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Etsy is under pressure to start acting more like a conventional company

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Re: Etsy is under pressure to start acting more like a conventional company

#31

Post by Retric »

lmm wrote: post #19
zzleeper wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time, > Sellers who developed successful products were prohibited by Etsy policy from hiring employees to help them expand Isn't that cruel? Your XYZ craft is amazing and people love it, but you can hire someone to help you make more. Then, the demand is just absorbed by copycats.

> Isn't that cruel? Your XYZ craft is amazing and people love it, but you can hire someone to help you make more. Not at all, that's inherent to the whole idea of handmade. Your product probably won't be the same if you get someone helping you with it; certainly the handmadiness that people are paying you for won't be there any more. If your product is good enough to stand on its own merits then you can sell it conve…

Traditional crafts often had apprentices/journeyman doing the bulk of the work with a master doing the critical portions. So, a policy that says the seller must do something to each piece could be reasonable, but essentially saying you can buy components from someone else, but you can't have assistants is silly.

Re: Etsy is under pressure to start acting more like a conventional company

#32

Post by ballenf »

MichaelGG wrote: post #27

Bizarre. I've only tried to use Etsy once, figuring it'd be a great place to get some sort of unique jewellery as a gift. It's filled with junk, both of the super-manufactured kind and of the "modern art" kind (someone glues 2 pieces of crap together and wants $500.) I haven't gone back, though I did enjoy the Regretsy blog while it was up. >Etsy’s insistence on running its own servers rather than using cloud-based s…

The cure when I start getting tempted to "roll my own" is watching that Ted talk about the guy who tried (failed) to build a toaster from raw materials to match the 5 quid discount store equivalent.

Re: Etsy is under pressure to start acting more like a conventional company

#33

Post by vosper »

Exuma wrote: post #16

The entitled employee comments at the bottom made me literally groan. Everyone bemoaning facts of life, it's not like what they did was a surprise or unjust. If your job title is "Senior internal paper waste management analysis director" then you shouldn't be surprised when you get canned.

The only comments I saw were one from an unnamed staffer, at the end, and two from software engineers. What about these comments (from people who've just lost their jobs, bear in mind) seems entitled to you? I just see people who agreed with the principles and ideology of the company they worked for.

> Jason Wong, a former engineer, urged his ex-colleagues to “fight” for “all the sellers who rely on you, for the values that Etsy stands for, for all the things you love about working there.”

> “I’m not crying,” wrote Katherine Daniels, a senior engineer. “I’m just allergic to capitalism.”

Re: Etsy is under pressure to start acting more like a conventional company

#34

Post by TheCowboy »

wgyn wrote: post #25

> “There is one and only one social responsibility of business,” the economist Milton Friedman famously wrote in 1962. And that is “to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits.” It's strange to me that Friedman is viewed (at least by economists and "business" folk) as a paragon of logical reasoning and empiricism, all the while his views reek so strongly of ideology. There are tons…

I'd disagree with the generalization that Friedman is viewed as the paragon of logical reasoning and empiricism by economists.

This might be a case of where there's a vocal minority who like to quote Friedman when it's convenient for their political position, so I do understand why it is hard to avoid the impression you have.

His academic contributions to the field are recognized when they've held up, but his views and who he sided with is not without criticism.

Re: Etsy is under pressure to start acting more like a conventional company

#35

Post by binarymax »

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #6

The focus on eternally positive second derivatives is the cancer of American capitalism.

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, since you have an interesting opinion, but in this case Etsy decided to play the game. They could have stayed private and done whatever they wanted without worrying about 'shareholder value'. They chose to IPO, they are now owned by the market. If you can't play the shareholder game then don't go public.

Re: Etsy is under pressure to start acting more like a conventional company

#36

Post by nikanj »

MichaelGG wrote: post #27

Bizarre. I've only tried to use Etsy once, figuring it'd be a great place to get some sort of unique jewellery as a gift. It's filled with junk, both of the super-manufactured kind and of the "modern art" kind (someone glues 2 pieces of crap together and wants $500.) I haven't gone back, though I did enjoy the Regretsy blog while it was up. >Etsy’s insistence on running its own servers rather than using cloud-based s…

Wait, are you saying using your own servers is somehow comparable to building your own ethernet cables?

Re: Etsy is under pressure to start acting more like a conventional company

#37

Post by shawnbaden »

This applies to any job: work where what you do is the core discipline. At a law firm, be a lawyer. At a medical practice, be a doctor. As a software engineer, work at a company where software is the product. Don’t write software at an insurance company and expect job satisfaction. At such companies software engineers are seen as replaceable.

Another option: work where what you do is largely represented by upper management. They make the decisions and if they worked in your discipline they will empathize with you, defend you, and promote you.

Re: Etsy is under pressure to start acting more like a conventional company

#38

Post by kuschku »

MichaelGG wrote: post #27

Bizarre. I've only tried to use Etsy once, figuring it'd be a great place to get some sort of unique jewellery as a gift. It's filled with junk, both of the super-manufactured kind and of the "modern art" kind (someone glues 2 pieces of crap together and wants $500.) I haven't gone back, though I did enjoy the Regretsy blog while it was up. >Etsy’s insistence on running its own servers rather than using cloud-based s…

> That reminds me of the silly StackOverflow "if you are a real you must setup your own servers". There are certain benefits of cloud or not, but this kind of thinking confuses me. Why stop there? Do they build their own Ethernet cables? Racks? Make their own distros, compilers, etc.? Build their own network -- after all, your network is critical in delivering pages to your users, why outsource this to XO and Cogent and so on?

Ehm, no. But if you outsource your servers, you’ve got an entirely different set of issues.

I’m currently renting dedicated servers, paying around 20$ a month, for something that would cost me 900$ a month with Google Cloud Platform, or around 60'000$ a month with Firebase. Outsourcing servers – unless you have highly variable load – is always literally burning money.

Remember that Google, Amazon, etc have to pay their devs Silicon Valley wages, while you can operate elsewhere, and pay half that, and save money with hardware, too.

Re: Etsy is under pressure to start acting more like a conventional company

#39

Post by malandrew »

MichaelGG wrote: post #27

Bizarre. I've only tried to use Etsy once, figuring it'd be a great place to get some sort of unique jewellery as a gift. It's filled with junk, both of the super-manufactured kind and of the "modern art" kind (someone glues 2 pieces of crap together and wants $500.) I haven't gone back, though I did enjoy the Regretsy blog while it was up. >Etsy’s insistence on running its own servers rather than using cloud-based s…

Yup, everytime I hear someone complain about capitalism I eyeroll because they clearly aren't "woke" enough to realize that capitalism is the reason they can remain blissfully ignorant of how capitalism supports their blissful ignorance.

Capitalism isn't without its bugaboos, but the wholesale rejection I hear people making can only come from a place of ignorance.

Re: Etsy is under pressure to start acting more like a conventional company

#40

Post by kristianc »

wgyn wrote: post #25

> “There is one and only one social responsibility of business,” the economist Milton Friedman famously wrote in 1962. And that is “to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits.” It's strange to me that Friedman is viewed (at least by economists and "business" folk) as a paragon of logical reasoning and empiricism, all the while his views reek so strongly of ideology. There are tons…

> It's strange to me that Friedman is viewed (at least by economists and "business" folk) as a paragon of logical reasoning and empiricism, all the while his views reek so strongly of ideology.

In the U.K. at least his views, along with Hayek's, tend to be associated indelibly with Margaret Thatcher. If there's someone who is seen as a paragon of reason whilst being actually quite ideologically biased, it's Adam Smith.

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