BUILD

SUCCEED

David DeRemer:

Hi, I am David, and this is Build to Succeed from Very Good Ventures. Today we talk with Landon Robinson, a staff engineer at Etsy. We're going to talk about how to build success in mobile in the two-sided marketplace, as well as the importance of understanding the needs of the business as software engineers. So, let's build some new ideas. All right. Hi, Landon. Thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to the Build to Succeed podcast.

Landon Robinson:

Hey, thanks for having me.

David DeRemer:

Great. Why don't you get us started? I know you work at Etsy. Maybe you could give us a bit of your background, your story, your career arc of how you got here today and kind of catch everybody up to what's going on for you these days?

Landon Robinson:

Yeah, absolutely. I've been in IT probably about twenty-some years. I won't bore you with a lot of the early career. But I started my career in software development doing web. Traditionally it was the Microsoft.net. Everybody wanted a web application at the time. I did that for a few years, learned a lot about SQL and things of that nature. And then mobile came out somewhere around 2007, I think. iOS and Android, and I did a lot of the Android work early on in my career, probably for the first seven or eight years, mainly because it was a low barrier to entry, you only had to have a PC to get started. So really sort of dove into the Android development and then Swift came out. I thought that was pretty cool, because I did not like Objective-C whatsoever. I did iOS for a little bit.

And then big Flutter came out. Big Flutter came out somewhere, I don't remember, 2002 or something, '17 or something like that. And I was a traditional native guy, of course, and you couldn't get me to try a cross-platform framework and all. And so Flutter came out, which completely changed my mind. And I worked with a few companies that worked basically migrating native to Flutter and then that's how I ended up at Etsy, because they were in a similar position where they were in a position where they were looking to move away from native development and more toward cross-platform using Flutter.

David DeRemer:

So you have a awesome story there like Web into native, both iOS and Android, and then discovered Flutter. What was it about Flutter when you saw it that suddenly got over your concerns about cross-platform?

Landon Robinson:

I think for me, the fact that Flutter builds pretty much every pixel on the screen from a displaced perspective, they don't reuse these wrappers of native components, was a really big draw to me. Because it was very difficult for me as a native guy to tell that this was done in cross-platform. And then I think the tooling that Flutter initially had, it was very akin to native, where I've had experience other cross-platform technologies where you didn't have the debugging tooling or things like that. Which just wasn't there. The developer experience was there. So coupled with the developer experience along with the ability to paint every pixel is grand, just sort of fell in love with Flutter.

David DeRemer:

That's perfect. I think there's a lot of people that follow that pathway and there was something magical about Flutter, especially early on where people just kind of felt like it made things easier again. Made it kind of fun to do. So now you're at Etsy and I believe you're working on the Etsy seller app initiative. Can you give us an overview of your current role and what's going on with Etsy these days in terms of technology and mobile?

Landon Robinson:

So for those that don't know, Etsy is two-sided marketplace that sort of brings buyers and sellers to together. And then unique crafted items is sort of what brings everybody together. So, Etsy traditionally has a buyer app and a seller's app. And I'm typically work on the seller app, so it's the go-to place to go for on-the-go management of seller stores. When I joined the team it probably was about four engineers at the time. I didn't hit start a new project for the seller app, but I was pretty close from some people that did. And I think we progressed over the years. Currently, the team is about eight engineers. And my current role is more skewed toward platform work these days, work that involves upgrades, tech deck, performance, modernization, things of that nature.

David DeRemer:

And that's within the Flutter base for the Etsy seller app?

Landon Robinson:

Correct, correct.

David DeRemer:

So what's the history of the overall Etsy mobile app experience? I mean, obviously it's 2025 and mobile or iOS and Android came out a long time ago. Was the seller app always ... Did it start as a Flutter app or was there a native app before that? What's the history that got you to having a Flutter seller app?

Landon Robinson:

Yeah, so the story I've been told is that you can see that the seller app used to have a legacy app that had the traditional iOS and Android team. And I think they were merged in sort of with the buyer side the way I understand it. So, there were times where, I guess, resources or time constraints that they started looking at more toward going toward this cross-platform work. But they traditionally had your regular native iOS and Android building on the seller app.

