The site lead of Amazon.com Inc.'s corporate offices in Pittsburgh has taken on a new director role at another e-commerce company.
Laura Dickey, who oversaw the 200-person office based on Sidney Street near SouthSide Works, is now the director of engineering for seller tools at Etsy Inc., a Brooklyn, New York-based online retailer that specializes in offering a marketplace for artisans and others to sell their wares.
She said she will remain based in Pittsburgh to fulfill this work given Etsy's remote-first workplace strategy.
"I didn't want to leave Pittsburgh, that wasn't part of the plan and no one was going to tempt me away," Dickey said before sharing details about a broader tech trend she thinks has emerged as it relates to hiring remote talent. "Honestly, I think it's a trend that is good for Pittsburgh and you see it more and more in tech in order to find and hire talent wherever they are. I think that's good for people who want to come back to Pittsburgh or stay in Pittsburgh. Obviously, we have a lot of great companies here where people can work but being able to have more companies that aren't headquartered here that people can work for is only for the good."
At the time of her appointment, Dickey was one of the first women in Seattle-based Amazon.com Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) history to serve as a site lead for a corporate office. It was at this office that Dickey also oversaw an effort at Amazon that aims to make searching on the company’s website seamless and as natural as possible despite the language — or in some cases, multiple languages — its users deploy when shopping online.
She said she's looking forward to the new opportunities available to her with the position at Etsy, a company she described as being smart on growth over the pandemic and one that didn't overhire its workforce like some in the tech industry, which has since seen many companies issue layoffs affecting tens of thousands of people across the country in recent months.
"The opportunity is definitely a technical leadership opportunity that would allow me to have, say, a hand in shaping the company's future and where Etsy is not as large as Amazon — I don't think that's a shock to say — but a company at Etsy's stage of development, there's a lot of interesting technical opportunities and so being able to help lead that is really what drew me and certainly the internationalization mission and part of my DNA and my training with that Ph.D. in linguistics," Dickey said. "Being able to bring the artisan shopping experience to more artisans globally and bringing more global artisans to people is pretty exciting."
Dickey said Kim Harrigal has since taken over as the local site lead for the company. The company's Pittsburgh office is the only one where Amazon maintains a dedicated corporate setting in Pennsylvania. Its workers primarily focus on machine linguistics research and development efforts.
In a statement, Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser acknowledged Dickey's departure and thanked her for her efforts.
"We’re grateful to Laura for her contributions and wish her all the best in her future endeavors," Glasser said.
