Chris Castle: An extraordinary journey, from Partnerships to Engineering

My manager, on my first day basically said, if as a junior engineer or like someone new to engineering and new to this whole thing, if you mess anything up, it's not your fault, it's our fault for not setting up processes that kind of catch this and coaching you or like just simple processes that aren't picking up that we're about to deploy something that breaks. So that sort of relief and support was really appreciated and from day one that kind of eases you a little bit. - Hi, I'm your host Liam and this is Behind the Journey, a show where we explore the inner workings of Get Your Guide by Talking To Our, incredible leaders about their journeys, ideas and strategies. For those who don't know, we're a market leading company on a mission to connect millions of travelers with unforgettable experiences all over the world. So if you're looking to embark on a new career journey and the thought of revolutionizing the travel experience, sector sounds exciting to you, head over to GetYourGuide.criz. And today I'm joined by Chris Castle. He's one of our software engineers in the guided experiences team. In addition to his strong technical know-how, Chris has a truly fascinating career journey fueled by curiosity and mentorship. So let's get into it, Chris. How are you doing? Welcome to Behind the Journey. - I'm very well, thank you. Thanks for having me. - No, thanks so much for joining. First of all, I want to kick up with a proper introduction, but I want to start with some context on how we met. So I had the pleasure of helping to hire Chris in his first role here, which was four years ago. - Yeah, 21. - I think so, towards the tail end of the pandemic. - Yeah, that's right. So it's been a while that we've known each other. So thanks for coming. And for the benefit of our listeners, maybe just tell us a little bit more about your background. - Yeah, sure. - So taking it all the way back to when I was studying, I started out in finance and accounting. And after three years of doing that at university in the UK, I realized I never wanted to do it again. So did the typical late teenage early 20s thing of going traveling for a little bit, working a couple of local jobs in my hometown. And then after that moved down to London, and was kind of applying for anything that I felt I could be passionate about. So I was looking at industries like films and movies, sports and travel, which is ultimately where I ended up, but was fairly scatter than in my approach. There wasn't any particular intention with it, like plotting a career path or taking on a grad scheme or anything like that. And just happened to get a job at a really cool adventure travel company based out of Brixton in London. That will be with intrepid travel, one of our suppliers here at Get Your Guide, actually. And spent multiple years there in the UK and in Toronto, in Canada. So got offered a transfer there and over this time I was working a bunch of different sales, marketing, partnership roles. And it was actually in those roles that I got to learn about Get Your Guide when I was based in Toronto. One of the accounts that I actually managed for the business was Get Your Guides. So I got to know a few of the team members in the New York office and the San Francisco office. Some people that still here today, actually. And that was my first introduction to What Get Your Guide does as a business and the culture and the values and how you worked with supplier partners. So actually saw it from a different angle than a lot of people have seen it from. And then yeah, over the years of just doing sales and partnerships work in the industry, I reached a point where I didn't feel like I was learning too much and at the same time, the travel tech side of things was exploding and you see all this exciting innovation and product work happening. And I also love the supplier side and the operating side, but wanted to, yeah, kind of immersing myself more in the product and tech world. And at this point, I had like no technical background or skills and started to self-teach just via online courses and YouTube and things like that. So then just some basic HTML CSS and JavaScript. And basically got just good enough to glide an interview with a tech company. So then after working at Intrepid Travel for about five years, the pandemic hit. And after about 18 months of working part-time, hours because there wasn't really much of a demand for operating adventure travel trips around the world. At that time, I started to pursue my next role and knowing get your guide and knowing the people that worked here was a really appealing place to work. So I reached out to a couple of people that still work here today and flowed with a couple of roles to them and they actually pointed me in a different direction into a role with the connectivity team as a connectivity partner business manager, which is kind of a count managing the API integration that we have with supplier partners. It was a half technical, half commercial role. So I felt like it was a good way to have one foot in the world that I knew quite well, like the sales and commercially side of things and then also be able to upskill on the technical side. Yeah, that makes sense. And that was about the time that we met. But initially, you didn't apply for a role in Berlin. I remember you applied for a role in New York and then ended up in Berlin. - Yep. - That's right. - Yeah, at the time I was living on Vancouver Island, this beautiful island off the west coast of Canada, but my visa was tied to a Canadian job and after being there for about four years, I was open to where I would work next. I was applying for things in London, in New York, in San Francisco was kind of open to where the next move would be. And the connectivity role that I was just talking about was based out of the New York office. So I applied there and two or three interviews in. My, at that point that would have been my future manager said, have you ever considered Berlin? And at that point, I definitely had an idea if she was referring to Berlin Germany or like Berlin, Ohio or somewhere. And my girlfriend was like in my peripheral vision. And I think she overheard it. And I'd like wondering why Berlin was coming up in conversation. So yeah, it was a bit of an unplanned move to Berlin, but it worked out for the best in the end. We're very happy here. And I also had a great interviewing experience with yourself. Yeah, I felt very well looked after in a way that I hadn't had before in any other role or company. So that kind of really put down a marker for how you guys like to operate taking care of candidates right from that first interaction through to onboarding and then obviously working here. Nice, great. Thanks for talking us through that. So you've had a very interesting career journey four years at