David DeRemer:

Gotcha. So before the seller app and the consumer app were one code base then this was just kind of a variant of it?

Landon Robinson:

Yeah, exactly. For what I can tell is everybody shared the same code base with just different functionality, different bills for the seller side and the buyer side.

David DeRemer:

Cool. So got an opportunity to split it out and leverage some new technology with Flutter. That's awesome.

Landon Robinson:

Exactly.

David DeRemer:

Yeah. Well, and I'm curious with your own personal experience, the flow that you went through, but also maybe from other teammates, and even to some extent the perception of the current native team still working on the consumer app relative to the seller team working with Flutter. What are some of the comparisons that you think you've identified or been able to dig into relative to the other solutions, right? You got React Native, you got the whole Xamarin Maui set of things, you even just have web apps, progressive apps, things like that. What are some of the differences though when you talk about it internally that you think has made this successful as a Flutter app?

Landon Robinson:

I think some of the key differences is I think the infamous one code base for two platforms I think speaks a lot. I think that is very evident as we move more toward Flutter. Some of the things that stay the same are probably the architectural things of it, the modernization of it, the things of ... The abstraction layers, all those things are the same, it's just implemented different. But I would definitely think that the biggest difference is being able to have engineers write the code once and have it tested on two different platforms are, it's a really big deal. It's really big timeframe.

David DeRemer:

Yeah. How do you guys interface with the other mobile developers? Are you guys close to them? Does each team, sort of the Native people who are working on the consumer app and the Flutter team working on the seller app, do they collaborate a lot together?

Landon Robinson:

I would say early on we worked a little bit more closely with the Native guys, because we were trying to understand feature sets and how things were done. Do we want to reinvent the wheel or not? I think early on we worked pretty hand in hand with a lot of the Native people, or we sought out a lot of their advice or how to do things. But I think as things moved away from the early on, we started sort of being really separate, apart from like I mentioned earlier, the architectural pieces of it, the observability pieces of it. We still have those common threads, but early on we worked pretty heavily close to the Native team, but as we got further away from building out, getting our old cadence, we forced our way in.

David DeRemer:

And organizationally, is the work you guys are doing Flutter seen as a real advantage and benefit for the company overall, given your pace and velocity that you're able to move more quickly and with maybe even fewer or more efficient resources?

Landon Robinson:

Honestly, I think we see that a lot in our org, in the shallow org. From a company-wide perspective, honestly, I don't see a lot of that being talked about, but I definitely think it's being noticed, because like I mentioned earlier, our team is eight engineers that we're able to handle this core app. So I'm pretty sure they're being noticed-

David DeRemer:

Right on.

Landon Robinson:

... how small but mighty team, but we don't make a whole lot of rah-rah about it, but we could.

David DeRemer:

Yeah. How big is the overall engineering team at Etsy? I mean, I know that's a lot. You got web, backend, mobile, what are we talking?

Landon Robinson:

Honestly, I do not know the numbers, I know it's a lot. I know it'd be Native teams, Android and iOS is probably five times as large as our team, and that's probably being generous, but there's a lot of engineers that support the Native apps.

David DeRemer:

Yeah, I mean, a lot going on with consumer apps, of course you're doing a tonne of stuff there to market to them and promote things to them and maybe the seller experience is a little bit in terms of the overall, there's some of that's probably just because of additional complexity, but obviously I think one of the key advantages of cross-platform is being able to do more with the resources you have. And I think that's just been really Flutter's unique niche and opportunities to create a great experience. And to do it by giving your engineers superpowers to do more. So, it seems like you guys are enjoying those benefits there.

Landon Robinson:

Totally, totally.

David DeRemer:

How did you start the team? I mean, I know that started before you got there, but when you think about the evolution and growth, how did Etsy go about establishing a team and some expertise in something brand new? And as the team has grown and you've been there and developed that team, and maybe you've had some people leave, some people join. What's generally been the strategy to bring people from Etsy or new hires into this seller app and the Flutter experience?

Landon Robinson:

Yeah, I think it starts with just really good engineers, people that know how to problem solve, people that can look at a bigger picture, if you will. And I think that's been really crucial in us being able to keep a really good team around. Most of the team that started this project, is still around, so we're very fortunate to have that on our side. But even when we have different people come in and build inside the app, it just starts with really good engineers, really good documentation to keep the momentum going that we started early on.

