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Yep, Etsy has added yet another engineer to their force. Ever wonder what the resumes look like for these creme de la creme Chad chooses? Unfortunately, they laid it out in the Dorque announcement.
This email we received just about sums it up!
Etsy hires a friend who has no e-commerce background. But what the heck, he plays a mean banjo and knows a lot about social networking. And isn't that what it's all about? Just folks, hangin, talking, pickin git fiddles and watchin the little uns roll around on the floor? Forget making the site about sales. "It's not about the money man, it's about the people. Anyone who is in business for the money is just an evil breadhead. Pass me that joint, brah."
35 Comments:
“The reason I stayed here for five years wasn't for the vesting or the accolades. It was because I worked with people who *care* about building something that people *care* about. This also happens to be the same reason why I chose my next step: Etsy. They care, and it shows.“
I wonder what the real story is, as Lou Dobbs would say.
Oh, so the new guy can take over (and boy does it show) when Etsy leaves early for 3 day weekends while their servers melt, caching and shopping cart probs get NO attention whatsoever, and Etsy parties like it's 1999!
Go ahead and hire more people with no skills or any contact with real handmade because your goose is up in January Etsy-------when sellers leave by the thousands and spread the word about what a rip-off Etsy is. Shoppers will follow fast!
Tweenies buying $15 schlock does get old, and your time is just about up. Your legacy? There's a sucker on every corner and the joke's on sellers who fork over tons of money every month for a lot of smoke and mirrors (without getting paid up front for Etsy-branded products).
I'm usually with you Bitches, but what's so bad about this? The guy has a big chunk of experience dealing with an extremely high-traffic site with a heavy server load. Given that Etsy's servers are probably held together with rubber bands and bits of string, this sounds good to me.
he comes from flickr. isn't that the site that has just banned all etsy tagged pics, because flickr is not a sales site?
very professional looking 'taking a confused dump in public' photo adds a little something extra. he'll fit right in.
my next avi will feature me on the toilet, in a chauffeurs cap, wearing tampon earrings. i wanna be cool too.
I think in 30 days he'll be wishing he was back at Flickr. Flickr to me has always seemed like it was staffed with competent intelligent people. I don't think he'll find that same crowd at Etsy. I give him 9 months before he goes running for the hills.
confused, he comes from a non-commerce site...the needs are vastly different. There's also a long history of hiring friends at Etsy, which has yet to work out.
Oh and 20 plus engineers and counting is a wtf too...Etsy needs 20+ engineers? Really? So, like, 22 can't get the job done but 23 is the magic number that can? When will Etsy have a 24-7 stable site with a working shopping cart and Paypal connection? Oh it's that magic number 23 that'll do it! plbtt
I think 24 is the magic number actually. One engineer helms the wheel per hour. Their attention span can only hold so much!
They get paid a whole days worth of salary, but the rest of the time they can pick the banjo!!
YEEE HAW!!
You forgot they play Rock Band using an overhead projector as well.
Truthfully, I don't think he will have any more success at Etsy then Chad has had. Flickr is a far cry from Etsy.
Besides, has anybody noticed we are just passing around people who are from investor sites?
To confused,
Etsy servers are not held together with bits of rubberband. They have a bank of extremely good servers. Don't ask how I know but I do.
I have to disagree on this one as well. I don't think it's a necessity for engineers to have direct experience in the exact type of web site they're hired to work on. It's a nice-to-have at best, but as long as he is good at the engineering areas they hired him for, then what's the problem? He'll need to learn the details as he gets going, as is true of anyone starting a new job.
Going from what info I can find online, it seems like this guy has experience in capacity planning (enough to write a book), and with all the server problems of late, that could come in handy. I think it's also good to have someone coming from Flickr, which gets a huge amount of traffic, so I would imagine he has some relevant knowledge that would be useful to Etsy.
It seems too soon to make any assessments, especially with such little info to go on. At most, I'll say that the write-up is fluffy and the photo is pretty tacky, but that's about it.
I would disagree that Flickr isn't commerce.
They are very profitable. If you don't have a pro membership ($24 a year) or order prints or such via the site, you might not think about where they make money, but they do.
The difference is Flickr is worth the money you pay, and in fact, is a steal.
For all the Admin talk about taking better photos, I wish they'd take a reasonably professional photo of an employee for the site just once.
Every time they try to tell us they have some new next best thing coming on staff, it's a crappy college party style photo of some kid who doesn't even marginally convey consumer confidence.
