I actually worked for a firm the staff of which was 99% near-shore contractors. Had some great folks there that I had the pleasure to work with. Can't really say as much great things about the US-based C-level structure, but that's neither here nor there.
‘Nearshoring’ Push Is Fueling Tech Job Demand in Latin America
21–30 of 155 posts
Re: ‘Nearshoring’ Push Is Fueling Tech Job Demand in Latin America
#22Re: ‘Nearshoring’ Push Is Fueling Tech Job Demand in Latin America
#23This 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 muc…
100%! I've worked with a ton of great Indian folks, but the "no" cultural translation is hard.
Just yesterday I was working through an issue, came up with a clear plan that critically involved notifying the customer before making any changes, after they'd been burned by previous uncommunicated changes.
Was in the middle of a busy day, so I didn't think and quickly asked if there were any problems or everyone was onboard with the plan: "Yes."
5 minutes later, as I'm typing an email to the customer, I get pinged: "The changes have been implemented. Kindly confirm with the customer they took effect as desired."
FML. My fault... but really hard to keep yes/no mapping in my head constantly, at all times.
Re: ‘Nearshoring’ Push Is Fueling Tech Job Demand in Latin America
#24For 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 lik…
I'm in South Florida. All big companies here have a big tech presence in LatAm, especially Argentina & Chile. The last company I worked for had maybe 5 developers tops locally, the rest were based in Argentina. Funny enough my old landlord is not technical at all yet runs a near-shoring dev shop, primarily in Argentina....she charges a pittance in pure USD terms compared with local devs but somehow she's managed to m…
How did she connect her devs with her clients?
Re: ‘Nearshoring’ Push Is Fueling Tech Job Demand in Latin America
#25This 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 o…
I stayed in London for three years, then moved back to Italy because with the pandemic I had gone to the office only twice in 18 months, and because my wife and daughter didn't like London a lot; I was able to keep my job as a hands on team leader (Rails+React) with the same company I was working for.
Now I'm looking for a new job, from Italy, and I'm finding that it's much more difficult to do that when you're already remote, compared to when I was in London. Lots of roles I could have applied before specify "fully remote from the UK". So, it's not so obvious that, if you move, you have as many opportunities.
PS if anybody is interested in hiring me, contacts are in my profile :)
Re: ‘Nearshoring’ Push Is Fueling Tech Job Demand in Latin America
#26For 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 lik…
We've bumped into each other. I'm also a Miami dev and part of the 00s brain drain. It's been exciting to see this city change so much. And I've gotten to meet so many amazing developers and engineers.
Re: ‘Nearshoring’ Push Is Fueling Tech Job Demand in Latin America
#27This 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 o…
I stayed in London for three years, then moved back to Italy because with the pandemic I had gone to the office only twice in 18 months, and because my wife and daughter didn't like London a lot; I was able to keep my job as a hands on team leader (Rails+React) with the same company I was working for. Now I'm looking for a new job, from Italy, and I'm finding that it's much more difficult to do that when you're alrea…
Is that a Brexit thing?
Know there's been a lot of shuffle in regulations on the UK side, along with some as-yet-to-be-defined regulations, so I'd hazard it's UK companies hedging their risk by saying "We just don't want to deal with global-remote until we get regulatory clarity."
Re: ‘Nearshoring’ Push Is Fueling Tech Job Demand in Latin America
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 muc…
100%! I've worked with a ton of great Indian folks, but the "no" cultural translation is hard . Just yesterday I was working through an issue, came up with a clear plan that critically involved notifying the customer before making any changes, after they'd been burned by previous uncommunicated changes. Was in the middle of a busy day, so I didn't think and quickly asked if there were any problems or everyone was onb…
I don't understand what your alternative was? How was this your fault?
Re: ‘Nearshoring’ Push Is Fueling Tech Job Demand in Latin America
#29This 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 o…
I live in North America and I have no desire to move back to Brazil. I've toyed with the idea of going there once a year and spend 3 months working remotely but the reality is that, at least in my hometown, the quality of life is much worse except for food. I have a really good time in the first few weeks but then issues like pollution, traffic and general culture of Brazilians starts to get me by week 4. Maybe Brazil's south is different, I've heard good things.
Cost of living where I a, in NA is def higher but I also know that my kids will get a better education overall. In fact, you have to pay a fortune in tuition fees for your kids to have a similar education to public schools here in NA.
I am not sure what is your situation but if you have more than 1 child, things start to get dicey cost-wise. I don't think there is a lot of disposable income to go around, and that's for a relative low cost of living city in Brazil like Recife. I guess if you are childless things would be different and I can see the fun times outweighing the rest. But for me it is a solid "no way".
Re: ‘Nearshoring’ Push Is Fueling Tech Job Demand in Latin America
#30This 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 muc…
Could you explain more what you mean with Americans & Indians having different definitions of "no"?