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Comment by xienze | Hacker News Reader

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xienze·

Perhaps I should rephrase the question. WHY do you need hundreds of employees to run a marketplace website?

And if it's truly only a couple hundred they are EXTREMELY well paid.

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Etsy has over 150 engineers, all living and working in NYC; of course they are 'EXTREMELY' well paid.

Engineers, UX, support staff. There's an entirely separate office in Hudson, NY for security and telephone support for buyers/sellers. Plus rent in Brooklyn isn't cheap (they likely have a fantastic deal for their early office space but DUMBO is an overleased market at this point and they are fitting out new space in "DUMBO Heights").

All the jurisdictions Etsy operates in require various forms of compliance, which you could waste engineer time on or hire dedicated employees to handle. And by going public they've likely had to hire 15-20 people to support their CFO and run compliance.

"DUMBO Heights"?? I thought we were supposed to call that RAMBO (Right Above the Manhattan Bridge Overpass).

Real estate naming. Go figure.

Yeah, that's the regrettable name the real estate developers came up with. I suspect BQE Heights didn't have the same melodious ring.

For the non-NYC people: "DUMBO Heights" is a cluster of buildings just South of DUMBO, Brooklyn on the other side of the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway (BQE) which were owned by the Watchtower / Jehovah's Witnesses until I believe 2012.

See http://dumboheights.com/ (warning: real estate developer site).

* edited: directions in DUMBO are easy to confuse. What you think is north-south is east-west and vice/versa.

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