Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Etsy Is Hiring Coders!

Must have a ironic sense of whimsy and kindergarten art skills.

News Flash: Etsy is hiring! from Etsy on Vimeo.

Granted it is kinda funny, but it's maybe even fairly clever being that it's coders who did it, but it's just more of the goddamn hammocks.

from: Code as Craft Etsy Blog


And speaking of hiring, we just added a new Bitch! With a icy cold rage that the greek gods would shudder in fear of, say hello everyone to The Stubborn One.

I know I look foreward to having a new voice on here, as well as pissing off our detractors by actually growing. And in this economy no less!

The hiring of a new Etsy Bitch is a tenuous process, and don't one we often due to the cost of background testing and hiring a Privates Investigator to make sure their hand crocheted vagina brooches aren't wired. To be brief, it mostly involves chicken entrails, a nice curry sauce, a long night in the Clockwork Rusty Orange Video Room complete forced viewings of video interviews of Rokali, disloyalty gauging, and intensive sarcasm testing.

Welcome Stubborn!

41 Comments:

Reneesance said...

Great now maybe these new coders can actually get the damn site to work correctly! Has anyone else noticed that views are even MORE down than normal this week? Also my research searches of my items are coming up all screwy...I have a pirate hat listed for sale. when you search pirate hat it's not there...when you search Tricorn pirate hat there it is...that makes NO SENSE. *argh*

Lucy Lu said...

It would be funnier if it weren't so damn true.

Cosmic Yuk said...

Welcome The Stubborn One! Damn, I wish I'd known EB was hiring!

As for the vimeo ad for new coders........could they make themselves look any more like Spanky and Our Gang?

But I'm sure it's targeted to exactly the type of person they want because certainly professional, mature candidates with a ton of experience would never apply for that job.

sark said...

Congratulations, the Stubborn One!
I paused for a moment after typing that and actually wondered if you Etsy Bitches are fucking with me, because I swear there was already a Stubborn one, but maybe I just imagined that... anyway, even if you are just fucking with me: congratulations, the Stubborn One, on your status as an offical Etsy Bitch!

I just watched that video. And I feel conflicted.
On one hand, I spend a large portion of my spare craft time watching paint dry... in fact, technically, except for the fact that it's behind me and I'm staring at the computer — I'm doing it right now... oh, because I just made 10 paintings. Dry, damn you, dry! Sarky needs that floor space.

Anyway, if I hadn't seen items from Lirola's shop featured on the front page 8 times a day for the past eternity, and if I didn't already feel some level of ire with "Curation Nation" inventing a new and exciting way to make sure that GlitzGlitter is ALWAYS featured in your curationnation inspired treasury — then when I watched that video, I probably actually would have thought it was funnier.

Yes, tech dept. — your merchandising team has screwed the pooch on my ability to find your off-key humor — even when actually kind of funny — funny.

The iron in the microwave was actually hilarious and apt.

There's a part of me that wants to believe in humanity (damn you, John Lennon), and thus cling to my fantasy that tech people are sequestered in a cubicle somewhere and spend their days swearing at esoteric things having to do with code... thus having no connections to bicycles, weddings, ruffle dresses, wire-wrapped earrings, mustaches on sticks, fingerless gloves, cowls in August, and things that are generally graybeigetaupewhite-colorless.

Had it not been for the rampant favoritism of the merchandising team, then, yeah, that video was actually kind of funny.

And, again, congratulations, the Stubborn One, I look forward to your adamant, cantankerous, headstrong, tenacious, and perhaps unyielding opinions, but then, I also enjoy the thesaurus.

Fed Up With Fools said...

That video shows exactly the mentality of the twits that run the place. How could any serious, self-respecting coder, or anyone for that matter, consider working for/with such a bunch of air-head, juvenile misfits?

Talk about "outing" yourself...they've just proved exactly what we have all been saying for, what is it, 3-4 years?

I am actually speechless, except for the above comments.

The Cranky One said...

EtsyBitch considers people long before we ask them to join us.

beenhere5years said...

First you laugh, then you cry. As bad as Revolving Dork treated the sellers, you knew he was only 1 of 3 engineers. Now they have 45 tripping over themselves. Should we clear our cache or is that so 2005?

ps. At least I'm not the only one who noticed Glitz Glitter must be the only seller who wire wraps jewelry.

