Melei’s Impact to Argentina’s Talent Market

Sam. Foreign.

Hi and welcome to another episode of the Nearshore Cafe podcast. I'm Brian Sampson, your host. If you have been following the year plus of Malay in Argentina, this is going to be a really interesting podcast for you. We're going to go deep into the economy, what it means for job seekers, companies, all sorts of stuff. Before I introduce our guest, let me thank our sponsor, Plug Technologies, plugg Tech. Great way to connect talent from all over Latin America to growing US Companies. Without further ado, let me introduce our guest, Matt Steinberg, a senior technical recruiter, lead recruiter out of Latin America. Great to have you, Matt.

Great to be here. Thank you for the invitation, Matt.

We'll ease into the economy questions for those that have never met you. Just give a little sense like how did you get into what you're doing and how long have you been working with people in the States?

Yeah, that's a very good question. I started out working back in the year 2005. There was no near shoring, no outsourcing really for recruiting. I actually was lucky enough to come across a person from the United States who was say a posted here in Argentina trying to initiate a company called Avature of All Things, which is a kind of a famous 88 nowadays. But back then was kind of in a beta testing phase. So we started talking. He was putting together a group of recruiters and sources to support the United States from Buenos Aires. I thought that was actually cool. I was studying, I was finishing off my degree in psychology. I thought this is kind of related, I would be lucky to be there. So we started talking and in the end I was lucky enough to get the job. And he was very good at training people because no one actually knew what recruiting was about. It was kind of the first thing in Argentina recruiting related. So he would just get us all together in the conference room, you know, have us cold, cold candidates and people from different job boards like Monster Career Builder and all those others. And so we actually learned the trait from him. He was the old school with the Rolodex, kind of a recruiter calling people from, you know, calling Carter stuff. So from there on it was just all recruiting. I started doing work as a, as a recruiter within rpo. Then, you know, Neil Shaw started taking form and taking shape here in Argentina. So I was lucky again to be associated and acquainted with people that were actually interested in investing certain fair deal money in expanding the RPO and near shoring business in Argentina. So ever since it's been like 20 years of supporting United States Canada, European countries, EMEA, as a region, APAC. So I was very lucky throughout my career to be exposed to those countries and those cultures.

It's really giving you a nice global perspective. I think the, maybe the elephant in the room with a lot of US companies is will I be able to communicate with them? Will I be able to understand them? Will they understand me? And can you, can you share just more about your personal journey with English and how you got to the fluency level that you have?

Well, that's a very interesting question. I don't know how to answer that honestly because I never actually studied English. I mean, I had English at school, but it wasn't really enough to get by. It was just grammar, you know, the basic stuff. But there was one day that I actually needed a job when I was 18 or something like that, when I approached a call center that was starting business in Argentina. And I went through the interview without speaking a word of English. Rights, yes and no, in all the right orders, I guess, actually got the job. So from there it was just practicing. I think every Argentina, every guy in Latin America who prides himself or herself of actually supporting a business globally or for the United States specifically, has done it at some point in their careers. Just you stand in front of the mirror, you repeat the words or you record yourself, or you sing in English, or you watch the telly without actually using the subtitles. And that gives you appropriate understanding of how people talk. And then you repeat it. It's just repetition. The more you repeat yourself, the better you get, I think. And of course, talent does play a huge part of it. Some people are more gifted than others. I'm not one of them. I actually had friends from the UK and I think I caught the accent. I just picked up the accent at some point and now I can't get rid of it. It's more like a speech impediment than an accent, really. But most people who are really gifted do have that ability of repeating themselves, getting really better at it and accelerating the learning curve so they really get fluent at it.

Matt Share if you don't mind, some of the types of companies and industries you've had a chance to work with from a nearshore perspective.