Get Your Guide now from that first role that you talked about in the partnerships team. But then moving to the tech team as a full stack developer. So just maybe tell us a bit about what inspired that move for you. When I started out in the industry, which is now like eight or nine years ago, you can feel a distinct difference to where it's at today. And I think operators are a lot more tech enabled and the offerings customers are like so much more complex and frankly, better. And you can just feel this like momentum shift and the excitement of being able to use technology to create something and put it out into the world. And that was the kind of thing that appealed to me. And still does feel to me is that with a few lines of code, you can push something to production and see it on the site. And then in our case, like millions and millions of people see it and like even like your friends are using the product and family using it. And she's like, oh, yeah, I did that. And then you hope it works and still hopefully it does. Yeah, and that's kind of what attracted me in the first instance. And when I first joined Get Your Guides, as I said, my role was hybrid commercial and technical. So I was having a lot of conversations with internal engineers and external engineers at other companies that we integrate with. And I just became more and more curious about how the technical side works. And it felt like with those tools, you could also have impact if you're able to create new things that customers can use. And it also just satisfied. It's kind of internal curiosity to like know how things work and working out the logic is like quite personally satisfying. which is quite opposite to where what I was doing before in terms of relationship management and a lot of Zoom calls and a lot of soft skill stuff and yeah I think having that blend and sometimes mixing those skills and balancing them out is quite appealing I suppose. So obviously it's a big move right completely different department, different teams, different colleagues so it just been interesting to hear about what has your experience been with the Imposter Syndrome like what support systems have helped you build your confidence moving into a new team as a software engineer? I found myself enjoying the technical side of my role more than the commercial side in the relationship management side and after about six months into my career with Get Your Guide I started to seriously consider doing bootcamp so kind of learning to be hands-on with code and ultimately with the aim of becoming a software engineer and that was daunting for a number of reasons obviously it's a career change which on the face of it is always a big decision I had only been around for six months with Get Your Guide so it felt like it would have been too early to say like I want to do something different now and I guess the thing that sticks out about that time was the level of support I had internally and making that decision I was quite scared to voice this because of the reasons I just mentioned but my manager was super supportive she was like okay how do we make this happen it wasn't even a question of like what it might be in short term for the team if they have to find someone new or anything like that it was this is great super ambitious let's figure out how we can make it happen I learned that there were already a handful of people internally that had done the same sort of career switches so was able to speak to those people as well even outside of Get Your Guide like I'd built up a number of friends acquaintances in the industry and I was able to call some of those up like some that run tech companies some that are like tech adjacent and they are all happy to offer their time and advice and pretty much everyone said yeah just just go for it like what's the worst that could that could happen and I was even able to start writing very simple bits of codes to support the team that I was working on which I think goes to show the level of trust that the business and management place in people with these ambitions that you're able to try new things and take risks and you'll have the support to do that and that's even before you know you've been rubber stamped with any training or you've got a natural role so that opportunity to dabble really spurred me on and encouraged me to go and do a bootcamp for six months which I did part-time so it was like Tuesdays Thursdays in the evenings and then four days on Saturdays it's a quite an intense period when I first moved to Berlin but I loved it it never really felt like work at the time and it was a good way to meet new people around Berlin and yeah that led to junior engineering role great thank you so much and you mentioned obviously as well that you weren't the first person to make a move like that and get your guide but I was just interested to hear you know moving into such a different team what is your experience been with I can post a syndrome like what support systems have helped you build your confidence as a software engineer yeah it's something that I don't want to say struggles with because it has like negative connotations I think it's completely natural to feel uncomfortable in brand new situations where you haven't got a lot of experience to to fall back on it's something that I still deal with today but I think a couple of the things that made me feel really comfortable particularly at the start of my engineering career were that my manager on my first day basically said if as a junior engineer like someone new to engineering and new to this whole thing if you mess anything up it's not your fault it's our fault for not setting up processes that kind of catch this and coaching you or like just simple processes that aren't picking up that we're about to deploy something that breaks yeah so that sort of relief and support was really appreciated from day one that kind of eases you a little bit in that sense and I have always believed in having strong mentors so I've always been quite intentional and kind of selective I guess on who my mentors are so usually lists down a kind of profile of mentor that I'm looking for so it might be that I want to learn XYZ or looking for someone that has done this before or has this certain type of personality or career path and then if I don't know someone like that I'll just ask around yeah so I'm happy to ask my manager or their manager or something like that until you kind of get a good recommendation for someone that is happy to mental you and happy also perhaps with something you can give in return that's been really beneficial in terms of just having someone in your corner someone that you can bounce ideas off someone that you can be completely honest with as well outside of your day to day about different situations in your team or something with a fresh pair of eyes and can share all their experience and