Anonymous said...

I'd be impress if the real Etsy coders were this professional and that much work.

Anne said...

Welcome, O Stubborn One. Dig in your heels.

I dunno. I've been busy setting up a shop on (gasp!) Artfire, and I'm seriously impressed by how well executed it is. I'm bewildered by the array of functional bells and whistles at my command. And they all work, and they're all properly documented. (Ever take a close look at the Etsy "how to set up your Google analytics" FAQ? Try following the instructions and you'll never get it working.)

As for hiring, programmers are just as threatened by the current economic climate as everyone else, and I don't know too many people who would turn up their noses at an actual, paying job. But Etsy isn't too well known in the technical world. They're not doing the kinds of things that would make inspired programmers sit up and take notice. It's too bad, because there are technologies out there that could really make Etsy a wonderful experience.

As for the "code as craft" thing, I've done both over the course of a long life. I think I'll continue to subscribe to the Wordpress approach: Code is poetry.

Ruby Re-Usable said...

this vid explains a lot (like, maybe they really ARE using Kapros, and finger painting, etc), damn!

ps welcome Stubborn One

Amber said...

Thanks for the welcome. It's a little dream of mine come true!

This new tidbit is rich. Watch how they scramble and squirm.

Let the fucktards spend more money on more incompetence. And we'll see what's in store for holiday shopping season.

Unimpressed said...

WElcome, Stubborn!!!!

That video. They needed a script to eliminate the 'you knows' and gaffs like Genghis Khan as an explorer etc etc etc. More of the same sort of cursorily educated hipsters trying to sound knowlegeable while looking blase.
Masturbation is all it is.........I sure feel jerked off!

Spoofvidyasareonlyaspoofwhentheyaren'ttrue said...

LOL.

I totally thought that was a spoof, a mocking video.

I was like, this is hysterically funny that someone is mocking Etsy so badly.


But then I figured out it is their ACTUAL advertising campaign..... SO um, then it's just sad. It's only cute to do something like that if your website isn't actually run like that............

Tula said...

Oh good grief! As someone who is a coder in my day job (though I prefer to be called a software engineer or developer) this video would not make me want to work at Etsy. It might appeal to juvenile-minded frat-boy types, but their attempt at humor really falls flat.

That beginning scene with the ancient computers doesn't make me feel like they have cutting edge technology. The picture I get in my head from this video is a big room full of tables with computers and toys on them, with paper airplanes flying overhead and spitball wars in the aisles. I left kindergarten behind many years ago and I prefer to work in a place where people don't act like kids on a sugar-high all day.

I've worked in places that were fun. I just finished working a contract job at Amazon, where they had monthly beer bashes and frequent get-togethers. Yet, people still worked hard and the environment wasn't some loud party room where you couldn't concentrate. I don't think that video will attract people who will work all that hard or produce quality results.

Unimpressed said...

I think it's time to see that Hipster Olympics video one more time...... who's got it??

Cosmic Yuk said...

Spoof, exactly!!!! Thank you for saying what I was thinking.

The video is funny. It's a goddamn riot. If it were a parody of the way Etsy is actually run, made by someone who was mocking Etsy, I'd say they pegged them perfectly. And I"d laugh my ass off.

Why would anyone put out an ad that makes them look stupid, inept and immature?

Amber said...

Ok, I have a confession to make.

I didn't actually watch the vid before posting my previous comment. Heh.

But I watched it just now, and just about fell out of my chair. Holy shitballs. If I happened to be a cartoon, you'd have seen a plethora of question marks floating above me noggin.

Firstly, who the hell is the little twit with the glasses, fumbling over his words? Was he just plucked off of the street and plunked down in front of the camera and told to speak? "Just spew a bunch of bullshit and we'll give you a cookie." Because it doesn't sound like he even knows what the fuck people are selling on Etsy. And I noticed that HE FORGOT TO MENTION ALL OF THE MASS PRODUCED SWEAT SHOP SHIT plaguing the site.

Another feeble attempt at being cute? Funny? Seriously? Are they really expecting to hire anyone with solid work ethics and/or skills with this? No. Tell me it isn't so. They can't possibly have their heads THAT far up their asses.