Wow. Yeah. I started out my career with it, right within it, technology, information and technology. That was all. I mean. But when I started was all about the cloud. 2005, 2010, those first five years was all about the cloud, migrations, implementations, you name it. So I supported managed hosting companies, web hosting solutions companies, managed cloud services, Storage companies. So it was all like Dimension Data, NetApp, Microsoft. Actually I support them for a few years. I worked with Lenovo, I worked with another company in the United States that actually manufactured storage devices, intel, you know, semiconductors companies that were trying to create servers, you know, more advanced at that point. And then, you know, there are always trends and stuff that are changing and the transition from one point to the next in a cloud became advanced computing services which became professional services. And then from there on you had two paths in front of you, hardware or software. You know, it could be everything as a service, could be Internet as a service, platform as a service, networking, security. So I supported companies in networking like Arista Networks, Juniper Networks, Palo Alto Networks, I worked with Barracuda Networks. I also worked with companies on the software. Everything as a service side like Lenovo had a professional services implementation a few years back and I was lucky enough to be involved in that. So I support many companies in it. And then of course financial services associated with it like Bloomberg and you know, all other financial analysis companies that provide an analytics into the financial markets. So they always look for financial analysts and financial people, quantitative analysts, software engineers. So it's been a long list of roles for a long list of companies for the last 20 years.

Do you have any tips for those in Argentina that are maybe starting their recruiting career and any tips for them on how to say best connect with it people in the U.S. yes, Brian.

I think it's all about reading. People don't pay enough attention to this, but it's all about catching up with the newer trends. But it's more about reading than anything else. You know, there's always a lingo, there's always a certain amount, a fair amount of technical words that you don't know, never heard of. You might see them on the job description. If you don't really understand them, if you don't really, you know, if you're not really able to know the depth of it when you speak to someone from it, unless you are an incredibly fast typist, you might have a bit of an obstacle in front of you. So the best way to come across that obstacle is by really learning everything you can about it. I, at some point in my career, or not, became a bit of a developer. I had to learn about it. I was passionate about it, but moreover I had to learn it. I was speaking to at least 25 Java developers per day and I didn't know the first thing about Java. So I thought I can't. And I mean this is My career, I can't let this be. So I had to learn. I took a course, I became a bit of an amateur developer and from there on it was just reading, reading about Ruby on Rails, reading about C. What is Golang, how's that? Translated data analysis. Why Python? When looking for a data engineer. So the best advice you can give to a person getting started in I'd see recruiting or sourcing is learn as much as you know about technology. Don't let it be just a site thing for you. Get deep into it.

I think that's a great advice. You know Matt, I was curious because the tech industry in the US brings people together from all over the world, you know. So maybe this is kind of a silly question, but did most of the engineers that you would have phone screens with, did they have any idea that you were in Latin America?

Well, you know, that's a very interesting question too, Brian, and I don't think it's a silly question at all. When you start, you don't want them to learn what you are. You don't want them to know because you feel you'll be mischarged from being Latin America. There's this misconception about Latin America that we all Latin Americans have. We're just trying to hide it away. And that's mainly the reason why most people try to work on their accents and try to sound more either American or English speaking English, because this is don't want to be recognized as part of another world, so to speak. But the truth is in time you realize that it doesn't matter. Most engineers are really not from the United States originally. And you actually will recognize that you end up speaking better than most people do because you're more articulate, because the job requires you to be. Because you really learn to listen, which is the most important part in communication. So it really doesn't matter. You do tell them, in fact, you're proud of being able to say, I'm calling you from Buenos Aires. How's that for a globalization or globalized work, right? And you tell them and they like it too. It's a good icebreaker. It's a good way into a conversation. It's a good segue into having a property personal rapport developed right away.

I think that's fantastic. That's really interesting. Let's jump into the economy, Matt. So we're about a year or so into Milei maybe let's just kind of start big picture and then we'll get into a lot of the pieces of it. What does that meant, I guess for Argentinians, you know, like this, this last year, how. How have their lives changed? You know, what has that meant for them?

