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Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

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Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#71
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.

Diversity happens naturally when you let people have some say. Meaning, don't think for a second that dev shops full of men wouldn't much rather have some women in the room. They have no say in the matter. Having no say in the matter is the actual problem.

As for Etsy, did they actually have 'diversity initiatives' within the company? What doe that even mean?

Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#72
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.

> Will they keep up their diversity initiatives, or do they consider that more of a luxury? if they need to cut cost, they should start firing males, if anything, right?

There's no gender pay gap for same roles (adjusted pay gap in that link) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap

Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#73
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, in the absence of strong evidence I would assume both Etsy and every other salaried company that permits offers to be negotiated is paying men and women non-equally for equal work, primarily because (as Greenspan points out) the market value of men is higher: they are receiving competing offers from places that are more blatant about paying men more (or extending fewer offers to women, or whatever). Hopefully th…

In the absence of strong evidence, you're making a bunch of assumptions you mean?

In the absence of strong evidence, I personally err on the side of caution.

I don't know what these mythical places are that vastly prefer men over women - every place I've ever worked at, everyone preferred people who are good at their job and are easy to get along with - mostly the easy to get along with part by the way.

Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#74
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't Amazon already have a lock on all that?

Amazon's "lock on all of that" has pretty much ruined their brand from a retail seller standpoint. They're catalogue is overrun with garbage and counterfeits. It's quickly becoming eBay. I used to look at stuff in brick and mortar stores and then buy from Amazon. Now I look on Amazon for research and buy from brick and mortar stores so I know I'm not buying Chinese counterfeit garbage.

No arguments there, but to be clear I was speaking primarily to the Alibaba -> FBA pipeline.

Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 could be paid equally, but the women will be better engineers. Because a man of the same skill level will command a more senior job.

This is a ludicrously bold claim.

Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#77
post #69
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, it's the opposite actually. "We have a monolithic php thing" seems to signal "We made an MVP, found traction, and have been too busy to start from scratch". In contrast, "We have ultramodern microservices" is depressingly often code for "there's no real business here, so we have all the time in the world to polish the tech". With the former using "old, boring" tools, as they have been battle-proven time and a…

> I'd rather do unexciting work in a profitable company, than exciting work in a company with a writing on the wall. this is a very good point

LOL, some of us like the thrill of a plane with one engine on fire, it appears some of us are happy safe on the ground.

Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#78
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could be paid equally, but the women will be better engineers. Because a man of the same skill level will command a more senior job.

This is a ludicrously bold claim.

how? this is the statistical norm in the IT industry

Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#79
A lot of negative nancies in this thread. I'm not here for kicking people while they're down.

But didn't they have a layoff a month ago? Isn't there a management saying that goes something like "If you're going to eat shit, eat enough so you only have to do it once", specifically about layoffs?

Etsy engineers (and other workers) reading this, I wish you good luck! May you survive and thrive through tough times.

Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#80
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…

hah similar thing happened to me. I provided them with my renderings that I made and everything showing they were home made. What I thought was crazy was quite a few months later I wanted to buy something on etsy. I couldn't log in so I emailed etsy staff. They told me my account was disabled. I asked them if that was only from selling things and they said that nope, I couldn't buy anything either. """ Please do not…

That's really messed up.
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