How Etsy Drives a Culture of Empathy, Autonomy, Learning

Etsy fosters a distinctive company culture centered around empathy, autonomy, and continuous learning, which was highlighted during an engineer exchange program with PagerDuty. Empathy is a core value at Etsy, evident in their hiring process, which includes a behavioral component to assess candidates' alignment with the company's values, and the implementation of blameless post-mortems to focus on mistakes rather than individuals. New hires participate in a five-week bootcamp to gain a comprehensive understanding of the organization, working with different teams and building relationships within their primary team. The culture of autonomy is supported by encouraging engineers to contribute from their first day, often through simple tasks that involve deploying code, and the preference for building custom tools that integrate seamlessly with existing systems. Learning is ingrained in Etsy’s operations through regular post-mortems for all outages, regardless of impact, and unique practices like the "Last Lecture," where departing employees share insights and reflections with the company. Overall, Etsy's approach creates an environment where employees feel empowered, supported, and continuously engaged in personal and professional development.