David DeRemer:

Do you mean documentation that was written about the old app, or you guys have been writing good documentation as you've been going?

Landon Robinson:

Yeah, I think we try to do a good job at trying to document how the app is set up, how to get going really easily locally, here's some best practises that we have that you should be considering. I think that goes a long way when we try to bring internal people into the team and build out in Flutter.

David DeRemer:

And I know Etsy obviously started as a website and probably I would imagine there's a strong web engineering culture. And you started at web too. People on your team, did they traditionally come from a web engineering background or a mobile background? Are there any patterns that tend to get good results with Flutter engineering?

Landon Robinson:

I think our team, most of our team come from native. Either Android or iOS or both. So that makes it really easy to build different building software in mobile versus web because especially some of the release cycles and how fast you can get updates out and things like that. So the majority of the team, they do come from Native. The other part of the team are probably pretty much full-stack engineers that's kind of know backend and web. But I think what we've seen generally speaking is that if you have some type of experience doing mobile development, you won't have a problem fitting in with Flutter.

David DeRemer:

And how do you guys work with the broader, so you obviously have the seller app, your Flutter engineering team. You got the consumer app, you also have the whole web and full stack and all the data and all that sort of thing. But you also have the product teams, the design teams, I would imagine all of these other teams that you guys are working with. How have you made some safe on-ramps for people to get involved with your code base and to work well with you guys? Given the fact that you guys can move pretty quickly and you can build something that works on all the platforms for all the sellers, how do you keep in sync with everything going on on the Native consumer apps and the web app? I assume there's a web-based seller experience too. How do you work with all of these different teams and people to stay in sync and make sure you're executing and shipping in parity?

Landon Robinson:

Yeah, I guess the big thing that I think we do really well is we do a lot of collaborative development where you have certain teams that build certain features while other teams build other features. But we all come together to build a great experience for our sellers. From a technical standpoint, the way we sort of do that for web engineers, is we create these co-labs that sort of walk people through how to build in Flutter, like some of the best practises that we've uncovered. We also do rotations from other team members where you maybe have a single engineer that's embedded in our team that builds their feature. They get to learn how we work and how the code base works and things like that. And a little sort early on. And that evolved into more of a programme we have now where we can have more than one engineer. It's sort of like the away team that comes in and is able to build out their feature from beginning to all the way to production.

And I think that's sort of how we imagined it from early on where we could always have people outside of the core Etsy seller app team to come in and build different features. So you couple that with everybody has a shared mission of building great tools. Everybody's on the same page about what features we need to build. It makes it a lot easier to build the app.

David DeRemer:

Amazing. So this concept of the away team and those embedded engineers, was that a broader Etsy initiative or was that a seller app thing that you guys stood up first?

Landon Robinson:

It was something that the seller app stood up. Again, when I got at Etsy, I didn't hear a lot about things like that. Because traditionally speaking on the consumer side, if the away team wanted to build a feature in the Native app, then you had to either get a special team member to do it or you had to get on their roadmap. So, this paradigm is a little bit different from what they see on the buyer consumer side where we actually allow people to come in and build inside the code base. It's not as daunting because of Native code. I mentioned Flutter Dart are very similar to Reactive JavaScript, so it's a natural progression to kind of come in and build, and that's worked out really well for us. It allows us to maybe really feature rich for our sellers where it's just not one team that's providing all the functionality or Flutter team that's providing all the functionality.

David DeRemer:

Wow, I love that idea. The concept of the away team and bringing them into your team. And so they have the opportunity to learn from you guys and your expertise and be safe. Because you can guide them around things, but if you have good documentation onboarding, you can bring someone in and help them ... I mean, I assume you need some leadership commitment and buy in on that to make sure that people, the away team can come and be left alone for the time they need to ship feature. How did you navigate that internally?

Landon Robinson:

Yeah, I think it's a credit too, like I was saying, the collaborativeness of Etsy and us building, everybody's on the same mission of building great tools. So, no matter if it's us or the away team, the leadership from Prada to their engineering leadership, everybody's on the same page building. So, it wasn't a hard stretch to say, "Your team has come up with this great feature, you're going to build it on web and you're going to build it on mobile. So here's what it's going to take." A few weeks, a few sprints, and then with the Etsy seller app a few times with the web. So I think the fact that we think in that nature makes it a little easier for everybody to sort of be on board with how things are set up.

