REVOLUTIONIZING TECH TEAMS WITH LATIN AMERICAN EXPERTISE

Welcome everyone to another episode of the Nearshore Cafe podcast, where we talk about all things nearshore. I'm your host, Brian Samson. Before we get into it, I want to thank our sponsor, Plug Technologies, plugg.tech. Plug is a great way to find talent all over Latin America for growing US companies. If you're interested in AI and how it all connects to nearshore and the way Brazil is right in the spotlight, this is going to be a great show for you. Let me introduce Tony Teixeira, a nearshore CEO, and he's an expert on all these things we talked about. Welcome, Tony.

Hey, thanks for having me, Brian.

Well, let me, uh, just get into it. You know, we're in the age of AI, it's coming in hot. Uh, yeah, tell, tell us more about, um, like what you're seeing, you know, some of the trends, uh, types of clients you're working with. Like, how is— like, what is— what does the world look like in your eyes?

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, probably the last 2 years I've been primarily focused on working with a lot of, uh early stage startups. And, you know, we both know that, hey, if you're starting something in tech in 2024, it's probably going to employ some sort of element of AI. And so, you know, been working a lot with a lot of machine learning engineers, language learning model engineers, because, you know, the reality is, is that there's only so many of them to go around, especially in the US. And, you know, what we're seeing is that a lot of the big, you know, FAANG companies, the, the Metas, the Alphabets of the world, they're paying big bucks and just to keep them on salary. And so, you know, you have all these emerging startups who want to add, you know, elements of AI. And so what's been really helpful for them is thinking globally, um, and it does a couple of things. It's really kind of opened up their talent pool because now they're not restricted to, you know, around the corner, and they have access to higher quality talent. And then, you know, and frankly, they're not having to pay the quarter million dollar salaries annually plus benefits plus taxes and all the other fun little things that people don't think about. So, you know, places like Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, they become the best bang for your buck.

Wow. Uh, you know, as you were talking about the compensation we're seeing in the US, um, sounds like quarter million dollars a year is maybe the, the basement, and it just goes up from there. What are, what are like some of the big dogs paying?

Yeah, I mean, I've seen everywhere from, you know, $250,000 up to $350,000 for some of the, you know, real, you know, pioneer Trailblazers, and then, you know, you're adding on equity and additional benefits as well. So I mean, it gets pretty expensive. And what's funny is I have a few friends who work in that space and a lot of them don't actually have too much to do, but it's really more about keeping them on salary and on payroll so they don't go to the competition. Right. So when I think about an early stage startup and I only have so much runway to go around, right, my capital is limited. I know I can't afford those. And so for the money that I might set aside for somebody in the United States, I can get two really amazing developers down in Latin America and get twice as much done, you know, in just as fast. So, you know, the way I look at it is when it comes to like implementing AI, you have to be like really fast to market because again, you know, We're training algorithms, we're building them. And that's if we're not just kind of like piggybacking off of like, you know, ChatGPT, which a lot of companies are doing right now. If you truly want to build like, you know, a true algorithm, it takes time. And so, you know, speed is the name of the game right now.

Yeah. Yeah. I want to dive into the talent of Latin America and Brazil. But before I do that, This was election week and there's an impact to AI, right? We're not going to talk politics beyond how it impacts AI, but the Trump administration, it sounds like less regulation around the AI industry. So with a goal to make the US more competitive with AI, you know, make sure the US produces the leading companies. And the second is focus on energy. And you're obviously in Texas, a huge energy state. AI eats up a lot of energy. So if they're— what was it, Microsoft that bought Three Mile Island? And, you know, like, so maybe I'll stop there and just how you— how the macro government economic decisions are kind of fueling this AI wave?

Yeah, I mean, there's probably gonna be a lot of nuance to it. I mean, I don't think we're gonna see a complete reversal of, you know, what the previous administration put in place, but I think, you know, you'll see different types of regulations. I know, you know, new incoming administration, you know, Elon Musk is a very, very big advocate of it. So I think like he'll have a pretty strong, you know, kind of perspective on how things get shaped. And he's very pro, you know, sort of like free market when it comes to AI. So, you know, I think the short answer is that I think it's going to open up some regulation. And frankly, then if that's the case, then you got to strike while the iron's hot. But I do think, you know, we'll see some calibration as time goes on. Because we're still learning about it, right? And we're only like really like 2, 3 years into its heyday and we're, we're still figuring things out and, you know, we don't know how restrictive or how open it's going to get yet.

Yeah. As far as the types of engineers, you mentioned machine learning. I'm seeing these new roles like prompt engineers. Do you think it's a case of like a great full-stack developer can quickly learn this stuff or should they have an ML background or any thoughts on that?

Yeah, no, that's a great question. Where I've actually seen a real big progression is traditional data engineers have really kind of seen that kind of transition into more like language learning model, machine learning. But absolutely, I think anybody, if you've got a solid Python background, you know, for example, I think it's a, you know, it's a great opportunity to continue to like upskill and, you know, learn your game. The thing of it is, is like when I think about full-stack engineers, it really does depend on kind of what your core discipline is. If you primarily, you know, feel more comfortable on the backend and feel like, hey, I'm great at building architecture and, you things like that, then I would say go for it. If you feel like, hey, I'm really more of a front end, I love designing things on the front end, user experience, you know, that's more of that like kind of artisan I always like to say. You have to really ask yourself, you know, would I be happy moving to machine learning engineering? Because there's a lot of, there's a lot of demand for it. but it's not always meaning it's going to be something that you're going to enjoy as a developer. So I think it really comes down to like, do you like to build things? Do you like to design things? And then kind of go from there.

