😱 How LATAM is Disrupting U.S. RPO 💥 | Nearshore Hiring Tactics 🎙 The Nearshore Cafe Podcast

Welcome to the Nearshore Cafe Podcast, home to the most interesting stories and people doing business in Latin America.

Welcome everyone to another episode of the Nearshore Cafe Podcast. I'm Brian Samson, your host, an entrepreneur who's been working in Latin America for the last 8 years. Before we get into our guest today, I want to give a thanks to our sponsor, Plug Technologies, plugg.tech. Plug's a great way to find technical talent all over Latin America. Speaking of finding talent, if you are interested in recruiting talent, ecosystem, RPO, this podcast is for you. Today we have Max Gurfinkel, someone that I've personally known for years, a recruiting leader for decades across Latin America. Max, so great to have you on the show today.

Thank you, Brian. It's great to be here. Good.

Max, for those that don't know you, you're an Argentine, you're from Argentina. And part of this show is bringing life to these places, especially for our listeners that have never had a chance to travel there. What should people know about Argentina? I know there's a lot. There's a lot there. But when people ask you, they meet you, they find out you're from Argentina, and they're like, oh, what's that like? What should they know?

Yeah. I think right now people's first thing they'll say is, oh, Messi. Messi is the first thing that comes to mind these days in Argentina. It's a pretty vast country with a lot of history and very deep culture. It's the southernmost country in South America, for those who are interested in geography. Um, it's, um, right, um, at the bottom of the continent zone, you know, next to Antarctica. But, uh, in terms of like culture, uh, some things that define us is, I would say, great food, architecture, um, music, and, uh, you know, great nightlife. It's a lot of people who've been to the capital city of Argentina, which is Buenos Aires, compare it to some cities in Europe as well because we've got a lot of European tradition. We had waves of immigrants in mid-century come over to Argentina to settle. You know, running away from the war. And so we have a lot of those traditions as well. So I would say it's like a mix of traditions. You got the native piece of it, the, you know, Native Americans and mixed with European tradition. So you get bits and pieces and everything around here. But I'm from Buenos Aires, so, you know, I come from all of that, and I've inherited a lot of that. My family is Polish, but I also have a Spanish side to it. So we eat a lot of great food here, and it's really fun to come down. People usually, Americans and Europeans who come down to Buenos Aires and all of Argentina, I would say, have a lot of fun. You got a lot of things to do down here. That's what I can say.

Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned Messi, obviously the World Cup. Where were you during the World Cup and how did you celebrate it?

That was nerve-wracking. I was actually in Buenos Aires. We have been looking forward to this for a long, long time. I mean, we have a long tradition of in soccer, and we played a lot of finals and we didn't win for many, many years. So this has been the first final we actually won in like over 20 years. So it was a big deal. Soccer is the main sport down here in Argentina. So obviously we got to a big tradition there. It was nerve-wracking for me. I remember, I think when we won, about, I don't know, 3 or 4 million people went out the street to celebrate. It was crazy. I'm not much of a, you know, I'm not a big fan of being in the crowd, but it was crazy. It was like a big countrywide celebration, you know, it was, it was amazing. Yeah, it was fun.

Yeah, maybe for the pod, we'll get a drone shot of— that was the big avenue, Nueve de Julio, right, that everyone congregated on?

Yeah, for sure. So that was crowded. People just ran to the streets massively, and it was just impossible to get by in cars. You couldn't, you could not get to, um, you know, where the city center is, which is the Obelisco. I'm sure everyone knows the, the, that picture of Buenos Aires. Uh, it was impossible to, to get there, to even get there because of, uh, how many people were there. So actually about, I would say a fifth of the whole country, um, was, uh, went out to, they were trying to count them for some reason. That's the number they came up with. But it was, yeah, it was, it was insane.

Yeah. Yeah. Max, um, I want to get into some of your professional experience for a minute. Um, so, uh, a couple things that the audience knows right away is, wow, your English is just like speaking to somebody in Nebraska or Chicago or LA, um, which I'm sure is has impacted your access to opportunities. Can you first talk about that? Your just how you acquired English and especially US style English, US style English. I should probably say that, right?

