Brian Harris
Technical Author

When did you join Red Gate?

April 2007 (it says on the back of my t-shirt)

What was your first ever job?

I worked in the wash-up at BhS cafe every Saturday and in the Summer holidays, scraping half-eaten sausages and fishskins into a musher machine. Eventually I was promoted to the tills. I used to let tramps through without paying (at least, I assume they were tramps; their hands were dirty).

Before you arrived at Red Gate what did you do?

I was a Technical Author at i2.

What does your job involve on a day-to-day basis?

Most of my time is spent looking at Tom's designs and saying things like "That should be a capital letter" or "I think we need a help widget there" or "Are you sure you want to use that shade of blue?" Mostly he ignores me. My job is to check that any words that a user can see in our product are sensible, and also that there is enough useful support information to help them when they're stuck. No two days are quite the same, though.

What do you like about working in technical communications at Red Gate?

What I like most is that no-one is ever watching over me, breathing down my neck, telling me what to do or checking up on what I'm doing. The total autonomy to use my judgement to implement good experiences for our users is incredibly refreshing and what makes Red Gate not only such a great place to work, but also capable of producing such fantastic tools. Trusting people to do good work, rather than micro-managing them, is key to the Red Gate ethos, and we embrace it whole-heartedly as technical authors. We're constantly looking to innovate, and I love that. I also really enjoy working closely with User Experience specialists... two heads are better than one, and it's the only company I know where authors and designers collaborate so much, and so fruitfully.

Complete the following sentence: I know everything there is to know about...

Act 1 of Hamlet.

What's your favourite book?

Great Expectations.

What super power do you wish you had (or have but aren't telling anyone because that's the point of being super)?

I'd quite like the ability to stop people chatting during films at the cinema by glaring at the back of their head. I'd also like to be able to tell when food has gone off (it turns out I'm not very good at this).

Why did you choose Red Gate?

Sounded cool.

What are your favourite Red Gate perks?

Food.

What's your most memorable Red Gate experience so far?

Flying a Tiger Moth is pretty hard to beat. I've loved the drunken punting nights out too.

What's your stance on Marmite?

It should be eradicated from the face of the earth, like a deadly virus (which it basically is). Possession of or dealing in Marmite should result in harshly punitive action.

(I don't like it)

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