David DeRemer:

Do you ever get away teams from the native team, from the consumer side, or is it mostly web people coming in?

Landon Robinson:

It's mostly web people on the seller side of the marketplace, whether it's shipping features or message features, whatever the case may be.

David DeRemer:

That's cool. You've uncovered something here that I think is pretty interesting. In my experience, a lot of times Flutter teams that are successful get started from mobile engineering backgrounds. Whereas React Native, I think because of into React Native, there's a lot of React web teams that get into Flutter, or just web teams in general. And I think that there's a cognitive thing, there's an experience thing that you kind of have to struggle with next, which is you're actually building for mobile. And mobile has a whole different set of needs and parameters and expectations than web does. And so not only do you have to learn a new language or a new framework, but you also have to learn a new platform you're building for. But what I've seen is people who come from native backgrounds and they get into Flutter, they understand all the nuance of what it takes to build a good mobile app.

But you guys have kind of done both. You said before that your team has largely formed out of native engineers who adapted to Flutter, and now you're bringing in web people, but because they have you as sort of experts to help coach and lead them, they're able to come in and pretty quickly be productive. I think that's just a really cool pattern to follow.

Landon Robinson:

Yeah, it been pretty awesome and rewarding as well. Because a lot of the things that we set up early on, the stretch of the layers, making things easy. I think early on we thought a lot about the developer experience a couple of years into. Because our end goal was to not only speed up development, but also to allow these other teams to come in and build. So that was always sort of top of mind went through and sort of set up the code base and shut up everything else. But yeah, it's pretty awesome to see this a feature rich application that can really help our sellers manage their shops on the go or whatever the case may be.

David DeRemer:

So when a web person from the website of the seller experience comes into your team, that away team comes in, what does their day-to-day look like for the first, let's say it's a month project or two months, what does that day-to-day look like? How do you get them ramped up to speed to do Flutter quickly? Do you have some training you give them? Do they get in there and read some docs or how does that work?

Landon Robinson:

Yeah, I think I mentioned earlier about Codelabs, where we have Codelabs to walk people through how to set up, I think the Codelab builds this feature in the app. And we have all these pretty good documentation to show you how to set up the API request, how do you set up state management. And sort of like the top level, high level things that have to be done pretty much for every feature. So that's sort of part of the onboarding. So there's this ramp up onboarding time, maybe one to two weeks in which they go through. And then somebody from our team is aware of what features being built. There's engineering discussions on best ways to do it.

And then I think we've adjusted along the way as far as how involved we are with the project. So, as we understand more knowledge about what's being built, we can provide way more context, much more support for the away team, because we understand what they're building. So day to day, probably week by week we're being available for questions they may ask from a technical standpoint of why things aren't working the way they think it is? We're there reviewing PRs to make sure they're following best practises. And I think it's just an inner approach of building PRs, cushioning, testing and things like that. So, it's support that we do have to provide. So, we do provide daily support for the away teams, but I think mainly they're just cranking out their features, learning Flutter, having fun.

David DeRemer:

I love it. That's awesome. What is the general structure of your team? I know it's a small team, eight people, but you get these away teams to come in and I assume when they're on the team, they're welcomed and part of the seller team for a bit. Are you guys structured by feature? How do you structure, you're on the platform team kind of side, you said What's the general topography of the Etsy seller team?

Landon Robinson:

Yeah, it is pretty much sort of by feature. So there's a subset of feature that certain teams own, whether it's either web or mobile. And I think it really aligns well with our strategy, allowing just any team that's sort of built in. Because you might have a team that, I don't know, that's specific to inventory, they're going to build it on web and then they're going to build it in mobile. So this allows those teams to do. So we are sort of structured or organised by feature set. And then of course, you mentioned the platform team as well.

