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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

#131

Post by ninv »

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…

> It's filled with junk

Not just Etsy, go pick any online marketplace right now, they all are filled with cheap Chinese junk.

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

#132

Post by ryanbrunner »

valuearb wrote: post #77
valuearb wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"I could argue under the same statement that such a move would do plenty for the company in establishing itself as a very good place to work making it likely to attract and retain top talent. " Market value means that your turnover should already be low, your employees can't leave for better paying jobs. Obviously there is more to retainment than just wages, there is managerial competency and how you treat people. Ba…

"Brand" is the key thing here. There's obviously an upper level where increased pay / perks becomes excessive, but for the type of customers / sellers that Etsy wants to attract the line is FAR above "as little as possible to make employees not leave". Etsy has to, more than most other companies, maintain an image of not being a soulless corporation as much as humanly possible.

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

#133

Post by valuearb »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #128
valuearb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're correct that ultimately, at the end of the day, the shareholders are the owners of the business, and should have ultimate control over how their resources are allocated or spent. That doesn't mean that the shareholders interests are necessarily for profit above all else. If your shareholders were perfectly happy with being ecologically conscious and providing an above-average place of business for employees ir…

If you are a shareholder and want to spend some of your profits on ecologically conscious activities, no one can stop you. But that doesn't mean you should force the other shareholders to do the same.

And Etsy isn't a B corporation. It's CEO tried to make it one and failed.

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

#134

Post by dxhdr »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #116
shiftpgdn wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On the other hand, a reserved m4.Large instance is $45/month. After a year of that, you're just $550 into hosting, barely enough to select and order the case and power supply for your server. It would be 30 years before you paid the cost of that Dell, so unless you actually need that power and your time is free, it's easier to let this be a tiny fraction of Amazon's expenses and workload than a big part of yours.

The $15,000 Dell being discussed is equivalent to a m4.16xlarge with 64 threads and 256 gigs of RAM. The m4.large you're referencing at $45/mo only has 2 CPUs and 8 gigs of RAM.

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

#135

Post by shiftpgdn »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #116
shiftpgdn wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On the other hand, a reserved m4.Large instance is $45/month. After a year of that, you're just $550 into hosting, barely enough to select and order the case and power supply for your server. It would be 30 years before you paid the cost of that Dell, so unless you actually need that power and your time is free, it's easier to let this be a tiny fraction of Amazon's expenses and workload than a big part of yours.

This is why I claim a hybrid model is the way to go. Your baseline/mean load should be on redundant dedicated hardware with spill-over into a cloud provider.

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

#136

Post by sametmax »

smileysteve wrote: post #118
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.

> If you want low cost, you do your own servers for anything under 20 nodes. This seems unlikely to be true unless your software engineers love doing ops (and the needs of the business don't need those on software.) The salaries of having Operations that can replace failed hardware 24/7 (and w/ vacations) alone is more expensive than a company like Etsy should have in ops. Then there is the cost of the pipe, power, a…

Here is the dirty little secret: most business run fine without high availibility. Your customer will not leave if your service is crashing for a few hours during the year if you are small.

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

#137

Post by sametmax »

angersock wrote: post #110
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.

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

Try desmoulinmichel on gmail. But honestly I don't do anything special. varnish + redis + nginx + celery + postgres can take you a long way.

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

#138

Post by valuearb »

sbov wrote: post #103
valuearb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, one example would be if you are CEO of a car manufacturer. Your engineers design two catalytic converters, one that meets all government regulations/requirements, and another that does substantially better, but reduces horsepower and drivability significantly.

If you are environmentally conscious and decide to standardize all your cars on the cleaner catalytic converter, and consumers react poorly and sales suffer, you aren't serving your shareholders. It's not a problem your company can or should solve, you are part of a shared organizations and your ownership doesn't trump your shareholders.

Instead you should take your share of the profits and your massive paycheck and work to get cleaner and more intelligent exhaust standards put into law, so that all new cleaner catalytic converters are as clean as you think they should be. Or find alternative and better ways to reduce emissions.

But you can't steal profits from your shareholders to fit your own agenda.

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

#139

Post by jorblumesea »

Completely anecdotal, but I worked for a company that was a vendor to Etsy and working with them was really difficult due to internal organizational problems. The teams I interacted with were somewhat dysfunctional, with lots competing interests and directions. Definitely got the vibe that they didn't have a good sense of company direction.

My guess is Etsy hit it big on the niche craft market but didn't know where to go from there.

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

#140

Post by sbov »

sametmax wrote: post #136
smileysteve wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want low cost, you do your own servers for anything under 20 nodes. This seems unlikely to be true unless your software engineers love doing ops (and the needs of the business don't need those on software.) The salaries of having Operations that can replace failed hardware 24/7 (and w/ vacations) alone is more expensive than a company like Etsy should have in ops. Then there is the cost of the pipe, power, a…

Here is the dirty little secret: most business run fine without high availibility. Your customer will not leave if your service is crashing for a few hours during the year if you are small.

On top of that, Amazon's single region EC2 SLA kicks in at 99.95%. So unless you are using multiple regions in AWS, going by their SLA you're already in the range of a few hours of downtime per year.
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