Welcome

Welcome to Salvador Castillo’s professional website. In this website I share aspects of my work experience, my professional concerns, new learnings and perhaps, also, some plans for the future.

Brief summary of my professional career

If I had to define colloquially how my professional career has been so far in as few words as possible, I would use “adjustment variable”. In the various working groups I have been part of, it has been customary for me to be in charge of the area in which none of the group members had any remarkable knowledge. In this way we preserved the overall efficiency of the group – since the other members worked in what they were specialists in. This has led me, over time, to learn aspects of accounting and finance, marketing and sales, making commercial contracts, or digital design, among other things.

Being comfortable with change may be a consequence of never having pursued the career that corresponds to my academic degree. After obtaining a Master’s degree in Applied Physics, my first job was, still at the dawn of the internet, to make an eCommerce programming in a language I didn’t know using a very new database at that time. Then I worked in mobile telecommunications, and later on in smartphone software when the first iPhone was launched. After a brief stint in Fintech, I am now focused on developing a technological, legal and process solution for the Third Sector, focused in Juvenile Justice. Before each career leap I had no prior knowledge of the area I was going into. For me, studying in the afternoons what I will need to produce during working hours is something I have absolutely normalized and assumed.

A direct consequence is the absence of a career path limited to specialization in a specific business area. On the other hand, I find it very interesting to acquire knowledge and experience in very different sectors and synthesize them to solve and advance the challenges that arise. I think I am reasonably good at “thinking outside the box” because I am not clear about which box I am in, and by my own professional deformation I bring points of view from other sectors to situations that at first seem unrelated. Consulting is a demanding career with long hours, but in return it is difficult to get bored if you are intellectually restless. There is always something new to learn that is applicable to the task at hand.

Doer, Driver, Dreamer… Doer.

Initially I was what is called a “Doer”. My initial assignments were to develop/configure the system or program that occupied me at the time. The requirements were more or less concrete and the time estimation of each task was at most in the range of hours or very few days. The natural evolution led me to become a systems analyst, systems architect -where several systems are already integrated with each other- and the time range was in the range of days/few weeks. The path to Team Leader, Project Leader and Manager involves assuming progressively more management and planning tasks and, therefore, to substantially delegate production tasks to other supervised colleagues, in a subtle transition to the role of “Driver”. The range of time on tasks became weeks/few months. When I was invited to co-found a technology company in the USA, I jumped to the role of “Dreamer”: as Director – Vice President I had to find strategic solutions to situations where there were no references to rely on, as intrinsically corresponds to an innovation startup. The time frame for decisions is years. And there is little margin for error.

Moving up the career ladder is a double-edged sword. Not so much because a promotion implies an increase in responsibility; acquiring new responsibilities has never been a problem, but rather a necessity to keep me focused. The part that I think is less good about career advancement is the decrease in independence to produce actual product tangibles. No doubt that managing 360° to large teams is a complicated task. Presentations to clients/investors are stressful times. Keeping a company operational is a major legal responsibility. Strategic discussions are crucial to a company’s viability. And in doing all that, you get away from production and become a more senior manager. Gradually you generate more bottom-up dependency with the teams -which are the ones that produce the product- that offsets the top-bottom dependency intrinsic to a hierarchical structure. And when a developer, for example, is the only one who knows how to program a fundamental element of the company, or who treasures the knowledge of an architecture, or who owns a crucial interface, then the pressure and demands change sides. And hiring an overlap is often not feasible, or at other times not advisable for the sake of maintaining a good working environment. Having the ability to directly manage such key elements of the company’s infrastructure, definitely not at the same level of detail, but enough to maintain them while a replacement arrives, rebalances the board and avoids conflicts.

Therefore, and learning from lessons in past lives, in recent years I have decided to take the reverse path to the original, so that I have re-acquired direct production capabilities, while maintaining my skills as a strategist, manager, salesperson and supervisor. My goal is to delegate 80% of the work in each area and maintain a direct mid-level overview of production tasks. I have seen prestigious CTOs of multinational companies attending technical project follow-up meetings. It is not micromanagement. It is just cultivating production capacity and maintaining independence of action, while minimizing risks.

Logo / Coat of Arms

Choosing a Coat of Arms based on heraldic tradition as the logo of my professional website is a symbolic and meditated choice. In the Middle Ages, coats of arms served to univocally identify knights, whether they were at court, traveling, or in battle. Thus, because they were always easily identifiable, these knights were subject to constant scrutiny of their actions – and also their omissions – bearing the responsibility of the name of their lineage. In Spain, the oldest form of having a coat of arms is the adoption of one’s own. Every citizen has the right to adopt his own coat of arms.

Like everyone else, at some time in my professional career I have encountered complex situations where conflicting interests, and not always aligned with business, struggled to prevail. Sometimes, in the confusion, it is not possible to discern who is providing the value and who is providing the smokescreen. My goal has always been to act in a clear and traceable manner. I am not perfect and I have made mistakes, but fortunately I can defend my professional career from an ethical point of view. Therefore, I am the first interested in being identified and recognized. Anywhere. And I gladly bear the responsibility for my reputation. Like the knights of the old times. I have something anachronistic in my spirit.

Blazon

According to the Heraldic Glossary of the Kingdom of Spain, the Blazon is “Description of the coat of arms according to the strict rules of Heraldry”. My design is modern and does not strictly conform to such rules, so the blazon of my Coat of Arms is sui generis:

Spanish coat of arms convex parted of sanguine and gules with cabriole and edged in gold. Sword in silver and aquamarine to the right, castle in silver and aquamarine to the sinister, and lynx in silver and aquamarine in point.

Motto: “Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest”.

The type of shield is Spanish with a central bulge symbolizing an advance.

The sanguine enamel (gules – red) symbolizes defending those wronged by lack of justice by making blood flow. The use of red in that tone is not recommended but hold my beer.
The sinople enamel (green) symbolizes to help the poor, the countrymen and the farmers who are oppressed.
The silver or white metal symbolizes to defend the maidens and to protect the orphans.

The golden or yellow metal symbolizes doing good to the poor and defending their homeland.
The aquamarine color (it does not previously exist neither as metal nor as enamel in the heraldic tradition, for what I inaugurate it) symbolizes to defend the individual freedom in front of debased mobs.

The castle or fortress is a reference to the lineage of my family name. The sword, to have the necessary capacity to face injustices. And the lynx, a local animal in Cordoba that refers to being subtle and cunning and not confronting if it is not really necessary.

The motto first appears in Aesop’s fables.

There is another version of my coat of arms with a helmet in chief, but I will not use it yet. In my cosmological vision – quixotic – I have not yet built something that will have a transformational impact on many people’s lives, and only that will be the right time to adopt it.