David DeRemer:

Nice. And as people come in, again, I'm really interested in this away team concept. I think it's really innovative and cool way to do it, especially in the context of Flutter where I think the onboarding, when you have expert support to help you, the onboarding, if you're, you started this with, if you're a competent strong engineer, you can get up to speed pretty quickly. But how do you as a team ensure quality and consistency across engineers to different people from different parts of the business, different feature verticals, different engineering backgrounds? How do you get them on board and make sure that the quality and consistency of the overall product it remains to your standards?

Landon Robinson:

Yeah, that's something that we have to be very intentional about. And I think we do that, one by a good architecture of the app, that's one, best practises laid out. And I think we have a really good cadence of branching and QA before releases. Like I mentioned earlier, we do support the teams pretty much on a day-to-day basis. So, nothing comes to a surprise when it's time to release these apps, because we've been pretty much involved with every step of the process. And I think that really helps us with the quality and consistency. Because we know exactly what's going into the code base, we know exactly what they should be doing, and then we have a really good strong support for QA. They do really good regression testing before our release cadence happen. Someone on the core seller app team is always understanding the code that goes in. So, there's a lot of checks and balances before that code actually gets into production. That makes us have a lot of confidence in the quality and consistency of what's being done in the app.

David DeRemer:

That's awesome. In long run, now that you've been at this for a while, I mean, when did the first Flutter release get released? Do you know off the top of your head when it was first one to production?

Landon Robinson:

I don't know. I do know that the strategy we wound up doing was we had the old app in the app store and we sort of released the new app, the Flutter app at the same time. So, it probably was a couple of years after we started that we felt like we had enough features to actually put an app out. But we basically ran both apps-

David DeRemer:

Oh, interesting. Gotcha.

Landon Robinson:

... side by side at the same time.

David DeRemer:

Yeah, well, I love those strategies too. There's so many different ways. There's people who stop what they're doing and they kind of switch to all Flutter. There's the kind where you just do add to app and you start adding new features in Flutter and kind of Sam Moore from Betterman describes as the Strangler Fig pattern, which is like a vine that wraps around a tree, until eventually you just eat away the old app and you're just left with the Flutter app. It sounds like you guys did the strategy of maintaining two fully independent apps until you got them to parody and launched. That's a strong strategy too. I think that's really interesting. When you look back, now that you're on this, and when you operate in a regular basis and cadence, are there some tangible real benefits you guys point to in terms of that as a result of your technology solutions. And frankly, your technology team architecture and your engineering philosophies and approaches, what are the tangible benefits within Etsy in terms of how your team is operating?

Landon Robinson:

I think it goes back to what you were saying about we do more with less. I think that's something that we can really look at even from a standpoint of, "Let's look back and see what we've accomplished." And we've able to have a lot of features in a short amount of time. And I also think that because we do use Flutter, there's no compromise in design, because we paint every pixel on the screen. Traditionally speaking, in my experience there's always telling the developer, "Oh, I don't know. We need to do this. It's going to take too long." Or there's always some compromise in design. And I think with Flutter that technology [inaudible 00:26:02] there's not a lot of compromise on [inaudible 00:26:04]. I think that's really a nice benefit to look back on because we chose the technology.

And then I think I mentioned this before, but I think the fact that we allow these away teams to come in and build, we can get ... It's just a feature read application for our sellers, which we can look back and say, we could probably do the same thing without Flutter, but the speed in which we did it, the ease of which we did it a Flutter allowed us to do it.

David DeRemer:

Well, I also think you were pointing out before that maybe this away team concept wouldn't work as well in Native code bases. Because first of all, you still have two, the away team would have to go to two places, iOS an Android. Also, as you mentioned, those languages are a little bit harder to understand from, Dart is similar to some web programming. And that has to impact culture too in terms of how the company culturally works together and sees each other. Because there's this interesting nuance that I think Flutter in particular has seemed to unlock for people. Which is sort of breaking down these associations with a particular language or framework or platform. Like you identify in your career as I'm an iOS engineer, or I'm a Swift engineer, or I'm a React engineer, all these things. And I think people still say, "Flutter, I'm a Flutter engineer."

But when you really get into it, I think people feel like they're just product engineers. They can just work on a lot of different things. And have you started to see some of that cultural shift as you've got these away teams going and the team gets this sort of broader vision of what's possible?

