. From what I've read, you've hardly covered yourselves in glory, but that is by the by.
I'm assuming the decision re: Sara was handed down from above and that you are the poor mug detailed off to break the news and catch any flak. However "I can assure you that this decision was not made capriciously."
I would never have thought that it was capricious (at least, not more than Etsy decisions usually are) until you put in that one little phrase. NOW I am really curious...
Yours,
Moving To eHive and Folksy
"I will be creating a new Brooklyn-based position to work closely with me to develop and implement new tools, collaborative promotional, and branding opportunities for Etsy Teams."
It sounds to me as if Teams is being retooled to promote the Etsy "brand" rather than the sellers who are members.
More spin. And still no answer to the question: why did we have to read about this on a blog? Why didn't Etsy tell us themselves?
Look, Dxoxo is obviously F*ing the right Admin. And Sara wasn't.
End of story.
Etsy's keeping EB busy! Matt seems to be the ax-man now. Except I think he whacked the wrong person.
And will Rob take the octopus to Switzerland? I'm sure we all want to know. Not.
I think the octopus should go to Switzerland on its own.
D'ya think Rob'll read Swimmy to the Swiss? What color nail polish will he be sporting?
oh, great! Because this is what EVERY etsian has been asking for------private team forums.
Although , they have been against seller only areas in the forums forever---- why would teams be the major priority of 09 and not a new and improved search function---which, um, you know none of us have been asking about..
How the hell is DXO still there and not Sara?? Etsy keeps digging it's own grave. She can't possibly be f*ing the right admin, homegirl looks like a morbidly obese elf!
Team forums looks a lot like more censorship to me...and like someone else said, more etsy branding. I guess more etsy control.
This promises to reach the depths of true absurdity.
Like, aren't there bizarre but irrelevant teams, like for breastfeeding and teevee show fandom? With the most brilliantly talented (yeah) Etsy admins taking a hand in this, there could be some awesome promos.
Etsy is getting too strange to be believable. It's camp ecommerce.
Why do they seem to be doing everything BUT fixing the search?
Seriously. If they can't fix it (for whatever reason), say so.
I'd dream of seeing some seller protections, ( block bad buyers) but hey, I'm only told to make nice with them instead, like I'm six and not like someone running a business.
Unfortunately, I'm not wild about Artfire as the reg process seems screwed up.
Special secret team forums with DXO - like the Etsy love-cult being reborn from the ashes of 27 million bucks. Yeah, that's the ticket!
More etsy branding my ass. I'm in my team to support other team members, NOT etsy. They're already getting enough of that from me, thankyouverymuch. I will be sooo out of that team like a bat out of hell is I see changes I'm not in-line with.
I suspect they're seeing all the pro-active things that teams are doing for themselves (ad,s etc) and want in on the action. Shop Live is baby steps towards that.
And now what, if we don't go along with whatever fuckery etsy wants with regards to teams, you can betcha there'll be more promotion of the followers and being frozen out even more of treaury picks, fp, gift guides, etc.
Huh. They really take people for stupid, don't they?
Not really sure to say about this except that I think there is a lot more going on here than meets the eye. And I'm surprised that Matt is so involved in this.
Re Danielle: I've had real issues with Danielle as a team admin and do not think the job is the right fit for her - she seems to be overwhelmed and is very difficult to communicate with. There have been similar difficulties with Sara too, though. The impression I have been getting is that the responsibilities of doing teams admin job had grown so much that they were not able to handle it. I'm not sure if either or both of them are full-time employees - if not, maybe that's the problem.
FYI, the new team profile pages and private forums is not a new idea, and has been promised for over a year - but it has never happened.
I too wish Etsy would be more forthcoming - their lack of transparency is extremely frustrating.
Wow. Sara commutes to NY and back every day for all that time and they give her the ax. Nice. Real nice.
I can appreciate most of the bitching here, but I really think that when Matt talks about team profiles and forums as a "top priority" he means as far as new features for TEAMS go, not a top priority over site wide features like improving search.
Poor Matt, such a nice guy, such an easy scapegoat.
Whhatttttt??
I've always thought Danielle = team work.
I can't believe you don't all agree. (Insert eye roll)
When I imagine Etsy admin, this is what comes to mind:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAO4EVMlpwM
May not be far from reality.
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