Bridget Frey, who was Redfin’s chief technology officer when she gave a 2017 interview to CIO Dive, treats diversity and inclusion as a software project. The team lists the features it wants, finds the bugs, records each one in detail, and then decides what to work on first. The method is useful for turning a vague goal into a set of owned tasks. The public record of how it worked at Redfin is limited to company-published material and Frey’s own account from 2015 to 2017, so it shows a way of working, not proof of results.
The analogy in Frey’s words
In the April 10, 2017 CIO Dive interview, Frey described the approach this way:
“We’ve taken an approach, similar to an engineering approach, that inclusivity is just like a software project, where you come up with all the features you want to develop, you find all the bugs, you list them all out in detail, and you prioritize what you’re going to work on.”
The comparison does two things. It makes inclusion something a team can inspect and track, rather than a general commitment. It also accepts a practical constraint: no team can fix everything at once, so choosing is part of the work.
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How can a company start down this path?
The interview describes a sequence that a team of any size can copy. The steps below are a synthesis of Frey’s software analogy and the process she described, not a formal framework Redfin published under a name.
- Define the improvements you want. Write down what a better outcome looks like, such as a hiring pipeline with a wider range of candidates or promotion decisions that people can explain.
- Surface the barriers and failures. These are the “bugs”: specific points where the current process loses people or produces poor decisions.
- Record each item as discrete work. Frey stressed listing every item in detail. A vague entry such as “improve retention” becomes a set of concrete entries that someone can complete.
- Prioritize. Frey noted that a large organization may have more capacity to act, but it still has to choose what to work on.
- Assign responsibility. Redfin’s account says activities were assigned across each area of the employee lifecycle.
- Revisit the list. Treating the work as a backlog implies that items are reopened, reprioritized, or closed as the organization learns, which is how software backlogs are managed.
Two features of the approach stand out in the interview. First, Redfin’s backlog was open to engineers, who were invited to contribute ideas. Second, the company researched what other organizations were doing before choosing its own actions.
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Which parts of the employee lifecycle were covered?
Redfin’s account divided the work into stages rather than treating diversity as a single hiring problem. The areas named are:
- Candidate attraction: how the company reached and drew in applicants.
- Interviews and selection: how candidates were assessed and chosen.
- Promotion: how people advanced once they were inside the company.
- Retention: how the company kept people over the long term.
The public accounts name these areas but do not itemize every activity under each one, so readers should not assume a complete list of Redfin’s actions.
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What did the 2017 prioritization example involve?
Frey said that Redfin’s 2017 D&I plan focused on Black and Latino engineers and gave relatively less priority to women, because the company’s figures for women had risen. That is her stated reason for a prioritization choice made at one point in time. It is a dated example of the method in use. It does not describe Redfin’s current priorities or workforce, and it does not show whether the choice produced the results the company wanted.
How did varied teams affect product decisions?
Redfin’s 2015 Q&A used the company’s Shared Search product to illustrate how people with different perspectives might prompt the team to consider different household use cases. In a 2017 account, Frey said she saw diverse teams as a way to bring a wider range of ideas to product decisions, and Redfin reported that intersectional teams had identified non-inclusive language and unconscious bias in its products.
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These are company-published illustrations. They show how the company described its reasoning. They are not independent measurements, and they do not establish that a particular team composition caused a measurable product or business result.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What does the “almost 30 percent female” figure mean?
Redfin reported in 2017 that almost 30 percent of Frey’s engineering team was female, after the team had grown during her time at the company. It is a historical figure from one company in one year. It is not a current workforce statistic for Redfin or for engineering teams generally.
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Can the approach scale to larger or smaller companies?
The interview itself raises the question of whether the approach could be scaled to a bigger technology company, and Frey’s comments on capacity and prioritization point that way. The method itself does not depend on Redfin’s size, but the sources do not show it being tested at other companies or measured against other approaches. Readers should treat it as a structure for organizing work, not as a benchmark.
How to evaluate a company’s D&I work
If you work for a company, or invest in one, Frey’s framework gives you concrete questions to ask about its diversity and inclusion commitments. These criteria are inferred from her account. They are not a published rating system.
- Does the company list specific commitments, or only general goals?
- Does the list cover the full employee lifecycle, from attracting candidates to retention?
- Is there a stated method for choosing priorities, and who makes those decisions?
- Can employees propose changes or contribute research?
- Does each activity have an assigned owner?
- Are figures dated, attributed to the company, and explained?
What these sources cannot tell you
The public material on Frey’s approach is from 2015 to 2017 and comes mainly from Redfin and from Frey’s interview. It does not establish Frey’s current title, Redfin’s current D&I practices or workforce figures, or the long-term effects of the approach. Treat the method as a documented historical example of how one technology leader organized inclusion work, and check any current claims against a company’s most recent published data.
The method is worth borrowing for its discipline: specific items, visible priorities, named owners, and dates on every figure.
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