Chad Dickerson to join Etsy in New York

Chad Dickerson writes about leaving Yahoo! and starting his new job at Etsy running their technology efforts. He’ll be relocating to New York after spending 10 years in the Bay Area.

“To my Bay Area friends and colleagues, you have given me so much in my time here, I can’t thank you enough. The time I spent out in California this past ten years has literally been life-changing. To my New York friends, I look forward to reconnecting.”

It’s great to see talented people getting rewarded for their hard work. Unfortunately, this is a loss for Yahoo! who needs forward-thinking leaders like Chad who can make things happen. Retention must be top of mind at Yahoo! before key institutional knowledge slips out the door and forces people to rethink things that have already been thought through.

There are lots of great reasons to participate in the future of Yahoo! where the Open Strategy stuff is unfolding. The Flickr Era set the stage for a lot of these smart ideas at Yahoo!. I only worry that the pace of release at the company will fail to create the impact that will make those changes matter. It’s not uncommon for great technology to lose due to bad timing.

The timing worked well for Chad and Etsy, though. He’s going to be a huge asset to Etsy at an important stage in its growth. If it wasn’t already, Etsy should be ranked high on everyone’s companies-to-watch leaderboard.