Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff • Hacker News Board

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#211

Post by pessimizer » Wed, May 03, 2017, 1:39 PM UTC

paganel wrote: post #168

blhack wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is tougher than it seems on the surface. A few years ago, I was involved in planning and running a maker "fest". We invited makers, and artists to the festival to show off their projects, and some of them wanted to sell things. A not-insignificant number of participants who wanted to sell things were just reselling things you could buy at Michaels, or buy online (in bulk) for cheap. Sometimes with just a little…

> The problem is that you basically have to examine every single item, and then personally decide if it qualifies as art or not. This reminded me of Walter Benjamin's essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", which was written ~80 years ago. Not sure there's any "solution" to what you or the OP are describing.

Turns out you can't mass produce individualism.

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#212

Post by harryh » Wed, May 03, 2017, 1:46 PM UTC

mathattack wrote: post #103

Is there any kind of conflict of interest when a board member names themselves CEO? Or is this considered OK in corporate governance circles? (Or is just "Beware when swimming with the sharks"?)

He is interim CEO. This is very common when a CEO is fired and there is no one internal to the company who is appropriate to take over. Someone has to do the job so the board member does it for a while while they look for someone to hire.

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#213

Post by chx » Wed, May 03, 2017, 1:55 PM UTC

Thing is, even my favorite Etsy artists (I have bought five Unicorgis from Squidbrains...) I have found via social media and not through Etsy. If they were selling on their own website, Shopify or whatnot, my willingness to buy and discovery process would be the same. I just do not see the value in Etsy. I am sure there is some but I do not know what.

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#214

Post by fffernan » Wed, May 03, 2017, 2:03 PM UTC

Etsy alternative: https://www.thegrommet.com/

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#215

Post by pbhjpbhj » Wed, May 03, 2017, 2:05 PM UTC

fireflash38 wrote: post #193

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then Etsy lose all those sales, which presumably is why they don't do that. Are they more committed to their morals or their profit?

That would be a very short-term perspective of them to take. If it becomes common knowledge that it's mostly repackaged chinese goods, then the storefront as a whole would collapse. In this case, preserving their morals I believe is very important to their business as a whole.

They probably only need to maintain the perception to keep most of the profits though, so look like your trying but don't do all you can.

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#216

Post by cLeEOGPw » Wed, May 03, 2017, 2:09 PM UTC

yalogin wrote: post #97

On a related note, how is Pinterest doing? How long can it survive as an independent social network. It focuses solely on one thing but how much is that pie growing?

Can't a business live without growing any more? The mean of business to survive is to stay positive, not exponentially positive.

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#217

Post by devopsproject » Wed, May 03, 2017, 2:37 PM UTC

mustacheemperor wrote: post #2

The conversion problem on mobile does seem like an issue, but speaking as a former customer of Etsy what drove me away was the selection. Not that it's too small - rather, Etsy is now flooded with thousands of storefronts selling "artisan" pieces that are actually bought on AliExpress or similar and marked up. If they're trying to apply ML to managing customer recommendations, they should figure out how to identify w…

My wife bought something at a "local artist fair". They didn't even bother to remove the "made in china" sticker.

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#218

Post by ex-news » Wed, May 03, 2017, 2:40 PM UTC

jph wrote: post #12

I spend a lot of time with Etsy sellers, all one-person micro-businesses creating fully-handcraft items. They tell me there are three major problems that are all interconnected: 1) search is poor, 2) cheap knockoffs swamp the search results, 3) there's no obvious way to emphasize truly handcraft items. All the sellers are experimenting with alternate platforms, such as Shopify, Wordpress, Wix, etc.

Yeah, discovery is awful, and it's really hard to distinguish fakes.

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#219

Post by Broken_Hippo » Wed, May 03, 2017, 2:59 PM UTC

ramy_d wrote: post #126

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really good point. Even taking mass produced art and modifying it is in a way it's own art and I've seen some really, really good ones. Seems a bit unsolvable.

Maybe if they were required to mention categorical suppliers it would further inform consumers

So much this. Folks should just be honest about it.

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#220

Post by mendelk » Wed, May 03, 2017, 3:04 PM UTC

Not sure if it's related to this, but I was scheduled to have an interview with them on 1/24/2017 for a Full Stack position, and an hour before our scheduled time, they sent me an email that "due to some changes in hiring priority this role is currently on hold", and cancelled the interview.

I wasn't too impressed :)