Ok, ok. I digress. They can, and they most definitely do. This home video just proves how "professional" they really are.

And it sure is "incredible"! An incredible, steaming pile of asinine hipster horse shit. I feel a bit jerked off, too, with no happy ending in sight.

Let's face it: everyone is entitled to be stupid, but Etsy just abuses the privilege.

UgaBugaBowls said...

You know what pisses me off about this thing? Not just the obvious idiocy of it that's already been mentioned.

But the simple choice of how to spend the precious resource of time. As a videographer, I can tell you that this was a minimum of 2 days work. All of those stupid graphics that are sliding all over the place, all the overlays that were done, then the filming and editing itself. That takes quite a bit of time.

It looks like about 10 people were involved in this and how they spent their time. And I'm going to give you the very efficient version as if myself and my professional crew were doing this. So let's say they had a meeting about it for 2 hours to decide that they wanted to make this video and to decide what to put in it. Another 2 hours to gather the equipment and make the props and costumes (assuming they had the camera equipment and the retro computers already in their possession). 4-8 hours to shoot it. Another 8 hours for an individual to edit this together and render it. And you know that editor had people hanging over his shoulder saying "wouldn't it be cool if???? and put that over there!"

So if they were really efficient, and I mean as efficient as could be, you're looking at 10 people dedicating 8-16 hours to get this thing shot and a minimum of one person spending 8 hours to edit it, get it rendered and approved.

That's between 88-168 man hours dedicated to creating this video to advertise a job opening.

THEY'RE ADVERTISING A JOB OPENING!!!! In a friggin recession where everybody and their grandmothers are desperately trying to find work!!!

If one individual had spent a half hour writing the ad copy and another half hour to get it approved from a higher up and make edits, they could have put out the job opening on Monster.com, or Craigslist for that matter and had 500 well-qualified applications by the end of the day from people desperate to work.

This was not made to enhance their business. This was made to entertain themselves.

And you know what's really sad? Part of me is thinking "Shit, wish I lived in Brooklyn so I could show them what an awesome videographer I am and maybe work a little bit this year since all of my other work has dried up in the last 12 months."

Fucktards.

nikki said...

Hi i am new on etsy making a shop there for my cards. i just discovered the etsy bitch sight. that video scares me. are these the people that actualy run the sight. should i back out now stop listing and find some other place to sell my cards. if what you guys say about etsy is true i dont think i want to spend my money thier but i need to have a shop someplace because i am out of work right now and need to pay my bills. i was hoping i could work from home on etsy but now i dont know what to do. thanks.

So Sad said...

What a freakin' joke. A 2-inch classified ad in the New York Times would have gotten them 1,000 qualified resumes within a couple days.

The fact that these are the people running Etsy proves why the site is such a mess.

It always seems like the engineers and management never quite understand what the sellers and buyers actually need to conduct business - this bit of fuckery proves that they don't.

This ad will just entice more of the same hipster doofus kids with no business experience and no common sense to apply. No self-respecting professional would want to work with those dorks.

The Sneaky One said...

nikki, yes, these are the people that run Etsy. I hate to burst your little bubble, but you aren't going to make a living selling on Etsy. The few that do are Etsy Favorites, or sellers that work their butts off working other venues and shows. They spend all of their time promoting themselves off of Etsy.

No Respect said...

We have the highest unemployment rate in many decades, and huge numbers of the unemployed are highly educated, highly qualified people.

2 questions:

Why are these idiots among the employed?

And why do they think their jobs in a high tech successful niche are such a joke?

People are desperate for decent jobs, yet Etsy acts like the jobs at their successful website are just a load of shits & giggles.

Children, hang up the tin-can phones, put away the legos, and act like you care that a couple hundred thousand of your customers are trying really hard to pay their rent.

Diana said...

Nikki,

You can post your cards on my new website http://efreeme.com. It doesn't cost anything to list your items and we don't take a sales commission.

I actually didn't even find the video funny at all, which I thought was the saddest thing about it.

EtsyBitches, how could I get http://efreeme.com featured on your list of etsy alternatives? (I think we're a good one because we're free).

