> Edit: Yes, I understand the pricing differences of cloud. So just say "it's cheaper to run our own stuff", don't pretend its due to some desire for "craft".

I think your criticism would make sense if the article was accurate. But I don't think this quote

> Etsy’s insistence on running its own servers rather than using cloud-based services and software offered by companies such as Google and Amazon—an emphasis that was known, under Dickerson, as “code as craft”

is accurate. AFAIK no one at Etsy has said that they run their own servers because it's more authentic, part of their "craft" in a way that using cloud servers could not be, etc.

There's some actual information on their thinking behind running their own servers at https://www.nextplatform.com/2015/04/07/etsy-shows-how-to-be... , which boils down to three points

1) Etsy has been around longer than EC2 2) Etsy does not have a spikey workload that would benefit from scaling up/down 3) Etsy thinks they can run more efficiently on bare metal