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Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

engadget.com

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Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#31

Post by psadri »

5ilv3r wrote: post #28
20years wrote: post #26

I tried using Etsy only to have them close my shop due to my products "not being handcrafted" according to them. These were small things that I 3D printed and people were actually buying. They shut me down but allowed similar endless China produced products to stay. They were not too happy when I pointed out those China knockoffs. They also kept my money hostage from the sales I made. I will never again use or trust…

Where should we go? I make little things frequently and friends have been telling me to start an etsy shop, but stories like this keep me away.

Sounds like an opportunity.

Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#32

Post by menzoic »

5ilv3r wrote: post #28
20years wrote: post #26

I tried using Etsy only to have them close my shop due to my products "not being handcrafted" according to them. These were small things that I 3D printed and people were actually buying. They shut me down but allowed similar endless China produced products to stay. They were not too happy when I pointed out those China knockoffs. They also kept my money hostage from the sales I made. I will never again use or trust…

Where should we go? I make little things frequently and friends have been telling me to start an etsy shop, but stories like this keep me away.

https://www.amazon.com/Handmade

Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#33

Post by kbenson »

strict9 wrote: post #15

Will echo others regarding China imports, but one last hope to bring me back to their marketplace is a revamp of the review system. After spending thousands of dollars on furniture, waiting a month for the guy to make it, and another two weeks to ship, I had maybe a few days to leave a review for something I spent a lot of money on. With this policy, reviews are for first impressions only. And I won't be coming back.…

I think good review and ratings systems for online marketplaces are possibly one of the hardest things to get right. I'm not sure it's ever been done really well before, or even if it can be done well. As a spouse of someone with a successful Etsy shop, let me tell you that the sellers aren't always exactly happy with the system either.

You have to basically keep it at perfect feedback in some goods marketplaces or you're considered a fuckup, and while that's easier than it sounds because people don't know how to rate effectively so almost all feedback is perfect, you also have to deal with people that leave negative feedback because of issues that have nothing to do with what they ordered (tracking shows USPS lost he package for a week or two in delivery, or shows it delivered to correct address but customer did not receive it).

Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#34

Post by diffset »

20years wrote: post #26

I tried using Etsy only to have them close my shop due to my products "not being handcrafted" according to them. These were small things that I 3D printed and people were actually buying. They shut me down but allowed similar endless China produced products to stay. They were not too happy when I pointed out those China knockoffs. They also kept my money hostage from the sales I made. I will never again use or trust…

I also sell 3D printed items and they did the exact same thing to my account. I just emailed them and they had me send pictures of my workspace and process to prove my items are "handmade" and my account was restored within 48 hours.

Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#35

Post by ufo »

086421357909764 wrote: post #19
geofft wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. This is economically rational, as Alan Greenspan pointed out in 1983: > ... the senior staff, including Miss Eickhoff, Judith Mackey and Lucille Wu, is mostly female. Mr. Greenspan explains the gender bias with the free-market pragmatism that has become his hallmark: "I always valued men and women equally, and I found that because others did not, good women economists were cheaper than men. Hiring women does two…

By that statement though, you're implying that men and women aren't paid equally within Etsy. Which is against the whole of diversity and equal pay for equal work campaign isn't it?

They might also be implying that they are paid equally but on average do equal or higher quality work. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing because companies don't typically micro-manage salaries (for a given job title) according to individual performance.

Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#36

Post by socrates1998 »

I have just heard a gradual declining of Etsy's quality and creator service of the last year or two.

Their reluctance to crack down on Chinese crap along with being very unhelpful to it's creators are the two biggest issues.

I mean, I get that a tech company would struggle with service to it's sellors, that's pretty normal, but if your brand is "handmade quality", then why the hell would you allow Chinese trash?

Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#37

Post by lkrubner »

There was a stretch, I think 3 to 5 years ago, when it seemed that Etsy was on a hiring spree -- lots and lots of recruiters were reaching out to me and asking "Would you like to work for Etsy?" I was intrigued because I used to live in Brooklyn, just a few blocks from Etsy is. So if I worked there, I could have biked to work in about 10 minutes. That would have been cool.

But every time I asked about the tech, I was disappointed. They wanted me to come in and work on a bunch of PHP code. When I asked about the details, from the hiring manager, I was told that it was, basically, a big monolithic PHP thing. I've no idea if they later moved to microservices, but I have been traumatized by a few too many encounters with horrendous blobs of PHP. For me, its become a bit of a heuristic. If a company is apparently working with a big blob of PHP, I am wary. I need to hear very good things about that company, to offset that wariness.

More recently I've read criticisms of their search system. At the risk of indulging in "confirmation bias", I'll say this (bad search) is exactly what I would have predicted, based on what I'd heard 3 to 5 years ago.

Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#38

Post by hinkley »

rpazyaquian wrote: post #10
learc83 wrote: post #8

I remember hearing that Etsy had an unusually large number of women working on the development team. I wonder how this layoff is going to affect that? Will they keep up their diversity initiatives, or do they consider that more of a luxury? I also read that they were also hiring a lot of bootcamp grads. It would be interesting to see the percentage of layoffs coming from bootcamps.

The diversity ratio is likely not going to be affected just by some people being laid off. I wouldn't expect it to change or to have been a factor in this.

In times of stress, people tend to regress.

Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#39

Post by 20years »

diffset wrote: post #34
20years wrote: post #26

I tried using Etsy only to have them close my shop due to my products "not being handcrafted" according to them. These were small things that I 3D printed and people were actually buying. They shut me down but allowed similar endless China produced products to stay. They were not too happy when I pointed out those China knockoffs. They also kept my money hostage from the sales I made. I will never again use or trust…

I also sell 3D printed items and they did the exact same thing to my account. I just emailed them and they had me send pictures of my workspace and process to prove my items are "handmade" and my account was restored within 48 hours.

I did email them but when I pointed out the Chinese knockoffs, that didn't go over too well. I guess I could have handled my response differently but come on!

The fact that they closed my shop without pre-warning when I had sales along with pending orders really made me lose complete trust in them. Especially considering the endless Chinese products on there that are obviously not handmade.

If they had contacted me inquiring about my products before closing my shop, that would have been a different story but that is not what happened. I refuse to do business with reckless providers.

Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#40

Post by hackcasual »

coldpie wrote: post #30
strict9 wrote: post #15

Will echo others regarding China imports, but one last hope to bring me back to their marketplace is a revamp of the review system. After spending thousands of dollars on furniture, waiting a month for the guy to make it, and another two weeks to ship, I had maybe a few days to leave a review for something I spent a lot of money on. With this policy, reviews are for first impressions only. And I won't be coming back.…

I wanted to leave a review after owning an item for a few months, to get an impression for how well it held up and how I liked it. Finally, I was happy with it, and went to leave a review only to be told I couldn't?!? Why on Earth do they have that policy?

It's beneficial for the sellers. Usually if you go back after some time, it's to leave a negative review.
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