Well, I'll try to answer that question, Brian, without getting too polarized, because that's one thing before we get started with that answer, that people need to understand about Argentina. The politics in Argentina got incredibly polarized over the last 20 years. There's always been a sort of a two party political world in Argentina, like Peronitas versus Radicales, right? So it's just left wing or right wing, or more to the left than to the center or to the right. There's always been like a polarized thing, but in the last 20 years, it really has become a one side or the other kind of a thing. So when Milei got to power, actually won the election, it wasn't only a shock to people, it was an incredible feat. And I'll tell you why, Mile, for most people who don't know who that person was, he's an economist, he's a proper economist. Someone who really started economy in depth, right? So when he became a politician, he was just coming out of the telly, he was a panelist, he would come up on the telly and crit his eyes in a very mad, mental way. Everyone who was in politics at that time, he'll speak of the president or the governor, or the deputies or the senators. He was criticizing the economy in an enormous fashion. So when he became an active candidate, and furthermore, he actually won the election, it was unthinkable, unfathomable. If you look back four years and the guy was on the telegraph, he was yelling like a maniac, and now the guy is the president. But it was welcome, he was welcomed by many people. I would include myself in that because a wave of politicians that we have the last 20 years was more of the same. The economy had to suffer because of it. So when this guy gets to power, it represents a change of the mentality of people who decided to vote for something different for once. So this guy has done not enough yet because he hadn't really had much time to do many things. And let's face it, he actually took an economy that was shredding it to pieces. It was crumbling down, it was all shredded down. And the guy is trying to pick up the pieces, shape it up into something more productive. But with that it came something that maybe most viewers or listeners have heard of, which is the planchaso, which affected the economy incredibly. For all those who don't know, in Argentina, we Had four different values to the American USD American dollars currency. There was a legal one. No one had access to it because there's something called sibo, which is kind of a blockage that the government put. So for people to get dollars and get it out of the country. So you cannot, you couldn't buy anything at that real price. That generated a second price. That was always a parallel market in Argentina for dollars. It used to be black dollar, but they had a very often connotation, so they changed it to blue because it had a better tumblering to it. So blue dollar, the value of the currency was much higher than the real price of the American currency. That generated a huge amount of opportunities for near shoring, for outsourcing. And I was not just me, everyone who was working for the United States earning in American dollars was benefited by it, right? As you all know, when you get paid in American currency, it generates a certain stability in the amount of money you get because of something called inflation and the valuation along with it. So when people started making their wages in American dollars, they could start getting a projection how much they would earn. And if the change of the price of the value, sorry, the value of the currency affected you when you were earning in pesos, that wouldn't happen to you if you were earning in dollars. So you could have a projection, you can have savings. So most people started getting their jobs and starting outsourcing services, sending services to the United States, to Canada, to Europe, to Australia. If you were lucky enough to get that job, you would get incredible experience working with a different culture, but more importantly a stable economy. Since this guy relates to power, things started change. They fixed the value of dollar to 1000 pesos per dollar and the parallel market got stuck stagnant at 1200. What that means is that if you're earning an hourly rate in American dollars, you'll always get the same amount as opposed to when inflation and the valuation affect your wages. So now your projection you have is still the same, you're still stable, it's stabilized. But if you work for the Archie markets, companies start to get wise and they started adjusting your salary every couple of months because of inflation. It's actually a legal thing they have to go through and it's the only way they have to return retained employees and to produce a turnover. So nowadays it is incredible how more beneficial it turned out to be or turns out to be to work for the local market because you have a growth in your salary every two or three months, whereas that doesn't happen when you're lending services to the United States anymore because of the Blanchard. That's something that happened over the last year and a half that is affecting all of us working for the United States.

To me, that seems like it's flipped the economy upside down because there was so much incentive to export services. Now there's this. You're almost penalized for it because you're not going through the adjustments. Matt, from your perspective, what percentage of, I mean, you've worked in the IT industry, I'm sure, like your peer group is probably a little bit different. But from, you know, your best guess are 10% of the, of the population in Argentina, you know, the working population, are they outsourcing, exporting their services? 20, 50%, you know, like, what does this kind of mean overall?

Well, what I can tell you is a huge percent, I think would be closer to 20% exporting because it still means that you will get American dollars. No one believes the economy will sustain or hold. And this is something comes with the history of the country and the economy. People don't believe in pesos, which is of course, a reason why, you know, the valuation occurs. People don't believe in the currency because they've seen it happen many a time before, many times before. So what people do is they still outsource their services, they still lend services to the United States because they believe that earning dollars and keeping that money in your pocket, or virtual wallet, if you prefer, that helps you project, have a projection you'll be safe from whatever happens in your country. So despite the fact that it is more convenient nowadays for this period of time to work for the local market, because you do get these adjustments, people still have this mindset towards outsourcing because that's what we do. We don't believe in the Archie economy.

One thing I'm curious about, Matt, is the rise of brics and alternative reserve currency. Has that impacted anyone in Argentina? How are you and your friends thinking about that?

