If Red Gate was available as a book it would be… “The Book of Red Gate”

Monday, April 19, 2010

If Red Gate was available as a book it would be… “The Book of Red Gate”

Business of Software Blog - The Book of Red Gate: how gold was born from mud #10geeksin5weeks

“A few months ago, I was stuck in the meeting from hell. Red Gate’s got a moderately complicated web site. Everybody wants to be able to update it how they like, but we need to keep it consistent. Of course, everybody says, consistency is good but only if it’s my way. At the end of this hour of circular arguments and evidence-free discussion, Richard stroked his chin and said:

“You know, what we need is a Book of Red Gate.”

We all stared at him.

“Huh?” I asked.

“Well, you know. A book. Of Red Gate”, Richard explained.

…

In short, I heard enough to know it was a very stupid idea, and that it shouldn’t be allowed to continue.

…

I read it.

It was work of genius. Crazy, oddball and inspired genius. You can get a flavour of what I mean from a typical page from the book (click on it to see it larger). This is the poster for a six page comic strip about the meeting pig, a silver piggy bank that travels the rooms at Red Gate:

…

The lesson is that smart people do smart things. But you need to give them the freedom to do it. Sometimes the best thing I, as one of the CEOs of Red Gate, can do is to get out the way. To ignore my instincts and just let people try things out they care about. Sometimes it will go wrong, but sometimes you get astonishing works of brilliance.

…”

Here’s a snap of the PDF:

This here book is a bath. So please, go natural, hop in, and gently steam yourself to the texture of dimsum.

With any luck, when you get out twenty minutes later you’ll be covered in bits of Red Gate that are really hard to get off.

Friends, colleagues, future colleagues, enjoy your soak now! In The Book of Red Gate!

…”

LOL. You’ve got to love a book that starts like that.

I thought this is a cool post from a CEO of a respected software company, who acknowledges that he doesn’t know everything (I know, amazing and refreshing from a C Level exec isn’t it? :)

I also thought it interesting that this kind of internal effort was made to share the Zen of Red Gate and recruit people. That says some things about the company, doesn’t?

Click through to download the PDF or request a printed copy…

Reflector (yes that one) now a Redgate Property
Red Gate's SQL Prompt Free (Until September 1st 2006)
Red Gate SQL Dependency Tracker