Our company-wide meal program is much more than a lunch break. It serves to strengthen the ties between our food systems, our communities, and one another. From its origins, when the entire company would gather around a single picnic table to the nearly 50,000 meals served this year, sharing food and conversation has been a…

Gauging Employee Happiness We believe the best work is born from happy, inspired, and empowered people. We developed the Happiness Index – a unique approach to measuring the overall well-being and connectedness of our employees to understand how well we are delivering on our cultural ambitions. Our Index evaluates the company as a whole ecosystem.…

Lunch ‘n’ Learns provide regular occasions for open, ad hoc, educational experiences. Nearly every week, people across the company sign up to present on any work-related topic they choose. These events, which are leadership opportunities for presenters and learning opportunities for the whole staff, are so popular that employees tune in from all over the…

One of the most beloved manifestations of our learning-focused culture is Etsy School—interactive classes taught by employees for employees. Anyone is free to teach a class on any topic they want. Dozens of Etsy School classes have been offered over the years, including knot-tying, fabric dying, herbalistic medicine, juggling, and Python programming. The School’s grassroots…

Every year we give all employees a chance to step away from routine tasks, think expansively, and collaborate on new ideas during our company “Hack Week.” Hacking solutions goes back to Etsy’s roots. Many of the most awesome features of our site stemmed from successful hack projects. Over the years our hacking tradition has transformed…

Leadership Dens Some of our best problem solving occurs in safe spaces with trusted colleagues. Leadership dens bring together groups of five to eight managers from across the company on a biweekly basis to share best practices and support one another through leadership challenges. Dens are professionally facilitated and are governed by ground rules, allowing…

We developed a new way to collect feedback from sellers by meeting them in person in the spaces where they make, create, and manage their shops. Seller studio visits gives Etsy employees from all departments a deeper under- standing of the seller experience. Employees learn firsthand about seller workflows, connecting them more deeply to sellers’…

Every employee across the company gets the chance to help our Support team by responding to inquiries from our members. During these quarterly support rotations, employees connect directly to our community and to get a better understanding of the challenges our users encounter. Through this deeper understanding we are able to build better products that…

If you’re around DUMBO, Brooklyn on a Friday morning, you just might stumble upon a strange and seemingly silly sight: a small group of Etsy Admin on bikes, outfitted in full-body jumpsuits and helmets, about to embark on what’s become a routine mission – taking our office compost to the farm. They ride alongside the…

We take trash seriously. Every night we weigh our landfill waste, e-waste, recycling, and compost at each of our primary office locations. We even built our own dumpster scales to facilitate these measurements. Continuous tracking helps us measure the effects of programs designed to lower our overall waste and increase recycling and compost rates. For…

We strive to understand the impact of all our business decisions, including the everyday materials we use. Our Brand Design team creates Etsy’s functional, promotional, and marketing materials—from tote bags to large trade show displays. In accordance with our values, the team challenges themselves to approach each project with sustainability in mind. We consider the…

We give employees 40 hours of paid volunteer time each year to work with organizations they feel passionate about. We also orchestrate volunteer days for teams and entire offices, deepening the connections between our employees and our local communities.

Among Etsy’s core values is our commitment to acting as a mindful, transparent, and humane business, and planning and building for the long term. For this reason, it is important for our company and our community to minimize our impact on the depletion of scarce natural resources. Those resources include threatened and endangered animals. As…