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> Edit: Yes, I understand the pricing differences of cloud. So just say "it's cheaper to run our own stuff", don't pretend its due to some desire for "craft".

> Edit: Yes, I understand the pricing differences of cloud. So just say "it's cheaper to run our own stuff", don't pretend its due to some desire for "craft". I think your criticism would make sense if the article was accurate. But I don't think this quote > Etsy’s insistence on running its own servers rather than using cloud-based services and software offered by companies such as Google and Amazon—an emphasis that was known, under Dickerson, as “code as craft” is accurate. AFAIK no one at Etsy has said that they run their own servers because it's more authentic, part of their "craft" in a way that using cloud servers could not be, etc. There's some actual information on their thinking behind running their own servers at https://www.nextplatform.com/2015/04/07/etsy-shows-how-to-be-just-crafty-enough-with-platforms/ https://www.nextplatform.com/2015/04/07/etsy-shows-how-to-be... , which boils down to three points 1) Etsy has been around longer than EC2 2) Etsy does not have a spikey workload that would benefit from scaling up/down 3) Etsy thinks they can run more efficiently on bare metal

MichaelGG 9y ago
Well that makes sense. I keep forgetting how articles incorrectly portray people, especially when it fits a narrative. I guess I was only too ready to believe that a company that bikes around leftovers would actually believe in craft-servers.
- mintplant 9y ago
  "Code as Craft" was the name of their engineering blog. I suspect the author found a post about Etsy running their own servers there and decided this juxtaposition fit the narrative they were building.
  - genericpseudo 9y ago
    It looks (from the outside) like Etsy's core eng team, early, had its culture come from all of the ex-Flickr people working there. Flickr's other direct descendant, culturally, is Slack. Those are nerdy, charming, funny cultures. "Code as Craft" is a cute pun. Taking it entirely literally is a really big point-miss.
bogomipz 9y ago
>"AFAIK no one at Etsy has said that they run their own servers because it's more authentic, part of their "craft", etc." I'm not sure I would agree with that based on a recent-ish post on “code as craft” the Etsy engineering blog: "At Etsy, the vast majority of our computing happens on physical servers that live in our own data centers. Since we don’t do much in the cloud, we’ve developed tools to automate away some of the most tedious aspects of managing physical infrastructure. This tooling helps us take new hardware from initial power on to being production-ready in a manner of minutes, saving time and energy for both data center technicians racking hardware and engineers who need to bring up new servers. It was only recently, however, that this toolset started getting the love and attention that really exemplifies the idea of code as craft." Source: https://codeascraft.com/2016/02/22/putting-the-dev-in-devops-bringing-software-engineering-to-operations-infrastructure-tooling/ https://codeascraft.com/2016/02/22/putting-the-dev-in-devops... Tangentially related to the hardware discussion - a bit of dated hardware post: https://codeascraft.com/2012/08/31/what-hardware-powers-etsy-com/ https://codeascraft.com/2012/08/31/what-hardware-powers-etsy...
- cat199 9y ago
  Only reviewing from your excerpt - Just because someone sees the work that is done as part of a more cost effective solution as 'craft', doesn't mean it is actually done solely for that reason.. automated cloud deploy pipelines likely would also fit the bill and could be blogged about just in the same way, as one small example...
irrational 9y ago
1) Etsy has been around longer than EC2 This is a good point. My company is on cloud servers, but not EC2 since EC2 didn't exist when we moved to the cloud.
- Domenic_S 9y ago
  It's not a great point. Many companies have been around since before EC2, and many of them have moved to EC2. Not saying EC2 is right for everyone, just that this particular point is bad.

MichaelGG 9y ago

Well that makes sense. I keep forgetting how articles incorrectly portray people, especially when it fits a narrative. I guess I was only too ready to believe that a company that bikes around leftovers would actually believe in craft-servers.

mintplant 9y ago
"Code as Craft" was the name of their engineering blog. I suspect the author found a post about Etsy running their own servers there and decided this juxtaposition fit the narrative they were building.
- genericpseudo 9y ago
  It looks (from the outside) like Etsy's core eng team, early, had its culture come from all of the ex-Flickr people working there. Flickr's other direct descendant, culturally, is Slack. Those are nerdy, charming, funny cultures. "Code as Craft" is a cute pun. Taking it entirely literally is a really big point-miss.

bogomipz 9y ago

>"AFAIK no one at Etsy has said that they run their own servers because it's more authentic, part of their "craft", etc." I'm not sure I would agree with that based on a recent-ish post on “code as craft” the Etsy engineering blog: "At Etsy, the vast majority of our computing happens on physical servers that live in our own data centers. Since we don’t do much in the cloud, we’ve developed tools to automate away some of the most tedious aspects of managing physical infrastructure. This tooling helps us take new hardware from initial power on to being production-ready in a manner of minutes, saving time and energy for both data center technicians racking hardware and engineers who need to bring up new servers. It was only recently, however, that this toolset started getting the love and attention that really exemplifies the idea of code as craft." Source: https://codeascraft.com/2016/02/22/putting-the-dev-in-devops-bringing-software-engineering-to-operations-infrastructure-tooling/ https://codeascraft.com/2016/02/22/putting-the-dev-in-devops... Tangentially related to the hardware discussion - a bit of dated hardware post: https://codeascraft.com/2012/08/31/what-hardware-powers-etsy-com/ https://codeascraft.com/2012/08/31/what-hardware-powers-etsy...

cat199 9y ago
Only reviewing from your excerpt - Just because someone sees the work that is done as part of a more cost effective solution as 'craft', doesn't mean it is actually done solely for that reason.. automated cloud deploy pipelines likely would also fit the bill and could be blogged about just in the same way, as one small example...

irrational 9y ago

1) Etsy has been around longer than EC2 This is a good point. My company is on cloud servers, but not EC2 since EC2 didn't exist when we moved to the cloud.

Domenic_S 9y ago
It's not a great point. Many companies have been around since before EC2, and many of them have moved to EC2. Not saying EC2 is right for everyone, just that this particular point is bad.