I applied through a recruiter. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at Etsy (New York, NY) in Sep 2025
Interview
- Recruiter Screen
- Tech Screen
- Virtual onsite ( System Design, Technical Deep Dive, and Coding interview)
The prompt for the System Design interview was to design a high level messaging system. Technical Deep Dive was for asking in depth technical questions about a project you have worked on. Make sure you know it inside and out.
After the full loop of interviews the recruiter set up a time for a call just to tell me I was not moving forward. Also she could not provide any real feedback. I would have much preferred she emailed me if she could not offer feedback.
I applied online. I interviewed at Etsy (Brooklyn, NY) in Apr 2025
Interview
The first technical interview is a two parter. You are given an app on Hackerank where the view is basically like vscode. You can code in either Python, PHP, or JS. I was given an API and some HTML code to fix and enhance. Interviewer was kind and engaged.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given an app with a list of 5-6 bugs I need to fix and 5-6 enhancements I could add. You start off with the bugs.
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Etsy in Aug 2023
Interview
So, Etsy... I applied several times before getting an interview. The recruiter interview went great, and we set up a time for the technical screen. The recruiter told me that the interview would be in Python only, so I spent the few days I had before the interview studying Python, which I'd never used before. I get to the interview and the interviewer explains that there's a small web app with a bunch of files and there are issues with the code and my job was to solve them. She says- you can use PHP, JS or Python. So first off I was thinking like wth did I spend all this time on Python for? So I said great I'll do JS, that being my strongest language. She starts hedging and saying ohhhh well I don't really use JS, I really can't help you if we use JS... so now I feel compelled to change my language choice. I have a history with PHP (which is one of the reasons this job was such a good fit for me) so I said I'd do it in PHP but what I didn't realize was how rusty I was at it. Plus, the PHP I'd done was WP based, so it's different. Anyway, I didn't get very far in the debugging process because I was trying to remember how to code in the language I was FORCED to use. Also the HackerRank terminal kept erroring out and she also preferred I use the browser preview panel inside the HackerRank IDE, instead of in another tab, which made it really hard to see everything on my small macbook. My interviewer spent more time trying to figure out how to fix the terminal than she did "helping" me code. So basically she was completely fine allowing me to flounder, as long as SHE was comfortable with the language I was floundering in. So I emailed the recruiter after the interview and explained what had happened and requested a new interview. I at least expected a response from him but no, he ignored my email. All I got was a form letter rejection 5 days later saying that I was such a strong candidate blah blah blah, it was such a hard decision blah blah blah. Yeah, Etsy whatever. How you earn such high ratings is beyond me. I will certainly stay away from them, despite the form letter saying that Etsy would be a great destination for me in the future. No thanks.