Sure. So my— so I learned English in school and then I studied English in in university as well for a few years. So it's obviously not my second language. First language is Spanish, as you know. I've been— I studied it for many, many years. And then that led me to get my first job, which actually was a call center. So I started in sales and call center. It was weird 'cause I made this transition from British accent to American accent 'cause, you know, I learned the British accent first, but Obviously, work— at work, American accent is what you used most frequently. And so, but that was back 16 years ago. And then I transitioned over to recruiting, and I never stopped working with American clients, which is what made me sound as I sound today. It's like everyday practice, and that's what made me get, um, has allowed me to get these opportunities in, um, because of, you know, my, uh, because of the fact that I speak the language, you know.

Can you dive in a little more, um, uh, for those that aren't familiar, just how the, the educational system is maybe set up, um, in Argentina, um, you know, from primary and secondary, high school, college, how English is part of the curriculum. Can you talk more about that?

Yeah, that's a great question. So English was introduced to the curriculum about 30 or 40 years ago. Most schools teach it as a second language, and it's mandatory for the most part today, like by law, even public schools. So it's a little different here. So public schools obviously run by the government. Private schools are— those are the ones where English is typically bilingual. I didn't get to go to a bilingual school, but it was quite intense. So we had, you know, several hours during the week. I then— I also went to private classes. But, but yeah, so far, so it's, it's, it's mandatory now for sure. And it's been around education for a long time. So I would say, you know, probably about 60 to 70 or more percent of the population now of people of, you know, 30+ years speak the language. And a lot of us work for multinational companies as well, which, you know, is why the language has become another tool. To get access to jobs, you know, so.

Yeah, one quote that I heard years ago that really resonated with me, because everyone thinks about technical skills, like if I learn software development or UX design or recruiting, that's going to get me a raise. But I think the quote was actually the biggest way to jump your compensation was get better at English. Can you talk about that with maybe the mentality of Argentines? Because it's, it's also a country that exports a lot of services. It's quite common, as you mentioned, to, to work with the States and like the mindsets, the motivations, the incentives for those to really acquire that American style fluency.

Yeah, for sure. But I think it comes down to the fact that we look up to European European countries a lot. I mean, and because we, we have this European tradition, um, as well, and, and in history is that we always look up to either America or, uh, or Europe. And, you know, we feel a strong connection even with their culture, um, you know, and, um, we, we follow all things pop culture in America, watch you know, movies and series. And, um, yeah. And so, and it's, um, and the language just, the language just comes with it, you know. Um, yeah, yeah, it is, it is true that, uh, being able to, to speak the language opens a lot of doors. Like I said, um, I started my career as in a, in a call center just because I spoke English.

That's all.

So I came with, uh, and then just going into recruiting, uh, which is the I just got lucky. But what got me— what got my foot in the door was the fact that I spoke the language.

Yeah. Starting with your recruiting career, can you talk a little about that journey, like how you broke into it, some of the early positions that you were working on, and whether they were domestic or for international roles?

Yeah. I'm laughing to myself because there was no ramp up. There was no introduction. It was me sitting next to a guy who was doing it before and trying to learn the ropes. My first project ever was drilling engineers and field engineers for this huge oil and gas company called Saudi Aramco with, they got, they got, you know, plants down in Canada. And so I had zero idea of how to even look for that kind of people. So yeah, there was no introduction whatsoever. It was learn on the job. And then we had, I remember, just the first day of work, an introduction to Boolean searches and what the tools that we would continue to use to this day, LinkedIn and so forth. But I, yeah, right after that, I started recruiting for technical positions. And it was all US-based. So software engineers, network engineers, back then, you know, administrators and technologies that no longer exist today. It was all on-prem, on-premise solutions. And cloud computing didn't exist back then. So this was back 15 years ago. AI and IoT was not a thing. All the things that we hear about every single day were not a thing, but it was still technology. And that's what I continue to do. To, to this day.