Landon Robinson:

Yeah, absolutely. Because I've noticed that as we talk about features, like I said, very collaborative. But I think people start focusing on the product itself as opposed to being confined by what can we do on Android or what can we do on iOS? It's more of a really product driven mindset that I think I have seen happen over the years. I think teams sort of almost reorganise around product domains as opposed to platform domain. So, it's very specific to just the product that we're making. And I think it just helps us streamline interactions, just making it easier for people to collaborate and discuss new ideas. Because everybody pretty much has the same goal, building this really great tool for our sellers. And I think that culture has this sort of amplified just because we have this [inaudible 00:28:32] platforming initiative.

David DeRemer:

I like that. That's a really ... People tend to think about the buy one get one free thing. Well, I can just write the code once and it runs on iOS and Android. But you've kind hit on this idea of it affects your product decision making. Because when you do have to think about your different platforms and your different end device types that you're hitting, I do think you're right that there's this sort of, almost from the beginning, you're taking this filtering process of like, well, how's that going to work on Android? How's that going to work on iOS? It needs to behave differently. Or there's nuance between those things that are different when you're at that level.

But you're right that when you get to this point where you're just kind of building it the same way, you're really just like, "Well, what's the best way to build it?" Not, How do I fit this into whatever kind of restrictions I'm faced to deal with?" And I think that's maybe a good way to think about the product power that these solutions really help to create by people. Thinking about design, app design in particular. One of the things that I think people get worried about sometimes is how do we kind of keep it unique to iOS and Android? Or how do we ensure that it doesn't just become some lowest common denominator ... Lowest common denominator app design? Turns out that's a hard word to say. And make sure that it feels flashy and special and cool and unique and kind of conforms to the unique nuances of the platforms that you're actually deploying. Have you guys developed any good strategies to make sure that you are still meeting the needs of your users on different platforms, even though you're just building at one time?

Landon Robinson:

I think we have, and I guess I can see that manifests itself. And I think I know from my past experience and something that I feel a lot done and answered I didn't see previously. It was like you prioritise the capability of the feature or the ease of use over simplicity. Because I think I've seen a lot of experiences where we will just dumb down solutions or product solutions because it's easier, it's more, it fits into the time constraints, things like that. But I think we've got a really good job at being able to look at the capabilities of the app, and easy to use rather than just trying to make things simple.

David DeRemer:

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. All right, so given we're here in today's world where everyone's talking about AI, one question I wanted to ask you about too is, AI and usage within Etsy and within your workflow. And in particular how you guys are using it or not using it? Are you using some AI in your development process so far, or where are you guys on that position?

Landon Robinson:

I don't think the team has fully embraced AI like we should. I think some of us are using some of the coding assistant tools like Copilot to help us do some of the mundane tasks. But I definitely think it's something that we can start considering. Because if AI can help us be forced multipliers of ourselves, why wouldn't we? Some things that come to mind for me are like translations or maybe unit tests or things like that could possibly be easy done with AI. But we haven't yet to sort of dive into it. But from Etsy as a whole, I think they're really embracing AI and LLMs some of the problem sets that the buyers' consumer size for LLMs and things like that, but Etsy definitely fully on board. They want us to use it, they want us to see how we can maximise it. So definitely excited going for how we can layer that into the already pretty nice and smooth process we have going. Right.

David DeRemer:

Yeah, no, I think it's tough. Because you got to figure out how to use these things in the context of still doing the job that you're asked. You still have deadlines and you don't want to waste precious time experimenting or playing with things. I think even that transition, that challenge, I don't know about you guys, but there's a lot of engineers by nature I think are ... Well, there's that famous, I forget who it was. Was it Bill Gates or somebody who's like, the best engineers are lazy engineers because they're the ones who want to solve a problem so they don't have to solve it again. Which I think is an interesting insight, and AI can help with that. But also it means that you don't really want to rock the boat if a process is working.

But I think actually the switch to AI for engineers is basically the same exact thing. Going through that transition to using a tool like Flutter. If you're a native iOS or Android engineer, you have this thing, "Well, this is the best way to do it." And that other things feels like it might compromise it somehow. There's this promise of insane developer productivity, but there's this fear of, "Well, it's not going to be as good or something." And so on of the things I say to the team at VGB is, "Actually, the value proposition of AI is the same as Flutter, which is just making our engineers have even more superpowers than they had before." And really accelerating and accentuating the unique skills of the person who's architecting the system, which is really cool. So, it'd be interesting to see as it progresses.

