Etsy

• Generous pay and benefits.
• Beautiful office space.
• Open to hiring skilled, hardworking employees with non-traditional backgrounds.
• Friendly and stylish co-workers.
• A humane tech culture that ranks well among similar companies like Kickstarter, Pinterest, Shopify, etc.

Note: These are all from pre-2018 from prior management. I only mention here for prospective future employees to keep a look out for red flags:

• Privileged and entitled attitudes, especially among engineers.
• Party/clique-ish atmosphere with lavish dinners and reimbursed expenses.
• Non-transparent communication of financial situation and company health to employees.

For example, while I was there:

• The $30m office building renovation was presented as an unqualified "Good Thing" that employees and management definitely enjoyed. It did not result in a corresponding $30m benefit for customers, suppliers, or investors.
• Former CFO espoused false earnings metrics like EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization), flew around on a private jet, and exited the company before unsustainable spending became well-known. A former VP was paid $500k/year, untied to performance and disproportionate with the amount of net income and free cash flow of the business.

General lack of concern or business aptitude among general management for the long-term wellbeing of the company.

In scaling your business, reinvest most of the profit into lower costs for both sellers and buyers.

Currently, seller fees have been raised from 30 cents per listing forever to 30 cents per year.

Many sellers are small businesses, and Etsy's advantage over eBay, Amazon, and local retailers is the fat tail of selection of handmade goods around the world from small sellers.

Make it easier for the sellers to post and make great products, and make it easier for buyers to find what they want.

Josh Silverman, the current CEO, inherited a mess and has done a fantastic job housecleaning. I encourage you to continue to increase the earning power and strength of the Etsy brand, not from MBA-style squeezing of existing profits, and reinvesting to lower costs for both sellers and buyers. Tie compensation to actual performance (this is notoriously lacking in software engineering where they are competing with VC-backed startups).