Yeah. Now, Max, you spent a portion of your career in RPO, recruitment process outsourcing, which is a way that companies accelerate the recruiting. They find sourcers, recruiters, as you mentioned, on-prem, but a lot of RPO is remote. When did you first start to see this RPO world take off a little bit in Latin America and especially Argentina?

So I started in RPO back in 2006, and that was not really a thing back then. It was very early, more of a pilot program, and even in some cases, but a lot of the people who are now in leadership positions started back then at that time. Most of the recruiting was done, but was done either in-house or you know, through agencies, but most of the work was, was mainly local. It was all on-site type work. Uh, so, um, this was more of a pilot, I would say. Um, well, probably after 2010, 2015 is when it started to go big, um, and it actually became a thing, and it was And then it blew up after the— after COVID actually, which is funny because, you know, at the beginning of COVID we would have expected otherwise and companies started to shut down and then they realized, oh, there's actually a world out there and we don't need for people to come to the office. Yeah. And there's life outside of the US border. So, and they started to find a lot of these, you know, companies started to find a lot of these providers. That's when it blew up actually. So COVID did this thing for us, which is opening, you know, borders and doors and making communication easy. I think a lot of the tools that we currently use for communicating also enabled us to have this, you know, real-time communication, which 5 years back, it wasn't even possible to be honest. It was all via email. I remember we did not have a lot of the tools we got today as well for sourcing and recruiting. So it was very hard for us to do what we do today. So yeah, all of that, good things and bad things. Crisis just got us to the point where we're now, where, you know, Argentina and some other countries in Latin America are in the map.

Yeah, that's, that's an interesting, um, commentary. Uh, more than really any immigration policy, COVID opened at least virtual borders.

Yeah, that's right, that's right. Yeah, yeah.

Um, so back to the, the RPO landscape, um, and, you know, we can mention some companies like Peerpoint, you know, has been, been around forever, and, um What did that look like? And I know you said 2015 is when things started to take shape. 2021 was the acceleration. But if you were a great English-speaking recruiter in Argentina in 2015, what were, what were your options back then?

Corporate recruiter. Corporate recruiting has always been there. It's just, I think for some countries, again, things that seem to, um, be negative turn out to be something positive, uh, which is in our case inflation, right? So, um, having an economy like ours where costs go up all the time and the local exchange is not solid. So if there's a lot of inflation, makes it very appealing for people in general to export services and make a living in US dollars. And so, and this goes for not just recruiting, obviously technology is another area where people make a really good living out of by exporting services to um, to the US. So, um, so some things make it favorable. Some things like those make it favorable for people in Latin America to export, uh, services.

Yeah, you'd mentioned, um, uh, the Saudi company, oil and gas, like a lot of traditional industries. It's funny, we give tech a lot of credit for being innovative, but yeah, it was really the kind of this, the normal big industries that were first to market with RPO, international RPO, Latin American recruiters, Argentina recruiters. Um, when did tech really start storming through and this need for technical recruiters in Latin America to work on US roles?

Yeah, that's a little bit different because when I started it was all US for the US. So you were recruited in the US or, well, in that case was Canada, but for Canada, right? What we exported was the recruiting service itself, but we didn't recruit out of Latin America. I think the BPO or exporting services from Latin America to the US and specifically technology engineering, I think it started a little later again in So, uh, around the time where, again, 20— 2015, maybe a little earlier, but towards, you know, uh, second half of, um, you know, the '20s, um, is where it actually started, uh, uh, to, to grow to the point where local companies are having a big challenge in recruiting local, um, local engineers to work to work locally is a lot of these engineers are now, you know, only interested in working with international assignments. So the same change we saw in the same development we saw in recruiting happened in tech as well. So same situation, you know, you got, a vast pool of very well-qualified individuals who also speak the language. And I'm not just talking about Argentina. This goes for many locations in Latin America, you know, Mexico, Brazil, Costa Rica, a lot of these other countries as well. They have a vast pool of candidates that do the same thing. But I would say, you know, 2013, '14, '15, That's when it become even to a point where it's a commodity today and people, that's what they wanna do. There's no other options. You speak English, you know something, you got a skill, you got a technical skill, then you'll work for a US or international company.