Landon Robinson:

Yeah, totally. Because I think that's the way I sort of envisioned it myself going. Where we're going to get so good at developing to ... We'll have more time to focus on architecture, we'll have more time to focus on better experience. Because we can just crank them out so easily. So I'm excited to see what the next two to five years brings.

David DeRemer:

And in the context of that, adopting new technologies. I think Etsy was an early adopter of Flutter, and you guys and your team there have been pushing along in production, adding a lot of value. What's something you think, when you think back on your experience, what's something you think teams might get wrong when they try to adopt a new technology, when they're really trying to embrace something new within the organisation?

Landon Robinson:

Good question. I think for me, probably, and I'm a technologist, I go after the shining things a lot. But I think you have to be very cognizant of the business solution you're trying to solve. If it doesn't make sense for the business, even though it's the coolest thing out there, as hard as it may be, you can't go that, right? You have to find a businesses, and I've seen some companies that just go after shining things without any business and it never ends well.

David DeRemer:

That's insightful. And actually it tracks with things I've heard from other people who we've talked to, which is, it seems like when these things go well, it is really tightly rooted to a specific business outcome, that what you're doing isn't just for fun. It's not even to make your own life easier or something. It's to really impact the business in a strong way. And when you have strong leadership buy-in, the adoption of that new technology goes well, because aligned on what the outcome could possibly be. Now you're growing your career, you're a more senior person. And so along those lines, enablement and having vision. When you think about leadership and the leadership things maybe you observed on your team that has helped you to be successful, what do you think the most important thing a leader can do for their team is?

Landon Robinson:

I think from my perspective, a really strong leader is to sort of empower and support the team by just fostering this environment of clear communication, trust, recognition. I think that goes a long way with trying to sortify a team. Keeping the morale good is that if you empower team to do what's right or what they think is right and then you support them along the way, I think that's very important for a leader.

David DeRemer:

Awesome. And one final question then for you. If you could go back maybe to when you were just starting out at Etsy or maybe further back earlier in your career and give yourself one piece of advice, what do you think it would be?

Landon Robinson:

I think at this stage of my career, I touched on it a little bit, I would invest more time in understanding the business side of it. I think early on in my career I just wanted to build cool things and try new things. But I think if you couple that energy with understanding how it affects business as you go into engineering leadership, as you move up in your career, I think those things go really well, where you can be that distinguished engineer because you know so much about the business. So, if I had to go back and tell my future self, "Take time to understand business you're in." Find an industry that you really love and really passionate about and go for it that way, but the business with great software is really magical.

David DeRemer:

That is a brilliant insight, I love that. I think, yeah, that's amazing, because you're right. So many people get hung up on, "How does this stuff work? Or how do I learn all the nuances of this API or get super excited about a technology, but what is technology?" Ultimately, we're trying to get outcomes. We're trying to make something, whether it's something that people love or that makes an impact on the business we work for. And connecting the dots of those two things with the right focus, it's more likely to lead to something that you get to keep doing is the things.

Landon Robinson:

Right, exactly.

David DeRemer:

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for sharing all these insights today, I really appreciate your time. Does Etsy have a place where if people are ever interested in careers or jobs or obviously Etsy.com is where to go to find out more about Etsy? Anything you want to plug?

Landon Robinson:

No, I think go to Etsy.com. Go find some gifts for your loved ones, your friends, your family, and yeah.

David DeRemer:

Well, and if you're ever hiring for Flutter engineers, let us know. We'll help shout it out to the community and get some more people heading your way. So, appreciate what you guys are doing, both for the world at large with Etsy and also for the Flutter community, and I appreciate you coming on.

Landon Robinson:

Yeah, awesome. It was a great time, David. Thanks for having us, and yeah.

David DeRemer:

Thank you for joining us on Build to Succeed, a Very Good Ventures podcast. We hope you enjoy exploring the experiences and insights of leaders that have built successful digital products. Please take a moment to leave us a review. And don't forget to subscribe to get our latest episodes. Thanks again, and see you next time.

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