Well, it's always been difficult to buy yourself a house in Argentina because the prices, despite the fact that by comparison they're not really super high, they're still kind of unaffordable, just beyond reach, beyond the grasp of normal people. So working people cannot project because they can't even earn a salary that will allow the bank to trust them with a loan. Right. There's no such thing as a loan unless you prove yourself earning a certain amount of money, which is, let's face it, less than 5% of the population who could do that. And that has Always been the case. It's not something that's just new. But what has been happening over the last few years is the price of brick has been escalating, skyrocketing actually. And people that would save in brics, because that was the most stable currency that you would just save by building yourself a house or building the flat or buying yourself a property, the price of property has gone down, whereas the price of bricks has gone up. That means is even if you buy, you'll be spending more money than you can ever get back if you sold the place afterwards. So that has created a way of thinking, which is kind of weird. I'll tell you about it if you don't mind. It's kind of interesting. Funny, actually. There's always been a model of business that works in Argentina. It's not something you can study. It's not something that financial analysts will tell you. It's something that just happens. We call it the flash business model. It happened back in the 90s with tennis and padel courts. It happened with something we called the Pari Porsche, which was kind of a grill where people would buy chicken. And then it started happening with cyber coffee places where you would go and use a computer because you didn't have Internet at home. And then from there on, it kept on changing. And every time it changes when something actually hits, when there's one businessman or businesswoman that does it and actually hits it and just hits it big, everyone starts copying that. Now you can't save in brics, you can't save in property. So what people do is they just start initiating businesses. Even though there's not real projection, there's not real figures that will tell you. Even if you crush the numbers again and again and again, nothing tells you you're going to succeed at it. But people do it all the same because they saw someone else do it and they saw someone else hit it big. It's just like going into casino. You just see a guy playing slots and it hits a big. And you just. It just paid up. It just paid. You're not going to get the jackpot again. Chances are you're never going to get it again. People can't play it again. It's the same thing.

I think it's the same phenomenon in the States. We often think about diversifying our investments. I almost feel like it's diversifying your currency in argentina, whether it's BRICs, pesos, dollars, crypto.

Exactly. It's a very good analysis, actually. Yeah, exactly like that. Now there's Something called Plaza Fijo, right? Which is you put the money in your bank and you have to keep it there for a certain period of time. And it pays an incredible margin because of the instability of the currency because it's so unstable. It's so difficult that you can actually know what's going to happen, that the risks outweigh the benefits. So they have to pay an incredible interest and interest rate is going over the top man is about, I can't exactly tell you, but I think it's about 45 or 50% interest in a short period of time.

Matt, for those in the States, we've experienced, in our opinion, high inflation the last couple of years as the price of eggs has doubled. But give some perspective. What does it feel like to live in a hyperinflation country, you know, for the last 10, 20 years? What is that? What does that feel like?

I can tell you a story. I went to this shop because I needed to buy a replacement for one of my sewing. I had a. I had a saw. I wanted to saw something. I had to get a replacement because it's all broken and rusty. So I went to this place and as I get in there's a line and I see the price on the wall, right? The price on the wall was, I don't know, $50, right. Equivalent in pesos, right? It was actually in pesos. I can't remember the figure, but it was. It was not really crazy, but it wasn't cheap either. So I wait in line and it's taking time, it's taking 20 minutes, 25 minutes, 30 minutes. And I asked the guy what's going on? We don't have a price list yet because this keeps on changing. So people are waiting in line to get their service because no one knows how much things are going to cost. So by the time I get to the front and I'm asking for the replacement, it was already $80 in 30, 40 minutes. That's how it feels like there are moments where that happens. There are moments where, you know, the whole thing becomes a bit more stagnant and it don't really feel it that way. There were times when you couldn't get anything that wasn't really here because you couldn't get imports in. So living in a country with this kind of inflation tells you you won't be able to know how much you'll be spending next month in groceries, in services and expenses. So there's really like a day to day kind of mindset, which is why Argentinas are so Good at resolving stuff because we resolve things every day. And I think that goes for every person in Latin America. Whether they have inflation or they have an unstable currency or a job market that's fluctuating. We all become problem solvers. And that's why I believe now most American companies look looking Latin America, because we're great at resolving stuff. We're trustworthy, hard working. Most of us are really devoted to what we do and passionate about it too, I might add. And really good at solving problems, whatever the problem is. We'll find a way. We have a word, for instance in Argentina, which is which is tied up in wire. Because when you can't get the replacement part, just tie up two wires together and make it work somehow. And that we do. Right. I do that every day for that matter. It's a very interesting thing.

