Etsy is under pressure to start acting more like a conventional company • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by valuearb » Thu, May 18, 2017, 5:16 PM UTC

clavalle wrote: post #91

clavalle wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Market value means that your turnover should already be low, your employees can't leave for better paying jobs. The curve isn't flat. >Do you really think those people are going to leave Etsy because it no longer has the CEO's cult cheerleader squad decorating the offices? I think people that spend their time learning a craft then peddling hand crafted objects for, let's face it, love over money, will not want to wo…

>The easiest response is to ask you to read some Warren Buffett. I've read plenty of Buffet, Munger, Graham, Dodd and the rest. Pretty common knowledge. What you are missing in your analysis is that Buffet et. al. invest in very well understood businesses (hell, they didn't even touch Amazon). Very well understood businesses tend to have very well understood systems (including the people and their roles and contribut…

If Etsy's management didn't understand their business, they shouldn't have been it's management.

But truth is, their business isn't from Mars, it's easy to understand, even if it's not easy to optimize. And if they truly need special custom development, why are they so poor at doing it? Where are the benefits of all that admin spending?

And BTW, I can't think of one Berkshire business that has any significant moat from "like huge capital or regulatory requirements". In Insurance their real moat is either the direct cost model (GEICO), or their underwriting discipline and long term thinking.

Etsy should know what makes it special to customers. Why isn't it more efficient at delivering that?

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

#102

Post by Zazezizozuzy » Thu, May 18, 2017, 5:18 PM UTC

bognition wrote: post #4

I can't help but think that the buyer appeal just isn't there. Looking back at the last couple of years I've bought a handful of items off of etsy. Come to think of it I probably buy more from EBay that from etsy, which is totally weird because I hate buying things on ebay.

My wife sells through Etsy and has been for a while. The biggest transition she has seen is buyers moving from purchasing items, to making items themselves. While the larger, successful shops are declining, there has been a steady increase in small, beginner shops. Based on that, she moved to selling more patterns and teaching craft workshops. In my opinion, Etsy should harness that. If they provided a way for crafters to showcase how they make their products, they could start selling that. It would have several benefits. It fits a simple subscription/learning model which is very popular right now. It also encourages the handmade community that they are trying to support.

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

#103

Post by sbov » Thu, May 18, 2017, 5:24 PM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #45

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…

Your post reads a bit contradictory. The only way we can all be responsible for negative externalities is if we each individually choose to be responsible, or if lawmakers force us all to be responsible. I honestly don't know what your view on this subject is, because you seem to be deriding any possible solution to the problem of negative externalities.

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

#104

Post by mintplant » Thu, May 18, 2017, 5:25 PM UTC

MichaelGG wrote: post #88

sciurus wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Edit: Yes, I understand the pricing differences of cloud. So just say "it's cheaper to run our own stuff", don't pretend its due to some desire for "craft". I think your criticism would make sense if the article was accurate. But I don't think this quote > Etsy’s insistence on running its own servers rather than using cloud-based services and software offered by companies such as Google and Amazon—an emphasis that…

Well that makes sense. I keep forgetting how articles incorrectly portray people, especially when it fits a narrative. I guess I was only too ready to believe that a company that bikes around leftovers would actually believe in craft-servers.

"Code as Craft" was the name of their engineering blog. I suspect the author found a post about Etsy running their own servers there and decided this juxtaposition fit the narrative they were building.

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

#105

Post by shiftpgdn » Thu, May 18, 2017, 5:25 PM UTC

dboreham wrote: post #68

sametmax wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cloud is very, very expensive. If you want low cost, you do your own servers for anything under 20 nodes. Which, given the power of modern machines and with unmethered bandwidth, will take you to the millions of user easily. I have setup a streaming website with 500k/d visitors, and it runs on 7 servers for 2000$ a month give or take. That's very, very cheap compared to GAE or AWS.

There has to be something very wrong when an article about the problems with a company that facilities an online marketplace is talking about the details of how their servers are run and paid for.. By this I mean that in such a business the issues surrounding servers and even software should be very minor compared to the bread and butter of helping people sell stuff so money is made. The costs of said servers and sof…

Except traditional "cloud" hosting is wicked expensive in comparison. Ideally you should shoot for a hybrid model where excess capacity spills into AWS/GCE/Azure.

For example: A dedicated m4.16xLarge EC2 instance in AWS is $3987/month. You could build that same server for $15,000 through Dell, lease it at $400/month (OpEx), and colo it with a 1GB/s connection for $150/month.

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

#106

Post by bogomipz » Thu, May 18, 2017, 5:26 PM UTC

sciurus wrote: post #74

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…

> Edit: Yes, I understand the pricing differences of cloud. So just say "it's cheaper to run our own stuff", don't pretend its due to some desire for "craft". I think your criticism would make sense if the article was accurate. But I don't think this quote > Etsy’s insistence on running its own servers rather than using cloud-based services and software offered by companies such as Google and Amazon—an emphasis that…

>"AFAIK no one at Etsy has said that they run their own servers because it's more authentic, part of their "craft", etc."

I'm not sure I would agree with that based on a recent-ish post on “code as craft” the Etsy engineering blog:

"At Etsy, the vast majority of our computing happens on physical servers that live in our own data centers. Since we don’t do much in the cloud, we’ve developed tools to automate away some of the most tedious aspects of managing physical infrastructure. This tooling helps us take new hardware from initial power on to being production-ready in a manner of minutes, saving time and energy for both data center technicians racking hardware and engineers who need to bring up new servers. It was only recently, however, that this toolset started getting the love and attention that really exemplifies the idea of code as craft."

Source: https://codeascraft.com/2016/02/22/putting-the-dev-in-devops...

Tangentially related to the hardware discussion - a bit of dated hardware post:

https://codeascraft.com/2012/08/31/what-hardware-powers-etsy...

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

#107

Post by mintplant » Thu, May 18, 2017, 5:28 PM UTC

malandrew wrote: post #39

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.

Not sure I understand your point. Are you asserting that anyone who argues against capitalism as a system must be doing so from a position of ignorance?

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

#108

Post by colatkinson » Thu, May 18, 2017, 5:32 PM UTC

malandrew wrote: post #39

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.

200 years ago:

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

> Feudalism 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

#109

Post by fdsfsafasfdas » Thu, May 18, 2017, 5:32 PM UTC

lobster_johnson wrote: post #78

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's still plenty of incredible hand-made and vintage furniture and interior design objects on Etsy. The problem, as ever, is about filtering. For every quality piece there 50 amateurish things cobbled together from steel pipes and reclaimed wood (or worse: distressed "shabby chic" furniture made to look like something you'd find in an old B&B on the French Riviera). With all the AI being thrown around, can't some…

> With all the AI being thrown around, can't someone build a "tastefulness" filter?

It turns out taste varies.

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

#110

Post by angersock » Thu, May 18, 2017, 5:36 PM UTC

sametmax wrote: post #57

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 cloud is very, very expensive. If you want low cost, you do your own servers for anything under 20 nodes. Which, given the power of modern machines and with unmethered bandwidth, will take you to the millions of user easily. I have setup a streaming website with 500k/d visitors, and it runs on 7 servers for 2000$ a month give or take. That's very, very cheap compared to GAE or AWS.

I'd love to pick your brain about that--what's a good way of getting a hold of you?