Yeah, yeah. If you were to think back to the 2013, 2014, 2015, kind of like that second phase of RPO, Um, was it, was it pretty common? Like, were there a lot of recruiters doing this? I think Korn Ferry and IBM might have already been there. Um, like, how, how big was the market then, and how big was it in 2021 in terms of recruiters in Latin America servicing the US?

Yeah, still, I would say still to that point, um, early those years, um, a lot of recruiters were sort of hesitant to make the jump and they would, they prefer to stay in their corporate job, safe, get an okay salary, but with medical benefits, you know? And so the market wasn't that big back then. And it was weird 'cause people were actually, what was happening back at the time is that big companies such as IBM, like you mentioned, or Microsoft, all the big players, you know, they had a team internally. That's how I started. So I was, I was at IBM and I was at SAP and I was at Microsoft. So all these companies already had a pool, a group of recruiters who would recruit for the US or who would source for the US, but they would do it in-house. Right? And so you were basically doing the same service just within the framework and the structure provided by these large companies. So in your mind, you weren't afraid of losing your job. Well, we later found out that it wasn't as safe as we thought. And, you know, and people started to realize, well, I could do the same thing and do it, you know, maybe in a smaller company but get paid in US dollars, or maybe do it directly with with the client who's already based in the US and get paid in US dollars. And so companies like Peerpoint, like you mentioned, they started to open those spaces where, and allowed people to get into these projects and then it started growing from there. And you know, there were, I think just also a matter of, seniority that recruiters started to gain, which allowed them to be in front of projects and then provide, you know, this kind of stability to projects. So it stopped becoming a pilot program and companies realized, oh, this actually works. And, you know, it's become a case of success. And so more companies, smaller and larger, started to open up and just, and grow from there. And so recruiters just realized, I mean, we could do the same as— I could do the same as I'm doing now but make 4 times as much as I'm making. So, you know, I know, you know, a lot of people got to buy houses, you know, and cars and things and save a lot of money, which wasn't really possible before. Uh, so it really opened a lot of doors, and I think Recruiters in general started to realize, well, I can actually make a living out of this and I don't have to risk anything. Um, yeah, you know, I can make really good money and I don't depend on huge companies' medical, uh, plans or whatever, you know. That just became, uh, did not became, uh, uh, something that you, you wanted to have, uh, you would rather make it much better, um, and, and safe than just depend on this huge corporation's benefits or whatever.

Yeah, yeah. And, um, you know, many, many know Max and I, um, from Bali Staffing. Um, you know, I was the founder, Max was my, my partner there, the VP of recruiting. Um, so Max covered a lot of ground across a lot of different technical clients Can you talk about the structure a little bit, like sourcers versus recruiters and kind of how you thought about leveling, like when someone was ready to make the jump?

Yeah, so what was challenging for us and I think for a lot of these RPOs was building fast and scaling. Yeah, so this was back, you know, between 2015 to 2020 or so. Where the need, the demand for RPO started to grow. And, and at one point we ran out of people to hire from, from the market. And so we started to look into ways to make this business scalable. And so that's how we came up with this system where we had a two-layer team with sourcers who would basically just source people, find people from the internet. And then recruiters who would be the face of the organization, those who would interview candidates and also many times be in front of clients who would speak, you know, the language fluently and, you know, be able to run projects basically. And so that's how we thought about it. So the sourcing, becoming a sourcer was like the first step into into recruiting, as it was for a lot of people in the business, as it was for me back in, you know, 2006. That's how I learned the ropes. You got to be a good sourcer to be a good recruiter. And in my, in my eyes, I think so. And that's how we, that's how we got people to start. A lot of these folks didn't have zero idea of what Boolean search was and how to, how to source for candidates. So, so we created this system where we would ramp them up and get them to learn the tools and take the first steps into recruiting and understand the logic of sourcing. And when we found out that, when we discovered that, you know, they were also had an interest for more and they had this, you know, good interface and good communication skills, then the next step was becoming a recruiter. And a lot of these folks just made a career out of this, which is something that makes me super, super proud, you know?

