One week at Redfin

It’s now been one week at Redfin. Here’s a quick and short list of what comes to mind:

• It’s scary, intimidating and humbling to start a new job. There is a reason why I don’t take up new sports.
• Free pop/soda
• Free snacks like Cliff Bars
• There’s a fancy coffee machine but I don’t drink coffee
• Free lunch Monday, Wednesday, Friday, every time from a different restaurant. I love this.
• I work in a cube though most people are in offices (doubled though). Being in a cube is fine for me. I’m not a coder so I don’t need peace and quite, instead, being able to over hear everyone’s conversations is important. I did order a pair of headphones though.
• It takes about 15 minutes to bike to work (and then five to eight minutes more to get dressed), 20 minutes to take the bus (#14), 30 minutes to walk
• Things move at a much faster pace here. We ship a new version of the site very often.
• My manager took a short notice vacation and so I’ll be learning a lot being the only product manager around for a week
• The hours can be long. Yesterday was 12+ hours. But everyone here works hard and is passionate
• DIY-culture
• We have very passionate customers. Keep sending us feedback!
• If you’re a friend of mine in Seattle and looking for a house/condo, let me know. I spend a lot of time on our web site and I’m getting bored of looking at Capitol Hill condos.
• I wasn’t able to escape Sharepoint though I really miss Product Studio (Bugzilla isn’t very user friendly)
• At Microsoft it took me months to bring in personal items to decorate my office. Meanwhile, here I’ve brought in a calendar and my Aeron chair
• It’s a small company. I get to work directly with the CTO and CEO. That sure never happened at Microsoft :).
• Most everyone I talk to about my new job has already heard of Redfin