

Avi Bryant Joins Etsy - micahalles
http://avibryant.tumblr.com/post/21287677615/etsy

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untog
IMO the really big news here is _where_ he'll be working for Etsy- which is to
say remotely, on an island in British Columbia. A stunningly beautiful part of
the world, and a really interesting outlook on working in the 21st century- a
startup hub this is not. Everyone should read the end of his post where he
discusses his reasons and plans for Galiano Island.

I'll be interested to see how working remotely like this works out for both
him and Etsy, because I wouldn't mind spending a little more time in the Gulf
Islands myself one day...

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plinkplonk
"like Etsy sellers, who are empowered by the internet to run their businesses
from anywhere, I’ll be working remotely, with only occasional trips to Etsy’s
New York office. Not only that, but the default assumption for those on my
team is that they, too, will be working from anywhere in the world."

The bad news is that this attitude isn't very common yet among employers. The
good news is that it is getting better all the time. I live in far away (wrt
SF) Bangalore and just turned down a remote job offer from a great startup in
SF. (nothing wrong with the job, I just didn't have the time).

~~~
foolinator
Etsy has always had remote working coders and they've always been aggressive
about hiring talent. Their CEO is a genius at doing this, which is a great
trait for a tech leader.

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mrgreenfur
Excuse my ignorance, but who is this and why is it interesting that he's
working for Etsy?

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sebphfx
He's the original co-founder of Seaside, the Smalltalk framework. He then went
to work on a startup called DabbleDB and at Twitter. He's like the Steve
Albini of the tech world. Really brilliant guy. He also gave a talk that was
called "Rails is obsolete(so's everything else)" in 2010 I think.Check out his
talks here: [http://blog.redtexture.net/2010/10/30/avi-bryants-
presentati...](http://blog.redtexture.net/2010/10/30/avi-bryants-
presentations/#Avi%20Bryant%27s%20Presentations)

~~~
pragmatic
Ok, who is Steve Alibini? (I know who is is, b/c I looked him up, but he is
anything but a household name).

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yawn
"Not only that, but the default assumption for those on my team is that they,
too, will be working from anywhere in the world."

I'm curious if this team has already been formed or if he will be looking for
developers. This sounds like an amazing opportunity.

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avibryant
It has not been. I'm not starting myself until mid-June, and I do expect to be
doing a bunch of hiring.

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whatamImissing
Avibryant: Etsy is great, but with the reasoning, why not Kiva?

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avibryant
Kiva probably would have been worth a mention in my post, yes. Etsy is where I
could see an obvious way for me to have an impact, and so could they.

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srconstantin
Etsy is a form of "micro-work" but it's never been particularly good
financially for people who sell stuff on Etsy. I wonder what they can do for
connecting sellers to each other to pool supply costs and identify each
seller's likely consumers.

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foolinator
Barely any sellers are profitable on etsy. They're all housewives or hipsters
that sell at amazingly low profit margins. It's a steal if you want to buy
handmade stuff though.

~~~
srconstantin
I know! I love it as a place to shop, would never try to make money as a
seller. But if they wanted to change that, they could -- run calculations for
sellers as to how much they should charge to be profitable, all the stuff that
the average seller wouldn't think about.

~~~
foolinator
When you have a marketplace of 600K sellers, the competition is fierce. Etsy
tries hard to make them profitable by offering classes online and attempts to
lower costs of supplies.

I hope they can find a way to pool the cost of materials to bring low cost
overhead to sellers. That would make the industry explode.

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fraserharris
There is an opportunity for a service that handles the legal implications of
remote workers. Some states have ruled that remote contract workers constitute
a business presence. The implication is that they now have to collect & remit
state taxes for online purchases. The service would legally employee the
remote worker, setting them up as a contract worker, and handle the various
state law quirks.

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100k
I appreciated reading about Avi's thought process in deciding what he wanted
to do next.

I'm in a similar place (minus the successful exit) and it's hard to figure out
what is _worth_ working on. I'm contracting now, and it pays well and gives a
lot of freedom to travel and just generally not work, but the projects are not
exactly world-improving.

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typicalrunt
My congrats to Avi. I still remember working with him at UBC's IT department.
He's an amazingly bright guy.

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jimm
I wonder how much of Etsy's enlightened attitude is because CEO Chad Dickerson
was until recently the CTO.

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lucian1900
I think it would be interesting indeed to see small distributed shops like
what Etsy has approach the efficiency of Amazon. I'm certain it's not possible
to quite match it because of inherent limitations, but I'm very curious about
what can be done.

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lukego
Great writeup, Avi. Good luck with the new adventure, and thanks for telling
me "you should start a company.." the last time we met, it was good advice to
take :-)