Um, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll say, Max, that, yeah, I'll say, Max, that, um, the communication level at the beginning, I was, I was as skeptical anybody else. Yeah, our recruiters would be on calls with C-suite as hiring managers, CEOs, CTOs, directors of engineering, and I would attend early on, kind of just like, when do I, when should I step in? When should I step in? Are they going to say something cringeworthy? And it never happened. Yeah, never happened. Like, in many cases, they were better than I was at taking requirements, building relationships, putting hiring managers at ease. And I'm curious if there's any, you know, besides all the recruiting training, if maybe there's anything like inherent about, say, the Argentine culture that makes relationship building and perseverance, you know, just better than most?

Yeah, that's a good question. It's in our DNA, I would say. We're born with this capacity to navigate tough waters and we're resilient and we're not afraid to speak up. I think that comes with our Italian roots of being loud and, you know, Not afraid of saying things, but also there's a lot of smart in that and there's a lot of street smart with that culture. Also, like I said, having that and looking up to the European or American culture as well. Copying accents, copying ways of saying things and copying, trying to mimic the discourse. I think that comes, that has a benefit to it as well. So there's a lot of, I know a lot of our clients were struggling with recruiting partners who were, from Asia, for instance, that, and, um, and they were relieved to hear folks who were like nearshore or outside of, you know, Latin America that they could speak to and communicate without any, any cultural or communication barriers. Um, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's inherent to the fact that we are in, in, in these countries where, you know, you always have to be, um, to find ways to survive and, uh, um, you know, to be creative and, uh, to be, uh, to think outside of the box. Um, so all the things, all those things come with being from, from Latin America, and I think, uh, Argentina specifically.

Yeah. And, uh, going back to your earlier point when the market was almost tapped out, like Anybody who was a recruiter had a job with some RPO servicing the US. And you, along with some others, had a great idea to build a recruiter academy. Can you talk about both the curriculum that you were teaching in addition to maybe how some of the clients shaped that curriculum, like the needs of the clients?

Yeah, yeah, that's a, that's a good question. So the cur— the curriculum, so it was this idea of a training academy for, for recruiters. It was, was a 2-week program. We hired people out of, you know, customer service roles basically, or sales positions, which I think are very relatable to what we do as recruiters. You know, this, this, this part, which is sourcing, you know, finding candidates, but there's also a very important piece of it, which is selling and offering positions to candidates, right? And the interface with the client, which is what we were talking before. And so we decided to go for people with, you know, customer service and sales backgrounds. So the curriculum was more geared towards the, technology, which is what we recruited for most of the time. And so we explained the different components of technology on a very high level, which, which each concept was, to give them an idea of different profiles that they could find. And we were particularly focused in startup companies as well. And so what we also made a lot of focus was for them to be able to differentiate what a startup company was versus a corporate company was, which were, you know, the websites where they could find databases of companies that would match the same like requirements and also where to find candidates. Best recruiting practices, which was like general stuff around all things recruiting. And so we try to cover like the basics of Boolean search, of course, and, you know, the tools that we would use— LinkedIn is the Bible, you know, all those things were in the Career Limbus. But as well, on top of that, we wanted to emphasize and focus on stuff that were relevant to to Bali at the time, which was, you know, startup and technology. And so we added that extra layer, which was successful actually. We had 1 or 2 people come out of that experience who, you know, remained for quite a long time and helped with, with our project. So that was definitely a successful way to add people to, to recruiting, which had worked for me and many other people back in the day. And that's how we— a lot of people started in this business. We just made it a little easier. For folks without the recruiting experience to get a foot in the door.

Yeah. I also wanted to ask you, as you maybe talk to other recruiters that are looking to launch agencies in the US and they listen to this podcast and like, hmm, you know, maybe I could get some leverage or recruiting support out of Latin America. What sort of advice would you give those agency owners in the US if they were thinking about doing that for their best success?

