Once again, Etsy’s layoffs come as no surprise

Remember when we wrote that Spotify’s latest layoffs make sense? Well, we feel the same about Etsy’s announcement that it would lay off 11% of its workforce.

This is not us being callous with employees affected by these layoffs, or making excuses for what led the NASDAQ-listed marketplace to that point and what could perhaps have been prevented. We are just saying that this isn’t much of a surprise.

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The company’s fourth-quarter guidance was already a tell; it has now updated it further, telling investors to expect its “gross merchandise sales to decline between 1% and 2% during the period from the year-ago quarter and revenue to increase between 2% and 3%,” CNBC reported.

But more than quantitative, Etsy’s challenge is qualitative.