That's great, that's great. Thanks for explaining that. Maybe let's flip this to the employer side. So think you're a CEO of a tech startup in the States, you're watching podcasts like this, you want to set up operations in Argentina, get the right talent. What are some things that they should be doing, you know, maybe currency or otherwise to be successful there?

Well, that's an excellent question. The problem with the economy, as you will, we were talking about moments ago is that you can't really know what's going to be headed next. So if you are a business owner trying to start a new shoring business or even starting a business in Argentina, one thing to bear in mind is that people will want to receive everything in written. People want to have, when I mean everything written is the adjustments, any changes to their salary. So everything has to be backed up. It has to be a backup for each contingency. Right. Because you never know what's going to happen. People develop this sort of radar for come at upcoming problems. So when talking to a new employer, people want to know the terms of the employment, how things are going to be changing over time, what if this happened? So you have to have contingency paragraphs in your contract to anticipate each of these problems. In terms of talent, well, English is a huge part of it. So Argentina hasn't got that problem. People know Argentina speak rather well and they don't really have this struggle where they have to go and learn and come back to the market. But they're ready to go plug and play, right? So that won't be a problem. As for talent, Argentine hasn't received much investment, many investments in it like Brazil has. So Supercomputing wise we're just getting started. HPC High performance computing. There are certain languages people don't really yet develop in or they haven't been developing for years. Like you know, you talk about databricks or we talk about qlikview, qlik sense replicate for migrating databases. Huge chunks of it. People haven't been doing it for long because it hasn't been here for long enough. So learn your markets, learn your trade. What really has been taking place in Argentina if you're going to start a business here, learn about what people are doing and what people are getting themselves into and give them time to get better at it. That's what I'd say.

Matt, are you bullish on the economy right now? Like if you know, do you think the country will be in a better place in two years? It's still hard to say. What do you think?

Well, it's always hard to say. I've been here for 41 years and he's always hard to say. I'm positive about it, I'm optimistic about it. I don't believe that things are going to happen magically overnight. There has to be a certain list of things to take place for things to get better. But I am a believer that thanks to outside investments and to the talent of Archer people and I hope that these new breed of politicians have a objective in mind than just getting rich themselves. So that is a good combination of things to be optimistic about. So yes, to answer your question, I am optimistic. I think things are going to get better. Things will definitely get better. It's just need time.

I think what I'm most interested in is among many, many things is importing of, you know, different goods from around the world. I had a beer of a time trying to get hardware into Argentina and I'm curious, is anything changing with that? Do you think that will be easier to move stuff in and out?

We're easing into it, yes. There used to be a major difficulty bringing hardware like you put it, computers, laptops, not so much accessories but big stuff like Apple computers because of what I said before. Things that hit it big start being replicated as business models and people just try to make money out of it. So the government got wise to say no, hold on, you can't bring 40 Apple computers. If you're a business owner that affects you because you've got 40 employees that need an Apple computer and you need that to work. That can kind of, you know, create a dent in your and your business and develop endeavor. But it is Understandable, because people abused it for many years. I don't defend it. I'd love to have the possibility of importing stuff at a lower cost. Things are very expensive to bring from other countries. I'll give you an example. I played piano and I broke a key of a piano because I've got big and heavy hands. I'm just kidding. It just, you know, tore off. So I tried to get a replacement, but no one builds it or manufactures it in Argentina or in America, not even North America, where you would say, well, there's more manufacturing. So I had to go to Europe. The cost of the item was $8. The cost of bringing it over from Sweden was about $78. It's because of the inflation. Because inflation, because of people doing this all the time and because of the customs, you know, the taxation is huge. But Milei has come up with a plan. And, you know, there's not Milei, but the government, the administration has come up with a plan of reducing the cost of at least the first $400 of imports in products. And the health people bring things in, and not just enough to create a business out of that, but to bring things for personal use. So that's easing into it. I think next step would be to be more considerate about how many of those things you can actually bring items. But, you know, for. The timing is getting better.

Well, Matt, this has been an incredible conversation. I can't believe how much I've learned. This is. This is. This is fantastic. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for having me.

Well, this is the Nearshore Cafe podcast sponsored by Plug Technologies, Plugg Tech, and we'll see you next time. Thanks for listening.