{"id":51635,"date":"2016-07-10T11:36:46","date_gmt":"2016-07-10T18:36:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redfindevelop.wpengine.com\/blog\/?p=51635"},"modified":"2020-10-05T13:11:57","modified_gmt":"2020-10-05T20:11:57","slug":"hello-world-what-happens-when-high-tech-companies-employ-people-from-all-walks-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/hello-world-what-happens-when-high-tech-companies-employ-people-from-all-walks-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Hello World: What Happens When High-Tech Companies Employ People from All Walks of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The New York Times\u2019s Nick Wingfield just published a story on Redfin, about<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/07\/10\/technology\/a-start-up-shies-away-from-the-gig-economy.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\"> how a software company decided to hire a thousand real estate agents<\/a>. The article doesn\u2019t make the case that Redfin will conquer the world. In fact it acknowledges how small our share of the $60-billion market really is, and highlights how employing agents through real estate\u2019s crazy ups and downs led in the early days to layoffs and low valuations.<br \/>\nBut it does explain what makes us different: that as employees, our agents get salaries, health-care benefits and the opportunity to earn stock options, which in turn lets us focus on getting the right sale for the customer, not just the commission. There are still questions of fairness between agents and engineers that come up every month, but even in this entitled age, those questions hopefully begin with the understanding that everyone at Redfin is paid by the sweat of a real estate agent\u2019s brow.<br \/>\nThe larger question is\u00a0how the high-technology industry got\u00a0to this point, where employing the people who do most of the work is a newsworthy approach? I came to Silicon Valley thinking I had found a kinder, gentler capitalism, where startup secretaries became millionaires, and ex-hippies ran Apple and then Google. This was before <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Google_bus_protests\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">angry mobs slashed the tires of private tech shuttles<\/a>, or employees in customer service published <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@taliajane\/an-open-letter-to-my-ceo-fb73df021e7a#.a713o3c9v\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">open letters about low wages<\/a>.<br \/>\nHow we engage the rest of the world has become an urgent issue for technology companies because <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/pulse\/20130408160410-5434591-the-next-50-ideas-for-billion-dollar-software-companies\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">we\u2019ve started to work in that world<\/a>, packing boxes, manufacturing cars, cooking meals, running taxis, diagnosing diseases, and filming movies. The good news is that more companies, like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.joinhonor.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Honor<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/managedbyq.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Managed by Q<\/a>, are bringing Silicon Valley\u2019s openness, energy and hopefully some of its wealth to new groups of employees, beyond software engineers or even real estate agents, to health-care workers and janitors.<br \/>\nNot surprisingly, the companies we can learn from go beyond the ones typically featured in Wired. When I came back to Seattle from San Francisco in 2005, one of the first business people\u00a0I spoke to was Richard Galanti, Costco\u2019s chief financial officer. Walmart was ascendant, its ruthlessness toward employees and suppliers celebrated as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fastcompany.com\/47593\/wal-mart-you-dont-know\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">the only way to survive as a retailer<\/a>. I wondered if all businesses eventually had to be that way, and asked Richard about it.<br \/>\nHe said that Costco had no intention of imitating its competitors. He told me that the reason you feel good when you walk into a Costco is because Costco treats its employees with respect. He pointed out the pins store employees wear showing the year they joined the company. Bigshots don\u2019t get the prime parking spots he said; employees who\u2019ve been there the longest do.<br \/>\nAt a time when everyone thought Costco would lose, Richard told me that Costco over the next decade would win, in the matter-of-fact way most of us say \u201cIt\u2019s raining.\u201d Since that time, Costco\u2019s stock has risen at triple the rate of Walmart\u2019s. And its founder, Jim Sinegal, only owns 1% of the company. At an age when I was finally realizing that everyone can be a maker of the world rather than just a bystander or a pundit, what Richard said\u00a0gave me and the other folks at Redfin the confidence to stand up for what we\u00a0believed in.<br \/>\nIn that same span, another Seattle company, Starbucks, shrugged off cheap coffee from McDonald\u2019s and Dunkin\u2019 Donuts, all while paying for baristas\u2019 health insurance and education. A shoe-store founded here in 1901, Nordstrom, pays more than any other department store but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/nordstroms-business-strategy-is-working-2014-12\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">somehow makes more money too<\/a>. As <a href=\"https:\/\/redfin.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/the-digital-diaspora.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">California\u2019s digital economy spreads to the rest of the U.S.<\/a>, the middle-class values of this old town, and of places like it across the country, can combine with tech to create a new business culture, half Silicon Valley, half something else.<br \/>\nInvestors will have to be patient, as building these companies takes time, in our case ten years to hire and train a thousand agents to cover a thousand U.S. neighborhoods. But the result is better for our customers and our employees, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/pulse\/20131114144120-5434591-this-time-it-was-different-redfin-s-50-million-financing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ultimately for shareholders too<\/a>.<br \/>\nThe traditional brokerage enjoys the flexibility of exclusively independent contractors who can do as they please, but we can set prices and service levels, and roll out technology and training to every employee agent, which we believe is the only way to make buying and selling a home fundamentally better. And making an industry fundamentally better is the only durable way to make money. According to independent surveys of thousands of customers, our customer satisfaction is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.surveymonkey.com\/blog\/2015\/09\/15\/real-estate-trends-changing-industry\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">nearly double that of our traditional counterparts<\/a>.<br \/>\nIt took a long time to get to the size where we could cover even one market well. Many nights in 2009 and 2010, I\u2019d become convinced that Redfin would fail. After my kids went to sleep, I\u2019d retreat to the darkness of our bedroom. My wife would listen at the doorway as I\u2019d say something in a strangled voice about the people who were counting on the company, about our losses.<br \/>\nOne night she finally acknowledged that Redfin, like any business, might fail. But then she said that, even if Redfin never became a money-making thing, it would always be a good thing, because of what it did for our employees and our customers.<br \/>\n\u201cCan you live with that?\u201d she asked. And then: \u201cCould you live with it if it were the other way around, a money-making thing but not a good thing?\u201d<br \/>\nIt has to be both. I turned on the lights again, and got back to work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Redfin real estate agents get salaries, health-care benefits and the opportunities to earn stock options, allowing them to focus on customer satisfaction. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13210,"featured_media":51636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"dashboard":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-51635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-company-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.7 (Yoast SEO v27.7) - 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