Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 232 posts

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

#41

Post by kgwgk »

binarymax wrote: post #35
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.

Who is "they"? At the time of the IPO, more than half of the shares were held by external investors.

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

#42

Post by hueving »

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…

>There are certain benefits of cloud or not, but this kind of thinking confuses me. Why stop there?

Because using EC2/GCE infrastructure is an incredible waste of money if you have any reasonable-sized base-load and bandwidth utilization.

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

#43

Post by pas »

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…

Because AWS is pretty insanely expensive compared to leasing/renting, let's say from Leaseweb. And unless you have gone completely serverless and kubernetes and [magic datastore that's easy to run], you need engineers that will eventually figure, that they can run a Ceph cluster, and a Cassandra cluster, and a Kafka cluster and Galera clusters.

AWS is great for prototyping, for scaling into new territories (you need a Point of presence in Tokyo for your new startup? great, AWS), but not for running a boring e-commerce site (buy cheap shit in 2 DCs, run replication to keep things in sync, pay someone for BGP + DNS failover, call it a day).

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

#44

Post by rvense »

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 don't get how it's compatible with the idea that corporations are people. If people act like dicks there is one and only on social responsibility for the other people around it, and that is to call them out and make them stop. But obviously we expect every one to behave, and generally people do.

I don't know exactly what it'd look like if a man on the street started acting like Shell is acting in the Arctic, but I'm quite sure there would be severe and immediate consequences.

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

#45

Post by valuearb »

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…

Friedman is of course right, whether lawmakers and jurists have tried to codify rules allowing directors to betray shareholder interests.

A single business is not responsible for externalities, any more than a single citizen is. We are ALL responsible for negative externalities like pollution and have to solve those problems together, using the political process and sharing the costs among everyone.

And his statement isn't specific to the short term. Increasing profits is maximizing total profits. Making of ton of profits today and none thereafter is in no way as good as making a ton more profits over time.

Imagine you can invest your life savings of $100,000 and a lot of sweat equity to build a business (including the opportunity cost of giving up your $100k a year job). You estimate it will fail half the time and you will lose your life savings. But the other half of the time you estimate will make $500k a year in profit, after paying all employee compensation, taxes and other costs.

Then you are told that if you succeed, you can't have the $500k a year. That half of that has to go to the employees who risked nothing and got market wages from you for helping build the business (and quit whenever they pleased for better compensation elsewhere). And another half has to go to the "community" to help support the arts, or some other noble cause that did nothing to help you start or grow your business.

You still want to risk your life savings?

Companies are owned by shareholders. Property rights are one of the most fundamental liberties we have. I don't go into your house and raid your fridge whenever I feel like it. Why should you be able to go into my business and tell me how I need to spend my money?

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

#46

Post by MichaelGG »

hueving wrote: post #42
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…

>There are certain benefits of cloud or not, but this kind of thinking confuses me. Why stop there? Because using EC2/GCE infrastructure is an incredible waste of money if you have any reasonable-sized base-load and bandwidth utilization.

As I said, there are benefits to not using cloud, sure. But don't pitch it as because anyone that loves programming should build their own servers.

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

#47

Post by valuearb »

clavalle wrote: post #30
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 is a beautiful example of dogma. It has some meaning but can be bent and molded to fit almost any argument. The obvious argument, especially in Etsy's case is 'well, this works for the short term but can mean no profits in the long term as you commoditize your business and what makes a company like Etsy, Etsy fades into market oblivion.' To which the next statement is 'Oh. Well, Friedman meant all expected profits…

Yea, if you twist Friedmans meaning you can make all sorts of nonsensical arguments. Value is profits extending into the long run forever, he spoke and wrote clearly enough that he doesn't have to spell that out for you.

In Etsy's case, paying above market wages and benefits does nothing for the company and it's shareholders, it's just a gift from the CEO to workers, paid for out of shareholder accounts. Etsy didn't get the best web site or software out from it, they got rampant entitlement and sub-par work.

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

#48

Post by valuearb »

kgwgk wrote: post #41
binarymax wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Who is "they"? At the time of the IPO, more than half of the shares were held by external investors.

Didn't have to be. They didn't have to sell stock privately either.

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

#49

Post by valuearb »

MichaelGG wrote: post #46
hueving wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There are certain benefits of cloud or not, but this kind of thinking confuses me. Why stop there? Because using EC2/GCE infrastructure is an incredible waste of money if you have any reasonable-sized base-load and bandwidth utilization.

As I said, there are benefits to not using cloud, sure. But don't pitch it as because anyone that loves programming should build their own servers.

Etsy has pay and benefits far outstripping the competition. They should have the best engineers and developers.

So why then can't they build and maintain the best infrastructure? Why does it suck so?

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

#50

Post by binarymax »

kgwgk wrote: post #41
binarymax wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Who is "they"? At the time of the IPO, more than half of the shares were held by external investors.

Whenever founders sell part of the business to other parties - either through VC investment or IPO, they (the founders) are now bound to the agreement of returning on that investment and providing value as a (the) core focus of doing business.

If you don't want to be beholden to third parties, then don't sell part of your business.

Post reply on HN