We are their consumers. We'd love a little consumer confidence in our business partner...
There is nothing in that article or in that guy's words that inspire confidence. I see it as another insider job snatch, nothing more. There's nobody in charge.
wait wait. Explain to me how the concept of Shopping Local helps us sell online????????????????
http://www.etsy.com/storque/craftivism/new-rules-support-your-local-economy-6092/
I wish I had money to bribe those Storque article losers, too.
I'd like to go to the NYC offices and slap most of them.
Oh, wait. I've been there and it's SOOOOO much worse and sorority like in person.
Chucked said...
“The reason I stayed here for five years wasn't for the vesting or the accolades. It was because I worked with people who *care* about building something that people *care* about. This also happens to be the same reason why I chose my next step: Etsy. They care, and it shows.“
I wonder what the real story is, as Lou Dobbs would say.
_______________________________
Yes, Etsy cares...about themselves, and about their investors. They stopped caring about their sellers a long, long time ago.
lol BRIBE - That's exactly the article that just made me come to EB just now!
"In a nutshell, she works to advance many of the same things that Etsy stands for — handmade, local, independent production, and a connection to communities and producers"
Doesn't Etsy realize that all those adjectives aren't synonyms, and that the Local and Communities part is the antithesis of the goal of online marketing and selling?
And BTW, Etsy sellers are probably a major force in keeping the big box craft stores like Hobby Lobby, Michael's, AC Moore & Joann's in business. How does Etsy think their sellers can crank out crafts at that $14 average sale level if they buy quality handcrafted supplies from local artisans & retailers?
I'm actually in favor of the shop local concept. But it's just stupid for Etsy to promote that as part of an eCommerce (mail order) strategy.
Another day, another fail.
he comes from flickr. isn't that the site that has just banned all etsy tagged pics, because flickr is not a sales site?
---
how is this relevant, or bad?
This guy just came from flickr. Larger than etsy, less glitchy. It's a huge company that he helped build. How is this bad for Etsy, again?
The only purpose of Shop Local that I have ever figured is to keep up with other sellers in your area, but it does little for selling locally at craft shows and events. That's where it's real value is, but Etsy's too lazy to do anything about it.
I do think it's important to have employees who have some connection with the product, so the lineup at Etsy was, from Day One, never about handmade. They just used that as a starting point because it was easy to exploit would-be-sellers into buying their propaganda.
Etsy lies all the time, so pushing one new gimmick a week doesn't change the fact that they're a big box retailer who don't pay for branded products up front, and expect their sellers to take all the financial risks while providing unending free labor.
And now that the holiday craft show season is upon us, it's even more clear that Etsy's brought on their demise 300% quicker by decimating the reputation and pricing of the handmade product.
The Righteous One said...
"confused, he comes from a non-commerce site...the needs are vastly different."
----
Not really, not for this kind of job. They're very much transferable skills. Why would a tech need to understand anything about handmade? Their job is to keep the site running, not to develop content.
Heartily agree that the emo-boy photo is ridiculous. Why can't these people just have normal, professional-looking photos of themselves?
I think he's perfect for Etsy, what with all the inbreeding that's going on in there. Didn't the weird, inbred hillbilly in Deliverence play a banjo too? Yeah, I thought so. There ya go.
How long do you suppose it will be before this guy starts squealing like a pig. Squeeeee!!!!
Before you know it, the sour-faced, meth-skinny chicks who model cowls at Etsy will be replaced with fat-white-guy models in tidy whities.
Okay, I can see I will have to write a blog about this. It's too ripe for the picking (heh, pun intended).
lol BRIBE - That's exactly the article that just made me come to EB just now!
"In a nutshell, she works to advance many of the same things that Etsy stands for — handmade, local, independent production, and a connection to communities and producers"
Have to add I was confused by the site linked to from that article. They had several articles about how big boxes and chains were rebranding themselves to appear local and gain better market share. How can a site promote shopping locally and also promote rebranding a giant chain to appear more like a local mom and pop?
Completely unsure how shopping locally applies to shopping handmade and online.
Unless Etsy plans on promoting free local delivery...
re: local vs. global branding issue
Etsy can't seem to make up its collective mind how it wants to be seen. They seem to either promote themselves as a "local artist in your neighborhood" site when it behooves them or a "global handmade marketplace for artists around the world to create and sell" depending on their whim.
For sure they fail in the global artist arena. Artisans outside the US are rarely seen on the FP. Even on the "local artists" front, they fail.............unless you live in Brooklyn.
