Given our focus on people, we think it’s always nice to share the views of our own team.
One of our most recent recruits, Chris explains why he came to Red River and what it’s like to work here.
What attracted you to working at Red River?
The genuinely agile working methodology and the modern technology stack.
What are the main things you enjoy about working here?
– The wealth of knowledge and experience of the other developers – The relaxed but focused working environment – The Atlantic quantities of tea
What makes the services/products that Red River offer different to other companies?
2 things come immediately to mind: the depth of product knowledge of the project owners means that the build quality is exceptionally high. Also, the openness of the coders and the willingness to share knowledge stands out in comparison to other places I’ve worked.
What do you think are popular misconceptions about working at software companies?
There is possibly an assumption that everyone’s a bit geeky and lacking in a sense of humour. In my experience software developers are some of the funniest people around.
What are you working on at the moment? What does a typical day look like for you?
Right now I’m working on a bit of software that helps people take soil samples to check for environmental pollutants but the kind of applications that we build are very varied. I’ve worked for clients as varied and professional photographers, an oil and gas recruitment agent and a company that installed hi-fi systems on super yachts.
A typical day usually starts with a scrum (a brief 5 minute meeting to plan the day’s work) followed by developing new applications or fixing problems. Usually at some point they’ll be a discussion with colleagues to discuss how to design a new feature. These are great as there’s normally more than one way to solve a problem so we get to share different approaches and learn from each other.
Which industry do you think Red River could excel in and why?
Because the build quality is so high, I think Red River would be great at building machines that make machines, so some kind of automated manufacturing. This kind of thing requires great attention to detail, which Red River is great at.
How would you encourage more women to work in this industry?
I think there aren’t enough prominent female role-models in tech, so we need to shout more about people like Marissa Mayer at Yahoo and Jenni Snyder, who is tech lead at Yelp. She runs a group called Awesome Women In Engineering and is generally very vocal about encouraging women to go into software development. There are more young female gamers now and often gamers become coders, so hopefully this will encourage more women into the industry.
What would be your chosen software development super power and why
The power to instantly and correctly indent computer code would satiate my OCD side. Also, the power to produce really good fresh coffee from my fingertips wouldn’t harm my productivity any.
Describe Red River in 3 words
Powerful Elegant Software
