Every afternoon at 2:00, Redfin’s engineers and product managers gather for a set of push-ups, sit-ups, planks, crunches and burpees.
Last Thursday, our president of real estate operations, Scott Nagel, looked in on the action and our general counsel, Kate Ross, snapped his picture:
Scott’s bemused expression is one I’ve seen many times before: I like to argue with Scott, and Scott likes to win those arguments by saying hardly anything at all.
What I love about the photo is that even though Scott leans against the far edge of the frame, he’s its center of gravity. The folks eating Costco snacks in the background are studying the exercisers, but Scott isn’t.
And what I love most of all is that the picture captures the essence of Redfin, in all of its absurdity and hopefulness, as a company of goofy software engineers, earnest about self-improvement, and worldly real estate agents, wondering what all this has to do with helping someone sell her home.
In the broadest view of the office, the agents and the engineers are as far apart as possible. And indeed, the knowingness in Scott’s expression makes this distance seem great. But when you look more closely, the fondness makes it small.
The project of any company over time is to create a story of how different people find a common cause. The differences at Redfin are greater than usual, but so is the cause. And a story that is hard to put into words fits easily into this picture.
To propose a caption for this photo, just post a comment below!
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