I cringe when I see the unprofessional photos too.
But the cupcakes wouldn't have it any other way.
"Oooh laidback Etsy admin with their uber goofy avatars, I just <3 taking orders from this kooky bunch"
I think any time Etsy hires more engineers it has to be good. The more programmers the better.
Unfortunately, the problem is with the management team. They need to fire most of the managers and hire people with some experience and skills.
A team of 25 engineers is useless if the management has them wasting time on creating 2 new levels of jumps into the Storque (Community page, middle jump page per article), Gift Guide buttons, and non-working caching ideas.
The Marketing management spends its time setting up "deals" to give sellers the same readily available deals from Moo and Fed-X; blogging about buying local instead of via internet; being the personal promotion agents of toybreaker, calloohcallay, 3Fun, Thrush, and the rest of the >100 front pagers and gg/finds/storque favorites; and pushing sellers to lower their prices and offer free shipping when the average sales price per item is only $14.
The best thing that could happen to Etsy would be to go public or get bought by some conglomerate like Martha. The first thing that would happen is the entire management team would get axed.
Quoting Not in Brooklyn:
"Artisans outside the US are rarely seen on the FP."
**
I disagree. I see artisans from Finland, France and Italy on the FP all the time. I think these are probably locales that Admin finds exotic. They can be distinguished by how much higher than everyone else's their prices are -- like $150 for a simple pair of fingerless gloves, plus $25 shipping to the U.S. But their style is by-the-book Etsy, so they no doubt are chosen to give the site some global cred.
Thank you Betsy Etc. for facilitating the best laugh I've had in months. I needed that. You rock!
You folks do realize that this guy is one of the most accomplished and respected people in the industry, right? That press release was not exaggerating, if anything it was too modest. Since your site manifesto is about progress, this should be considered a good thing...
Intheknow, great, they brought on board someone who knows their way around servers...just like the great good it did bringing in Chad, or the number of other industry insiders they've used the past year. Why even tout what buddies they are? Real professional given the nepotism that has already destroyed Etsy. What they need is someone with ecommerce experience, not another server expert to help them load up on equipment they can't even effectively use until they fix the bandaid and glu infrastructure left behind by the founders. If recent instability is any indicator of how well that is progressing, the next year is going to a lot of fun. They already have at least 22 other engineers to work on a supposed 2-4 servers (they bragged about purchasing a second one after the last round of money, not sure where it leaves them now)...what the hell are they doing?
Usually bringing in someone who knows what they're doing is a good thing, I'll give you that, but Etsy does not use people in their best capacity. Look at Ian, the EtsyHacks guy. Is he developing apps for sellers now that he's working for Etsy? Nope. They hired him to take him away from the sellers. Did they hire this Flickr guy in order to actually have someone on board to get htings done? Likely not, they just have him to boast how they have the guy from Flickr, just like they can say their CEO is from NPR, their CTO is from Yahoo, and their head of CS is from 1800Flowers. Yep, that's right Etsy's had a head of CS for a few months now. How's that working out?
You folks do realize that this guy is one of the most accomplished and respected people in the industry, right? That press release was not exaggerating, if anything it was too modest. Since your site manifesto is about progress, this should be considered a good thing...
So was Lou Dobbs. What's the REAL story? Did he make a resume deal so that he wouldn't look like he got canned> I do not believe any spin. The truth is never uncovered that way. Etsy can pay him more than flickr? Or is he doing it out of the kindness of his heart? I smell bullshit, sorry.
Chad was supposed to be the savior and things have just gotten worse since he's been around.
New hire, new highly paid wonderboy, whatever.
Show me some positive changes.
I've not seen anything get better as of yet despite all the big salaries and nice biographies.
Etsy is one big spam-fest at this point and adding more bodies seems ridiculous.
I'd love to hear from EB commenters what the buzz about Etsy is in the tech world - positive or negative, because I can't find a damn thing other than regurgitations of the 150% overstated/overbloated Etsy press releases. Is anyone talking about Etsy at all?
This is ridiculous. Allspaw is one of the best -- a total coup for Etsy.
If he loved flickr so much and it was so lucrative, why did he leave? He looks like a dork, bbut that's what Etsy likes to have their people present themselves to the world.
If it was so great, why did he leave? To hang with his buds? It just doesn't compute with me-- I figure there is more to the story, but I don't give a shit. I just want the site to WORK PROPERLY and the twats to start reading the descriptions and tags before they stuck stuff in the Gift Guides.
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