senior software engineer

software engineer

program manager

user experience researcher

staff software engineer

Etsy

Overall I loved my time at Etsy. The office was amazing, ability to WFH, culture, events, etc were the best of any job I have had. The pay and benefits are amazing, too! I was in seller support payments, which was a VERY tough role with a ton of intricate background work necessary. Looking back, I think I was too emotional for the job, as Etsy wants you to follow the resource articles and be pretty "black and white" about payment decisions. I was having some trouble grasping the payment concepts and after 7 months I was put on a performance improvement plan and through that, improved a lot and drastically raised my customer experience score. I was told by my manager in private meetings that even if for some reason the role of payments didn't work out, she would work with me on transferring me to another team. This proved to be completely false. I came into work June 2019 expecting to meet with my manager and HR to discuss the completion of the Performance Improvement Plan. Since I had improved so much and raised my score, along with verbally being told prior by my manager that she would still work with me in another team, was under the impression that there would be no issues. Instead, I was completely blindsided that morning and let go.... to say I am still shocked is an understatement. I believe other things were involved whether it be politics or whatever. I'm still not sure what happened but have since gone on to start my own business for the past year and a half. Etsy was great and I have no hard feelings but I would be wary of the Seller Support Payments team in particular. 

Owning your own business is no small undertaking but I felt very confident in this venture while using Etsy. The platform has gone through some major changes since my time using it (predominantly 2020), so I can only speak to my own experience- but it was very beginner-friendly and a really great way to garner traffic to my shop without relying entirely on social media marketing. I did have to do my own external marketing initially but once I was able to get good SEO and a good place in the Etsy algorithm I had some really remarkable success for someone with little experience in selling art. Etsy did a great job of recommending my products to my specific niche once I was able to get those first few customers, which really helped me to focus on my production and customer experience instead of purely on marketing. I definitely recommend it as a stepping stone for anyone interested in starting a new business without much experience or existing clientele.

Etsy can be a great place to work day-to-day, where you'll be working with some very motivated and intelligent people who care about what they're doing.  

However, the leadership for the past few years has been rudderless and is very slow to take responsibility for their questionable decisions, such as making numerous expensive acquisitions during the height of the recent tech mini-boom.  The CEO prefers to talk about how he didn't have a "crystal ball" with which to see the coming change in "macroeconomic factors" at the time instead of taking responsibility.  This would be less egregious were it not for the heavy amount of executive self-congratulating occurring when macroeconomic factors were responsible for buoying the company in 2020-2021.  

For the past two years, while the stock price has been decreasing, many decisions from micro to macro have changed on a dime in such a way that suggests a lack of true long-term strategy.

I had a great experience working at Etsy in terms of the work culture. When it came to what we were actually delivering, though, it's garbage in, garbage out. So many Etsy listings - and the often purchased ones - are cheap stuff, drop-shipped stuff. Leadership is interested in metrics that optimize for sales, not benefiting the real small businesses. This means that when they want higher quality stuff being sold, they just bias search results to be more expensive. There aren't tools in place to differentiate sellers who are actually handmaking stuff from people who are just re-selling stuff from Amazon. I don't see this improving in the future because it's hard to make as much money if you take out all these non-handmade sales.

Etsy is an awesome company, with incredible social responsibility and great benefits, financial and otherwise. The company is full of relented, unique, and supportive people. I was incredibly proud to be able to work there and support the goals they aim accomplish.

As a neurodiverse person however, there was a lack of understanding of the challenges this presented for me. While management was incredibly supportive and seemed to truly care about admin's progress and goals, their was some lack of insight into the support and feedback some employees may need.

That being the only major concern, I would highly recommend seeking out Etsy for job opptunity. I have no doubt that given the chance to learn from these shortcomings, the company would address them

Etsy can be a great place to work depending on the department and leadership within the department you work. During parts of my time at Etsy I learned a lot and grew exponentially while having a great impact on the business. Having a lot of fun in the process. Once my leadership changed my experience at Etsy become quite hostile and discrimination became a clear topic of concern. My leadership lacked communication after multiple conversations and them agreeing in was a miss on their part, it began to become apparent it was intentional. At times Etsy can be a "toxic nice" environment, where asking questions or challenging ideas to find the best one is frowned upon as it may hurt feelings. Sometimes you have to take what you can from a situation and move forward with the best approach, but there were both positive gains and negative experiences working at Etsy.

My mother and I currently own 3 shops together. When we started this 3yrs ago we had 1 shop and I did the photography, loaded the photos to the laptops, edited the photos, and she did the rest. This worked for quite a while and we even managed to open a 2nd shop but then I got sicker, at that time, and she had to take over everything. Eventually I got better and was able to start up social networking which brought in some views (not a lot but more than before) to the shops. So it ended up that she runs the shops and I run the net (which kinda became a thing of it's own).

My mother goes to garage sales, second-hand stores, estate sales, etc. to find things almost every weekend. She takes photos in the mornings and loads them to her laptop when she gets the chance. She does thorough research on all items as well as VERY thorough packaging.

Etsy truly seemed like a wonderful place to work before I actually worked here. Even while I'm currently working here, I see its amazing purpose, its ethical business practices, its emphasis on diversity and inclusion, and its quirky workplace culture. With that being said, your experience at Etsy will depend on what team you're on. In my current team, my manager does not care at all about my career development, my well-being, and my co-workers and I are often scoffed at for continuously seeking career development opportunities even though we were promised them when we interviewed for our roles. We feel disrespected and undervalued.

Etsy HQ is a warm and truly unique workspace. It offers an open-air seating arrangement with communal desks. The company has made a proactive commitment to sustainability and provides quality, locally sourced goods for employee meals and events. This is a non-discriminatory environment that actually celebrates individuality, promotes gender equality, and encourages work to be executed colorfully, thoughtfully, and communally. There is an attitude that we all have something to learn from one another and that everyone's ideas can propel Etsy's teams to greatness and the company to higher ground.

Etsy is a great site that has a built in audience already going there to shop. Downside is they usually always take the customers side when it comes to disputes due to a missing package, or a refund when your store policy states a no-refund policy. They did force a refund from my account to the customer which Made me very upset. They have since made some improvements to help aid the seller more in instances like this, but only if you fall within a very strict requirement. Either way, if you don't want to do the work to build an audience with Shopify or social media, this is the way to go.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Senior software engineer 4 salaries reported	$159,125 per year
Software engineer 4 salaries reported	$65.00 per hour
Program manager 3 salaries reported	$129,333 per year
User experience researcher 5 salaries reported	$132,600 per year
Staff software engineer 5 salaries reported	$220,800 per year

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