

Our Next Chapter at Etsy: A Letter to the Community - donohoe
http://www.etsy.com/blog/en/2011/our-next-chapter-at-etsy/

======
code_duck
This is an interesting change.

First, anyone would be a better CEO than Rob Kalin. The period when he was
_not_ CEO at Etsy was blissful by comparison... for once, the company was
being run by someone mature and normal, someone with actual experience working
at a professional company, whose goal was to serve customers and investors.
Kalins goals are mainly self aggrandizement and extracting revenge for sitting
alone during lunch at 6th grade, as far as I can tell. His actions and writing
give me the impression of someone who is mentally unstable and has adjustment
difficulties. He is given to grandiose flights of fancy where he places Etsy
(and #1, himself) at the center of an imaginary cultural revolution which will
topple Wal-Mart. It was never clear if this was a total sham, or whether he
believes it himself, but these self indulgent rants distract from the actual
purpose of Etsy, which should be providing a superior service selling arts and
crafts. As a long term Etsy customer, I have had absolutely no respect for the
company's management for years. The direction Kalin has taken the company in
since returning as CEO seems to be investor-driven ('social commerce') and as
an Etsy shop owner, I am not impressed.

Chad Dickerson has done an adequate job as COO. I can't say I'm blown away
with Etsy's achievements, their staff or their engineering culture, but
they've managed to keep the site running. On a technical (server) level, Etsy
is fast and responsive. While many of their changes and improvements have a
somewhat amateurish feel in the product and web design, I believe the
technical underpinnings are sound. However, the culture of 'we push 900
changes a day!!! our PMs and Dotty dog push code lol!!' would impress me more
if the site was 100% reliable. The API is a mild disaster and in my opinion,
the people running that project are not qualified (it's written in PHP, we
should note).

So, good luck Chad. You couldn't do a worse job than Rob Kalin. I think you're
a nice person. Etsy seems to be entirely in the thrall of investors and
techies these days, and the employees appear to have no understanding of who
their customers are. I hope you can change this.

~~~
donohoe
Have to disagree with you on the API. The implementation seems fine to me -
would like to know specific issues you have with it.

I am also curious as to why you single out PHP. Every language has its place
and I don't see how this particular choice is cause for such revulsion. While
its trendy these days to just bash PHP cos its, well, PHP, I don't think thats
your angle here.

~~~
true_religion
If you're like Facebook and started out with PHP, built your own compiler for
it, and have a brilliant engineering team that regularly comes out with
products like Haystack or Cassandra, then go ahead use PHP.

But you're not Facebook are you? You're not the go-to source for graduates in
the top of their class. You're seeing incredible traffic, and the original
source is not a wet pile of spaghetti mushing up every improvement you try to
make.

Perhaps then its fair to say you shouldn't have used PHP, and instead used a
language that was a better fit for _your organizations structure and practices
at scale_.

~~~
donohoe
Your reply gives the impression that you might think that I work at Etsy - I
don't.

No one here has cited examples of how Etsy's API has failed. At least, nothing
substantive. I'd love to see examples as the few times I have used it, its
worked fine.

I guess the questions are:

    
    
      - (1) If Etsy's API is defective, then what makes it so?
    
      - (2) What potion of the blame lies with the language it was written in?
    

Anyone?

~~~
code_duck
Not sure why my response wasn't enough to provide insight that your brief
examination of their API has not. Nor do I understand why you'd like to focus
on examining that one statement I made along with what was intended to be a
brief aside. My aim was to raise the question of how well the API program has
worked out for Etsy and developers overall. Whether the design of their API is
technologically sound or whether PHP is a good choice or played a role in
their API's successes or failures is only part of that.

------
briandoll
Congrats to Chad and to Etsy. He's created what appears to be one hell of a
great engineering culture that has helped to nurture a great community
culture.

He gave a keynote at RailsConf this year about engineering for happiness,
which is worth the watch if you haven't seen it:
<http://blog.chaddickerson.com/2011/05/20/railsconf/>

------
camworld
This is _good_ news. Chad will be the type of CEO that understands code and
how innovation in that area will lead to new opportunities for Etsy. The
history of the Internet is littered with great dot-com ideas that were ruined
by clueless CEOs. Chad has done a great job in building an awesome engineering
team at Etsy. I think the challenge going forward is to increase the marketing
and awareness of what Etsy offers.

~~~
code_duck
I like Chad and feel comfortable with him in this position. It's just sinking
in for me how awesome this is compared to having the previous occupant in this
seat.

I don't think Etsy needed more techies or investors in control, though: Etsy
needs someone who understands what it is like to be an individual who is
supported by an art or craft business. The best thing that could happen at
this point would be for Chad to take a year off and try to make enough money
to pay his rent by selling ceramic mustaches from an Etsy shop.