fill in some gaps that you naturally don't have until you've been through yeah a bunch of different situations yeah that makes sense and myself I mean I've been here not quite but almost 10 years so I can safely say obviously that you know I feel that we're accomplishing the champions the opportunity to grow your career in many different directions I've seen happen with so many people I did it myself I was a joined originally in care I was a lead for a year and then moved into another role as workforce manager and it was only after two years in that role that I well been thinking about it for a long time I think like you had as well but with a little bit nervous of making the step but then moved from caring into business recruitment and I've been this team now for like just over six and a half years and you recently starred in a video about your journey which is great by the way thank you and listeners you can find it on LinkedIn and on the get your guide you to page so do you feel like you now mentor employees you help them with their career shifts into tech and you just tell us a little bit about how you help your mentees forge their own path yeah and linking back to what we were talking about before around imposter syndrome it still feels quite uncomfortable for me when someone comes to me and says hey can you help me with this all like I saw you saw you did this and I'd like to learn how you how you do that because yeah it still feels quite strange that people are coming to me for advice and I don't feel like qualified at all to be in that position but over time you realize when you're talking to different people that everyone has different skillsets different experiences and naturally with my background in sales and marketing and partnerships I have a lot of soft skills and project management skills and things like that that I can share with people that haven't had that sort of experience and coming to yeah realize that everyone has something different to offer had been really helpful in that as an example I recently had a candidate actually I don't think you were his interviewer but he reached out to me from after applying to a job in Zurich as an associate he reached out to me over LinkedIn and just asked like a few questions said he'd actually read one of the blogs that I did a couple of years back for the employer brand team and yeah that was kind of nice that someone had read it and decided to apply and was able to share a few tips about the interview process isn't it and he actually starts on Friday all right great so like and that was a result as well as seeing the video but you are you ready maybe but that was like a super fun thing to do as well like I'd never done any acting before and it was definitely different to what I my usual day today but a lot of fun and yeah super well organized and good to share my story and my mum was also happy with it oh my last she still has no idea what I do when people ask is she says he works with computers which I think he's close to that you clearly do yeah yeah it's a bit more near to it yeah she does like the friends of family discount too so she understands that part of so does mine yeah that's amazing thanks so much and just be great to hear like you've been in obviously you've transitioned a while on into the new team so how things are going right now any projects that you're working on that you're particularly excited about that you could share with them yeah so a few months ago now we launched a series of new teams within get your guides around growing specific verticals So my team is responsible for guided experiences. So pretty much anything where as a part of the experience you have a guide. So it might be a walking tour around the city, food tours, day trips, that sort of stuff. I'm really honing in on the problems customers face when trying to book one of these tours. You know, what do they want to know about the guide before they book? What do they, how can we make the transportation aspect smoother? Yeah. Things like that. So we're only a few months in. We're still staffing up. So we should have another couple of eyes joining us in a few days. But it's all things considered. It's going great. We are also doing this as I said across four different teams. So there's like four teams staffing up at the minute and all trying to get up to speed on different projects. We have actually a cross team boat party on Thursday. So we've got four teams heading out on the water and hoping for some good weather just as a way to try and bring everyone together, build some culture within our in our group. And yeah, start delivering on some cool projects. I think the one that I'm quite proud of recently is the work we did around multi day tours, which is a type of tour that's close to my heart because I worked on it for multiple years at previous roles and with different suppliers around the world running three day trips, four day trips up to two weeks or even beyond that. So we're able to reshape the experience that customer seeing on the front end and the same for what our suppliers are using to supply the content on the supply side as well. So really proud of our work that we're doing that. Yeah, I can imagine it's great. And I think it's also great as well when you listen to someone from your team, to yourself in this instance, talking about the focus is always around improving customer experience, or whether it's the customer taking the tour or if it's a supply partner involved in it. So thanks for talking us through. Lastly, we always like to finish up with our shared passion, favorite subject, which is travel. So interested to hear what was your most unforgettable travel experience? I guess the first day I landed in Berlin, I did bump into Euliam at the big garden near the office. Yeah, so that one remember that. Yeah, that was a good way to land in Berlin, but outside of that, I think my favorite travel experience ever. I was lucky enough to do some gorilla trekking in Uganda a few years ago. So that's where you spend a day with the local rangers hiking through the forests of Uganda looking for families of gorillas. And you get up super close, so four or five meters away. And it feels very primal to be that close to something as. Yeah, amazing as a family of gorillas. And you see the silverback being his chest and giving out a roar and it kind of makes it his tingle. That can imagine. Yeah, exactly so that one is hard to beat. Sounds amazing. Books with Get Your Guide, I assume. Yeah, of course, of course. Great. Chris, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me today. Really, really appreciate it. No, thanks for having me. It was a lot of fun. Good to hear. And if you want to learn more, you can check out behind the journey on all major streaming platforms for more episodes and insights into how we're working to revolutionize the travel experience industry.