Same as, and this is a like wild comparison, but same as Messi is opening doors in soccer and people realize, oh, there's this guy who's, you know, amazing in soccer. Now soccer is becoming this new thing, you know, this, this all, all this talent in Latin America. The same happens. Across multiple areas of fields. And there's engineering, and there's, you know, and there's recruiting, and there's sales. And there's the same talent or the same capacity that you'll find in a soccer player, you'll find in any other capacity, you'll find in any other profession. Not just in Argentina, of course. We're talking region-wise, and there's, there's this huge potential. There's this vast, uh, talent pool of people who have been, um, maturing as professionals in an international, in international environments who are maybe today still working under a huge corporation or supplying or supporting a huge organization that are just ready. You know, they're behind companies like Accenture and IBM and, you know, these huge service providers who've been in the BPO business for a long, long time who allowed for, um, you know, a lot of people to get the knowledge, but they're, they're doing it behind doors. So, you know, it just takes financing. It just takes someone who's, who's, you know, um, um, who's, who's got the courage to invest, uh, as you did with, with Bali, very successfully. Uh, it just take— it just takes someone who's, who's, who's got, um, enough vision to be able to, uh, to grab that talent. Um, and, um, I think they're— the combination that I've seen typically works is having a, you know, a sales team in, in the U.S. or having a good business network in the US combined with a Latin America workforce. So selling in the US with a, with a group of people, engineers or whatever, you know, recruiting, whatever it is in, in Latin America. So offering, having that initial interface with someone who's US-born and local, but also, but who will enable these companies to, to all this talent that is outside of the US, you know?

Yeah. When people think about nearshoring, usually software engineers come first. Recruiting RPO is close behind it. Um, what else are you seeing, um, that is either already being nearshored and nobody knows about it, or, or could be? You know, what are some other, other roles so people can think big about this?

Yeah, sure. Uh, I would say that over the last couple years, BPO has, has grown a lot, uh, significantly, and both in Central America, but also South America. I would say, you know, all of Latin America. Um, and so it's, um, um, you know, any, any, any jobs, I would say any jobs that could be done from home, right? Um, that would, uh, just require a good level of, of English, uh, good use of tools, and, um, experience that can be, can be like transferable to it, to any location, you know, like, uh, assistance, uh, I don't know, accounting, uh, finance, sales, marketing, all that stuff can be done from, from anywhere in, in, in the world, you know. So, um, uh, there are some companies out there, uh, like BPO companies, it just specialize in one, one particular role. There are some others that are more generic, but I think all— I've seen all those jobs grow and all those companies like BPO companies grow. On, uh, there's this opportunity to leverage, uh, this monetary exchange, um, differences and, um, you know, uh as well as accessing a vast pool of candidates, like I said. So the options are, I would say, are unlimited. Basically, it's just finding the right niche and the right company with the right culture to match them with the talent. But the talent is out there.

Yeah, absolutely. Max, a few fun questions as we start to wind down the show. So obviously English is a strength of yours, but not your first language. Do you have any favorite English sayings or phrases or words that you'd like to share?

Yeah, I have actually tattooed one of them. I don't know if you can see that.

Oh, underdog. Yeah, tell us about that.

Yeah, it's sort of my favorite. It's one of my favorite words. And, you know, it's funny because if you, as you learn the language and you try to translate it, if you do, if you translate it literally, it's not, it doesn't, it doesn't make any sense, right? But when you understand the meaning of it, it becomes very powerful. And I think it does relate very well with what we're saying here is Latin America is always the underdog when it comes to, you know, looking into maybe a location or thinking about, thinking about talent in certain areas, certain specific areas. And so it's been my job. I've taken this very personal, very personally and very seriously to make it to become the underdog and to show to a lot of these companies that, you know, what we, what we do has much, as much value as what can be done from any other region. And we've proven ourselves many, many, many, many times. So yeah, that is, that is one of my favorite words for sure. And it definitely reflects what we're talking about here. Love it.

How about shopping? So someone travels to Argentina for their first time ever, non-food related. We'll get into food in a second. But if they're visiting Argentina, what should they buy? What's something interesting that they might find there that they wouldn't find at home?

Definitely an Argentina football, you know, soccer jersey. I'm not trying to get creative here. You know, you can, you can buy— we have this local beverage that some people know, which is called mate. Mate is just a drink similar to tea. So it's tea leaves like crunch that you drink out of like a cup with a straw, very particular flavor. So some people might to find it interesting because it's very local. I'm trying to get away from food because that's what— like wine, I would say it's like— but for when people come visit, I would say my first recommendation for them is think about what they like. There's so much to do here. It's like, you know, you like nightlife or you like trekking or You like, you know, I don't know, fishing, or you like, um, visiting different places. We got the mountains and we got the sea and we got whatever. Um, people, a lot of people come by leather goods because, yeah, we've got a lot vast agricultural tradition here. Um, that's what they do. But, uh, you know, in terms of activities and things to do down, down in Argentina or Buenos Aires is It's a vast, vast country, so a lot of things to, to be done. And each state, or as we call them provinces, have different traditions and different things to do and things to buy. So it really depends on what people like to, to do. Uh, yeah, many things, many options really.

Speaking of the outside provinces, outside of Buenos Aires, if someone traveled there and they had like 2 extra days, they could visit any other province, which one would you recommend?

I'd either go north or south. Um, south you got the Patagonia, which worldwide known location for great sightseeing. Um, certain times of the year, uh, whales come down here, um, to to make. Um, and so it's, you know, a great, great sightseeing, uh, opportunity. And on the other side of the country, you got the mountains, some of the biggest mountain ranges in, in the entire world. So, uh, and, and, and beautiful, like, lakes surrounded by mountain, uh, mountain ranges and, and forests. It just— it looks like, uh, a fairy tale. And then if you go towards the, the north, you have, um you know, you got forests. I've recently been to the Iguazu Waterfalls, which is one of the 7th world— what's it called?

Wonders of the World, right?

Wonders of the World. Thank you. So, and it was amazing. It was just— it's like a different country, you know, it's close next to the border with Brazil. Surrounded by nature. So those, those are the two places that I would recommend to, to visit outside of Buenos Aires. They're breathtaking.

Good suggestions. And last question, my favorite topic is food. For someone visiting Argentina, and also even an opportunity if you wanted to recommend a restaurant, this, this is a great time to do it.

Yeah, um, I was just recently, uh, looking at the, the lists of best restaurants in the world, and, and Argentina comes in, I think, first in, in Latin America, uh, probably together with, with Mexico. They got amazing food there as well, but, uh, Argentina has some of the best, uh, ones, uh, like top 50 even, uh, which is insane. Steakhouses, obviously, which we call here, we don't call it steak in Argentina, it's called asado, as you may know, which is different cuts of meat cooked on coal, right? So different ways of preparing the meat, very traditional cuts of meat done in certain way. So Um, and, you know, in Buenos Aires, uh, where I live, you got a vast, vast, uh, you know, uh, restaurants and lots of different options. We also have the international food, like I said. Uh, we are great pizza and ice cream, and, you know, you have all this Italian and Spanish tradition as well. So Some people say Argentinian pizza is one of the best in the world as well. Maybe some people would disagree, but that's what people say. So pizza and ice cream are also part of our, you know, like food tradition too. But yeah, I mean, steak, Argentina meat, Argentina wines, first thing you gotta try, dulce de leche. Everyone's blown away by it. And then And then all this, these other foods like pizza and pasta, you know, all the, all the Italian food are something to, to try.

Amazing, Max. This has been a blast. It's great to see you again, my friend. Um, let me just give a thanks to our sponsor once more. That's Plug Technologies, plugg.tech. Great way to find software developers. All over Latin America for US companies. Max, thanks so much for being a guest today.

Was a pleasure.

All right, until next time, we'll see you on the Nearshore Cafe podcast. Take care, everybody.

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