Joe Caraffa, Marketplace Operations manager at Etsy, talks tools at Hack+Startup
In every job there are things that you do over and over and over…and over. These repetitive tasks like pulling reports or deploying code can be way less painful if you have a tool to help you — a simple script to run rather than working through the process each time.
In this Hack+Startup talk, Joe walks through the critical pieces of the build vs buy decision for internal tools and identifies some areas where deploying tools can create amazing leverage.
The full summary is available in the First Round Library but my key takeaways are
Focus on simple solutions to simple problems — humans should shape the task and machines should repeat them as often as necessary
Identify what your team needs and build accordingly
As your company scales, you need to do more with the same resources and tools are often the answer.
Here’s Joe on building tools: