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Showing posts from 2015

Joining Attend.com

When I left Etsy at the end of February, it was because I wanted to join something small where I could have a lot of impact. I did that, becoming a co-founder/CTO at a three person startup in Boston in the online grocery space. Unfortunately that business didn't work out, and closed its doors for good on April 6th. That left me wondering what to do next, and I spent the month of April talking to a lot of companies and exploring opportunities. I wanted to stick with my original plan of joining a small company, but I decided to make post-Series A companies my main focus, to take away some of the risk that I experienced at a seed stage, pre-product company. I was introduced to Attend by a friend, and the company fit all of my criteria. It has a popular product in the market, has around 30 employees (~5 full-time engineers), just raised a Series A , is in growth mode, and has a great team. There's a ton of potential for me to learn technically there and grow as a leader. Attend ...

Reflecting on 2.5 Years as a Remote

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February 27th was my last day at Etsy, concluding 2.5 years as a remote employee (more on what's next in a future post). A lot has been written about remote work, including a recent book , but I wanted to talk about my own experience and some of the lessons that I learned over the past few years. Overall Etsy does a great job with remote employees, and it continues to get better. During my last couple of weeks at Etsy they were rolling out a new policy that added a number of additional benefits for remotes (including the ability to bring your spouse with you to the main Etsy office in Brooklyn for a week once a year). All that said, at the end of the day I believe that how much you enjoy working remotely is more a function of your personality than the perks that your company provides. Generally I think there's a correlation between how introverted you are and how much you enjoy remoteness. Here's how I put it in my last lecture at Etsy, discussing how my expectations  m...