‘Nearshoring’ Push Is Fueling Tech Job Demand in Latin America
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Re: ‘Nearshoring’ Push Is Fueling Tech Job Demand in Latin America
#2This will get big pretty soon. It's been a trend for a while, my last few jobs we've had LATAM contractors. No time zone issues like with overseas and much less of a language and cultural barrier, like basically nonexistent compared to India. Average skill of LATAM devs is still low compared to the US, but they will learn and grow as more work moves there.
Re: ‘Nearshoring’ Push Is Fueling Tech Job Demand in Latin America
#3I’ve had two ex-coworkers move to Latin America while working full-time remote. One to Mexico City and one doing digital nomad for a few years in Argentina and Chile.
I don’t work directly with them but see their updates on LinkedIn and they claim, and have sustained GitHub activity at least, that they work exactly the same as when they were in the New York suburbs and Miami suburbs.
I read Eastern Standard Tribe [0] by Cory Doctorow maybe 10 or 20 years ago and have been looking forward to remote work aligned by time zones for quite a while.
Re: ‘Nearshoring’ Push Is Fueling Tech Job Demand in Latin America
#4This will get big pretty soon. It's been a trend for a while, my last few jobs we've had LATAM contractors. No time zone issues like with overseas and much less of a language and cultural barrier, like basically nonexistent compared to India. Average skill of LATAM devs is still low compared to the US, but they will learn and grow as more work moves there.
> Average skill of LATAM devs is still low compared to the US
I'd say it is a sample bias of the developers working as contractors (average devs with good enough English).
Top LATAM talent moves abroad or works as employees at international companies that pay way more than nearshores.
Re: ‘Nearshoring’ Push Is Fueling Tech Job Demand in Latin America
#5This has been happening for quite a while now, I'm in Brazil and most of my career (11 out of 17 years) was built working for companies in the US and eventually Europe. I know many that followed the same path.
One thing that I'm surprised is not happening more, and I'd love to hear your comments about the reasons, is the move of senior engineers from places with high cost of living to countries with much lower cost of living, specially for those that are already remote. Another person commented of such move but considering how much more disposable income one would have I'm very surprised this isn't happening much more often.
I certainly understand how complicated such a change is, specially if you have spouse and children, but the difference in purchasing power and cost of living is so dramatic that a senior eng making 120k USD per year could easily afford a nice house (mortgage), a decent(bilingual/international) education for the children, healthcare for the family (private that wouldn't bankrupt you) and would still have a considerable amount of disposable income for whatever else they think is relevant (I'm using south of Brazil, where I live, as a reference for that).
If you are in such position, have you considered it? If so, what is stopping you right now?
Re: ‘Nearshoring’ Push Is Fueling Tech Job Demand in Latin America
#6This will get big pretty soon. It's been a trend for a while, my last few jobs we've had LATAM contractors. No time zone issues like with overseas and much less of a language and cultural barrier, like basically nonexistent compared to India. Average skill of LATAM devs is still low compared to the US, but they will learn and grow as more work moves there.
Agreed. The skill isn't even an issue - you just hire them for the right roles.
Having the same definition of "no" as Americans is huge. Indians have a really tough time saying something isn't going well, or that we shouldn't do a project, for cultural reasons. That's great! Culture is great.
For work though, something closer to the culture of the outsourcer makes it a lot easier to deal with.
Flights are also so much easier, everyone I know speaks at least SOME Spanish (unlike Hindi/Tamil/Tagalog for the other big destinations) and that helps rough out the edges a LOT.
I'd bet on Mexico, hard, right now. Same with BA and Colombia.
Re: ‘Nearshoring’ Push Is Fueling Tech Job Demand in Latin America
#7I really hope this takes off, it would be a huge deal for my country and me personally.
Re: ‘Nearshoring’ Push Is Fueling Tech Job Demand in Latin America
#8This will get big pretty soon. It's been a trend for a while, my last few jobs we've had LATAM contractors. No time zone issues like with overseas and much less of a language and cultural barrier, like basically nonexistent compared to India. Average skill of LATAM devs is still low compared to the US, but they will learn and grow as more work moves there.
> Average skill of LATAM devs is still low compared to the US I'd say it is a sample bias of the developers working as contractors (average devs with good enough English). Top LATAM talent moves abroad or works as employees at international companies that pay way more than nearshores.
I worked with great LATAM talent, but they weren't contractors, they were at Auth0 (founded by an Argentinian, incidentally).
Re: ‘Nearshoring’ Push Is Fueling Tech Job Demand in Latin America
#9For anyone who has worked with a tech company based in Florida, this has been the norm for 15 years. It started with Buenos Aires/Argentina based devs in early 2000s and then clusters started popping up in Bogota, Mexico City, Santiago, and now in 2nd tier Latam cities too. In mid 2000s there was a big push in universities across LatAm to teach OSS tools. One of my friends had a team of 250 engineers in Guatemala like 10 years ago.
There was a brief period 6-7 years ago when Venezuela was in between dictators that they had hints of a blossoming nearshoring industry. Eventually situation got too dangerous and all those that could left to other countries.
So these teams can be built, and this is not new.
Re: ‘Nearshoring’ Push Is Fueling Tech Job Demand in Latin America
#10This will get big pretty soon. It's been a trend for a while, my last few jobs we've had LATAM contractors. No time zone issues like with overseas and much less of a language and cultural barrier, like basically nonexistent compared to India. Average skill of LATAM devs is still low compared to the US, but they will learn and grow as more work moves there.
At a previous company we had some contractors from Brazil and I was really quite impressed. Super knowledgeable and it was great not having a huge language barrier.