Red Gate, to the untrained eye, looks a lot like other companies. We are departmentalised, we are spread over multiple offices, and we sometimes don’t know what other areas of the company are up to (note to Sara – when do we find out what “activities” we will be taking part in at the Red Gate Summer Day Out this year!?). However, one thing you could never accuse us of is failing to work as a team.
Teamwork can never really be an element of a project that you plan, but I can assure you that Red Gate always manages to successfully pull it off. I think the reason is because we try so hard not to be departmentalised. Making friends at work often sounds like ‘pie-in-the-sky’ ideology, but when you are thrown into a foreign country with nine people you don’t really know, you’d be surprised at how many you are still talking to when you get back again! And I don’t mean that in a negative way either.
I’ve been lucky enough to travel with colleagues to two tradeshows, and both have been great fun. I will never forget my first year at Microsoft TechEd. I was terrified before we left, not to mention slightly concerned about travelling with a group of work colleagues for a week. I could have saved myself a lot of unnecessary stress because Team Red Gate was AWESOME!
If you walk around your office and look at the different groups of people I bet you find yourself thinking ‘Why does every member of that department [insert stereotypical comment here]?’ I do it in our offices all the time: why does our HR and Administration department look like they have just stepped out of a women’s fashion magazine? Why do all our developers wear really huge headphones? I guess some things are just meant to remain a mystery.
But, despite our differences, there is nothing more fun than making new friends. I wouldn’t have found my new Puma handbag if it weren’t for a shopping expedition in Orlando with Cara our Office Administrator. You overlook your own comparatively awful fashion sense and her lack of giant headphones when you find that your new friend from HR turns out to share your love of mojitos and retro handbags! And let’s face it, who knew that our Head of Development, Tom, could trot out so many of Chopin’s piano Nocturnes at the drop of a hat.
But it’s not just our immediate team that we enjoy spending time with. All of the Red Gate employees cite meeting real customers at trade events as a big deal. Over the past twelve months I have met some great people. Those I have kept in touch with most regularly are Jason Follas (SQL Server MVP) and Jeff McWherter of the Greater Lansing .NET User Group. This year I was introduced to Joe Kunk who is the President of Jeff’s user group, and he very kindly sent me this super picture of Red Gate friendship being shared at TechEd Developers in Orlando this year.
The moral of this story is that Red Gate really isn’t like other companies. We honestly do like spending time with each other. Underneath the layers of fashionable attire, our HR and Administration team are great to work with and even better to hang out with after office hours. Most importantly though, when we meet or hear from our customers, we really take notice of what you are saying and what you are getting up to just as much as we do with our fellow Red Gaters. So Joe, I hope that you are still enjoying working with Jeff at A. J. Boggs despite him being your manager during work hours! And Mike (Michael Fors of the Hawaii .NET User Group) I will be in touch to take you up on your offer of a holiday in Hawaii just as soon as I have a week to spare!
Post by Rachel.