Eveline said...

I hope their investors have the same sense of humour. I would hate to invest, you know, MILLIONS, only to see them making 'funny' clips like this.

done with it said...

So, I didn't actually watch the video at first. I came here and started reading the comments so I had to go back and watch it. I got through aprox. 2 min. before I totally lost interest, (I'll blame that one on the fact that I have no interest in computer programming, coding, etc.), however one thought that crossed my mind was, "how nice that they're spending all of that money on making a stupid video when some wisely place ads on Monster or Yahoo would do. I haven't renewed any items in months and really do believe that I'll be leaving my shops go dormant once all the items expire.

withhope said...

I am always curious why Ms. Fake, Mr. Wilson and Mr. Breyer, etsy's BOD would never run their own companies like etsy is run.

The disrespect shown to the artists of the site and staff incompetence will one day be seen by someone else with venture capital who actually cares about handmade and a new site will be built. I know it. I just know it.

Anonymous said...

Nikki, check out http://Artfire.com, a basic site has free unlimited listings with no fees at the sale and everything gets to google base- fast. The admin are in the forums several times a day.
Give it a looksie

Georgy Porgy the Teenage Prodigy said...

Etsy has been very focused on hiring new people. Unfortunately, they don't appear to know what to do with the 50-60 tech staff they already have, so will it help?

Look at codeascraft.etsy.com, or many of the posts Etsy employees have made off Etsy on various forums. It's all focused on 'hire, hire'!

The stories about the food, the little phone booths, etc. - trying to make Etsy look like a really cool place to work. This video, again, is trying to make it look fun and exciting to work there.

A little birdie told me that their HR/recruiting staff is as unprofessional and incompetent as everyone else (I know I'm suprised!), so best of luck to them. Ha ha.

Sorry folks, Etsy won't get anywhere until you get rid of that red haired dickwit and get some competent management.

Georgy Porgy the Teenage Prodigy said...

@eveline

The investors OWN the company - it is their fault. Everything. They appear to have no idea or no concern of how poorly the site has been run all this time, how much opportunity has been wasted, how many bridges have been burned, hacked, spit on by Etsy's 'management' team (god, if you can even call it that). As far as I can tell, they go to Etsy board meeting and sit around and play with coloring books with Rob Kalin. He dazzles them with stories about Swimmy and pseudo-thoughtful poetry on Twitter. They're satisfied with Etsy's results, I guess, because they don't realize how much better they could have been with adult supervision.

I get the impression that people like Fred Wilson and Jim Breyer have so much going on, Etsy is small cookies for them. Sad, because it's a big cookie for people like us.

subeeds said...

I'm not surprised at anything those idiots in Brooklyn do anymore. Reading a closed thread today was the straw that broke this camels' back and I put my shop in vacation mode with a very pointed, sarcastic and scathing announcement about why. If I had not gone into vacation mode then, this video would have been the straw.
I don't understand them and I am to the point I don't care anymore. I am much happier with AF, working on getting more listed in Zibbett and found a new place, Cargoh, that's in beta. Etsy can keep their resellers and the Brooklyn ebay rep that they are starting to get.
Sue (DancingWindDesigns)

Salad said...

I kind of liked it, especially the part about squids. I'm not sure what impression they're out to make with this video, though. Agreed that it doesn't seem to be made to attract older professionals.

I was looking into working at Etsy, but the guy who was supposed to call me missed a couple of appointments, and I never heard back from him. I'm not sure what that was all about.

sleepy Em said...

When Etsy's management gets a mind to do something, they are so single minded and brutish about it that it is simple to see what they are thinking. For instance, 'recruit sellers, sellers, more sellers' has been the sole goal flicking through Etsy corporate's head for the past 4 years. Other than selling out ASAP, of course, but that's only the owners' thoughts. One leads to the other for them, BTW.

Recent indications is that they are trying very hard to hire people. They DO place ads online, in industry journals, and so on. I wonder why they seem to be having a hard time filling all these positions? IMO potential employees don't see Etsy as a great place to build a career and filming childish videos aren't going to solve that, folks.

BTW it blows me away that they have 2 (3?) fulltime video makers for the storque (and at least one intern - can you imagine being an intern for Etsy? probably you make them coffee and fetch luxury sushi catering all day )

SuziDoodlleDesign said...

