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...
Agreed. As a soon to be college grad in CS, I've resigned myself to the spiky world theory and the fact that I'm going to spend the rest of my life in the tech hubs of SF, NYC, and maybe Boston. It's good to see someone is able to hack from an island.
"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).
I think it'll come with time. Startups are disproportionately staffed by young people who actively seek living in city hubs- I know I'm one of them. But as that population ages, priorities will change (having a family, etc.)- I'd like to believe that the industry can shape itself around the wishes of those who create it. We'll see.
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.
I've been to Galiano a few times, and from what the locals tell me, the internet connections there are pretty crappy. It's fine at the resort inn next to the ferry terminal, though.
At Hybridgroup (http://www.hybridgroup.com) we cater to that exact working environment where anyone can work from anywhere (For the most part. Timezone seems to be an issue so we stick to the Americas/Can for now +3/-3. You still have to treat it like an office.).
It's a new age. The workplace of the future is everywhere.
Galiano isn't that remote. It's less than an hour from Vancouver International Airport by floatplane, or a couple hours from downtown Vancouver by the (2+ times daily) ferry.
It is beautiful though, and I envy him. I have a place on Salt Spring Island (right next to Galiano) and I don't spend nearly enough time there
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...
My interaction with him is limited, but he's really sharp and a very nice guy in my experience. He's responsible, at least in some part if not mainly, for Twitter's adoption of Scala.
That's much broader than the truth: what I can claim credit for is Twitter's adoption of Scala for Hadoop jobs (and the Scalding framework that resulted from that). Scala services were already in heavy use at Twitter long before I got there.
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.
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.
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.
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.
aliexpress,taobao,ebay,amazon-stores,paypal button,bitcoin,square in a busy location. lots of competition on the ad-hoc sale tip. tightly coupling this with a particular kind of item is not my cup of tea either
A lot of people selling on Etsy are doing so for some kind of fulfillment, as a way of covering the cost of their hobby and feeling like their work is bringing delight to others.
Then, there are sellers that are based outside the US with far different production economics.
And of course, there are the deluded sellers who are trying to be profitable and can't get there.
Many of the sellers ARE profitable but it takes a while to get them there. The actual 'formula' to figure out how to correctly price their items is passed around in the forums. Nothing wrong with this but it does show you that most sellers don't have a clue when they first open a shop. They just want to sell anything at any price.
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.
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.
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 :-)
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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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 73.3 ms ] threadI'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...
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).
It's a new age. The workplace of the future is everywhere.
It is beautiful though, and I envy him. I have a place on Salt Spring Island (right next to Galiano) and I don't spend nearly enough time there
He was active in the Ruby community.
The company he co-founded was acquired by Twitter. Then he worked in Tumblr ...
So in a nutshell he is well known in the startup world. Or at least this is my impression.. .
http://vimeo.com/4763707
It might help to put in the link Avi Bryant, Creator of Seaside, joining Etsy.
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.
Then, there are sellers that are based outside the US with far different production economics.
And of course, there are the deluded sellers who are trying to be profitable and can't get there.
I'm curious if this team has already been formed or if he will be looking for developers. This sounds like an amazing opportunity.
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.