I had a 30-minute phone interview with a recruiter, then (a few days later) a video chat with one member of the team, which was followed a week later with a series of interviews (1:1, 2:1) in the DUMBO office. About two weeks later I heard back that they had decided not to hire for the position. The good: Etsy seems like a great company and definitely has an energetic, fun atmosphere that everyone seems to love. Plus, it's an app / site that a lot of the applicants are likely to enjoy and use themselves. And the people all seem to genuinely care about the company and its future success. Based even on my (very) limited experience in Etsy-land, it seemed to me that everyone is anxiously waiting for this thing to go public so they can exercise their stock options. I don't know if they think it's going to be the next Facebook, but... they definitely think it's the next Ebay (there's a little bit of an impending --slightly smug?-- atmosphere of great expectation that was hard to ignore). And a bit of anxiousness about it, too, maybe. But that's good! Who wouldn't want to work at a company that's poised for success? C'mon. That's why I applied. The ok: the people seemed... Good. Likeable, certainly. But... I could tell I was auditioning for club membership versus applying for a job. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but... this was all about whether they liked me, not whether they liked what I could do for them (which, again, is sorta the purpose of the interview). Most of the questions focused on me, my life, and what I didn't like at my current job (which was a little uncomfortable to discuss); there was surprisingly little discussion of the job for which I had applied (which I will discuss further in a minute). I had to steer the conversation toward what I could do for them, what I could do with the job (which was difficult for reasons I will discuss momentarily). Some of the questions were a little personal, in a chatty sort of way, and I wound up revealing more about my personal life than I expected to (which happens during interviews, but sometimes I wish it didn't). So be prepared to make friends; these people want to be your friends. Which (again) is fine; I was just expecting more of a... business-like interview. In reality it was a little speed-date-y. The bad(?)... More like the "ehhh, I'm ok with not getting the job:" They clearly had no idea what they wanted this role to be. Different people on the same team had very different ideas of what the job was to entail, so the interviews were a bit disjointed. I honestly doubt I could have asked for and received three consistent details from the team of interviewers about what this job would have been, what the duties were to be, or how it would function within the team. I tried to discuss how my current duties and skills would transfer well to Etsy, but with very little feedback from the team about what I would actually be working on or doing for them, the conversations were pretty nebulous. Without sounding like an idiot, I kept trying to ask them "What would I actually do?" or "Why does your idea of the job conflict with his?" But after a few half-answers, it became clear that it was up to me to define a new and unknown role to them without any real knowledge of their internal operations. Despite my enthusiasm for the company, I couldn't describe what I would do for them (outside of restating my skill-set) without knowing better what they wanted from me. And some of the people I spoke with had just been hired themselves and simply could not answer my questions about the company or the job (lots of "I'm not sure; I'll have to get back to you" answers). Interviews with other people within the company (people who were not on the immediate team) revealed to me the frustrations they felt trying to bring regularity and reliability to a creative start-up becoming a corporation that was still stuck in its start-up-iness despite a growing global workforce and an imminent (and hopeful) boom. It seems there's a lot of work to be done, a lot of clean-up and polishing in preparation for an IPO, and while it could have been exciting to be a part of that, I'm ok if I'm not the one who has to ease this team through their growing pains. But I wish them well.