Why do they do stuff like this? It's cool for fun when it's low key, but this is what they want their public image to be?

Unhappyincupcakeland said...

Welcome to The Stubborn One!

Speaking of the Etsy search, I'm still getting more searches of sold items than new. That really does a lot for my business...snark, snark. But I'm just a seller. Not only that---I'm a supply seller, and a vintage supply seller to boot. I am worth less than mouse dreck in Etsy cutesy cupcake hipster currency.

I still have to wonder if the people who do the books at Etsy have noticed how many of us have decreased our fees by 95%. Of course, resellers are probably making up for it.

Confuzzled said...

Meh. It's kind of cute and funny. Of course, only goofy coders that prefer humor to technology will apply, but that's important so Etsy has homogeneity in employees.

So hey, what's with all the butchered sentences in this article?

Virginia said...

Good Lord. That's a real want ad?

Bizzie's Mom said...

behind their playful and jokey, whimsical exterior, there is something so dark and creepy about Etsy.

The cliquisness, the muting, the favoritism, the lies and misinformation, they way they keep giving their sellers less and less for the same money.... like the chip companies that start giving you 8.9 ounces instead of 12 and hope you're too tricked by the shiny packaging and don't notice.

Maybe it's how they are have actually been really harmful to artists and crafters on the web overall.. .can't tell. But they suck.

Pauline said...

All I have to say is, leadership starts at the top. Bizzie Mom, your comment is essentially a psychological profile of Etsy's CEO.

Bizzie's Mom said...

Pauline, you are 100% correct. Etsy's problems start at the top. Their incompetent CEO has a lot more problems than just being incompetent. He's mental

He has created a toxic company culture that is really a spectacle of disgust. It is very difficult to change a company's culture once it's established. Etsy will never be anything other than awful. I hope people who are waiting for them to improve have gotten the point by now. I used to be active in the forums and I've given up. These people just take the cake in just about every way you can thing of, yes, all negative.

Chantelle said...

Welcome, The Stubborn One!

I ran the video past my SO (a software engineer) and he thought the opening bit with the antiquated technology and the bit with the cephalopods were funny. The video didn't make him want to work there, though.

I don't understand why they didn't just put an ad on Monster or something.

Honestly, I can barely focus on this issue for the whole reseller/TOU issues. HeyMichelle says there are no long-term resellers on etsy - WTF????? At least now we know that etsy can't enforce their own fucking TOU and so anything goes there.

I've let all my items expire and am waiting and watching to see what happens. I want to put this news out there everywhere... but I don't know where to do that.

truthful said...

Why can’t anyone see that this is a joke. Really, it’s a joke. This is etsy’s middle finger to everyone that hates them. Look at the freeze frame from the video. It looks like he is about to say “fuck you”. The holiday season is approaching and they already know what’s going to happen. By January most of their intelligent sellers will be quietly telling their costumers to shop at their other online stores and the rest will just stop posting. Rob Kalin isn’t entirely stupid. He is already creating his backup plan. Parachutes.com is his next plan to take over the world. The “Christmas in July” sales everyone is having over there is really funny I must admit. Etsy takes advantage of people with very little business sense. Most business people tend to put together a focus group filled with their age/income demographic and they ask them questions like where do you like to shop and how much money do you like to spend when you shop there. Then after receiving this information they set up shop. Etsy sellers tend to set up shop and hope for the best. Who is shopping at etsy? How much money do they make? HOW OLD ARE THEY! By the time sellers figure out that they should of asked these questions before setting up shop they are already financially/emotionally invested in etsy. This is why people keep calling it a female ghetto. You need an example. Check out Jaz Jewels. She was featured, videoed, and put on the front page of etsy. How many sales has she had so far…Three! And if you are an established handmade business that has been on the web for awhile you can forget etsy. It’s like Youtube, people get pissy because you are trying to get more attention and they feel you don’t need it. They will purposely ignore you and not shop at your store just to teach you a lesson. Why do you think Vickie Howell doesn’t sell there anymore? Her youtube reception is even worse. Threadbanger won’t even sell there and they are always licking etsy’s balls.