I also wanted to get your take, Tony. I think you're more technical than most when it comes to those in the recruiting industry. And you know how AI has changed the world for the life of a developer, you know, where before, you know, they're Producing lots of code, maybe now it's more editing, QA. I don't, you know, what do you think?

Yeah, I mean, it's changed the life of a developer, but it's also really changed the life of a hiring manager and a founder because what, when I'm talking to a lot of people who are interviewing potential developers, some of the biggest concerns that they have is the potential of developers, whether they're in San Francisco or Brazil or the Philippines, leveraging AI to produce their code and just kind of the level of protection there, right? And so it's something that I think is going to continue to evolve where I think that AI is going to certainly speed up the time to ship. I think it's going to call for a greater emphasis on the things like quality assurance, more user acceptance testing, things like that, because I think the code can get shipped pretty quick, but if it doesn't have like a human element working through it, I think there are numerous failure points. So, you know, what I would tell anybody who is considering hiring is that the development process itself is, it's just one component of it all. You really have to think holistically about, okay, you know, am I really QAing this pretty hard to make sure that it's working and I'm validating that sort of stuff? The other thing we're seeing too is just like the emergence of more tools that are testing code against AI to make sure, you know, who actually produced this, right? Because, you know, there's some thought of if AI is producing this code, Is it still like my intellectual property? Right. So I think it just kind of creates some ambiguity there that people just, we don't know the answer to that yet. So I think there's a lot to be figured out.

Yeah, that's a great point. I think it also ties in with the new administration. JD Vance has talked a lot about open sourcing and, you know, creating more like open collaboration, you know, with this code. But then again, like, who owns it, right?

Exactly right. And I do see a lot of that where people do use a lot of like open source shared, you know, development. And right. And then it just— there's that potential exposure of, you know, like IP theft. Right. And so, you know, I think the big concern and I do think it's not necessarily warranted or unwarranted is I get asked a lot of time about IP protection for somebody that's international, right? And usually it's covered by, you know, good governance of NDAs, contracts, whatnot, that really it shouldn't make it any more risky than if somebody was working remotely across the state or across the United States, right? So I think when, you know, and tell me what your thoughts are, Brian, is like one of the biggest questions I concerns I get when it comes to using talent from like Latin America is just kind of the protection of like the data leaks and integrity of that. Just kind of having those conversations and educating that it's no more dangerous than employing somebody who's working from home.

Yeah. You know, I think there's this there's almost like three worlds, you know, if somebody's based in the States, you trust them before you verify in a lot of cases, right? If someone is, say, in China, Russia, Iran, you know, countries that are on a kind of a watch list, so to speak, it's verify, verify, verify, and then maybe trust. But I think Latin America still is a little bit of like an unknown. For a lot of companies. And, you know, could you expand on that a little bit more, like how companies should think about similarities and differences with Latin America? And, you know, what does that mean for IP confidentiality?

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I think one of the first things I discovered when working out of Latin America, and my primary hub is out of Brazil, you know, I do work out of some other countries as well, but Brazil's been sort of like my go-to, is that there's a lot of cultural similarities and just the, you know, the way development is approached, right? There's a lot of agile processes, there's a lot of collaboration. And, you know, when I talk to a lot of potential founders or, you know, directors of IT engineering, you know, they always say, well, I'm not looking for contractors. And I try to go into conversation of, well, they're only contractors if you treat them as such. Right. Right. It's really just a matter of classification on a piece of paper. If you treat them like your core development team, they just happen to be, you know, in Latin America, there's no reason why they can't contribute no differently than somebody else who's distributed across California or Florida, it's a matter of integration and bringing that in. And so, you know, one of the questions I always ask people who are looking to hire on for Latin America is, for you to be successful, how do you plan to really like integrate them into the team so that way you're feeling like you're getting your, your maximum contributions? And it's not meaning like maximum like output of work, but like maximum contribution of a person within a team, right? Because you talk— like, I've, I've talked to so many amazing people down there, and they just, like, they have PhDs or they're former CTOs or CEOs, and they've built brilliant things, and they want to contribute to, like, the next great thing in the States. But if you treat them like they're an hourly worker who is just clicking through tickets, you're probably missing out on a lot of great opportunities to, like, grow your team and your product really, really fast. And it's been really cool. I've been doing this now for about 4 years and I've got some developers down in Brazil who are with the same company now going on close to 4 years. And they just, they get bonuses, they're included in all of the sprints and everything like that. So it's just, it really is a matter of classification and how you decide you want to treat them.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. Um, reminded me of something that has been top of mind for us because I think in, you know, when we're talking about nearshoring, um, time zone and cost are always like a big, a big thing. But, um, uh, but finding somebody that can hit your hiring bar is really what managers want, right? What, what directors and VPs of engineering want. Like, I'm All right, that's nice. Like, are they good? Can they hit my hiring bar? And if you could talk a little more about that.

Yeah, I think the way I approach hiring or placing talent in the companies is I look at it from a business perspective first and a technical perspective second, right? You know, like the way I look at hiring is we're all trying to accomplish goals or objectives, and hiring is sort of a byproduct that gets us from point A to point B. And so I really want to understand, like, are we building a product? Are we factoring legacy code? Are we— what are we doing here? And what's the impact that's going to have on the business? So I can really understand that, because then what I'll do is, as I talk through my network, I really want to get a feel for the real right personality and mindset and be able to match them up because it, you know, when we're talking about like checkboxes, I need 8 years of React, 5 years of like those sort of our checkboxes and they'll validate through whatever processes are, but it's really more important to sort of hit that kind of soft skill mindset because again, those are going to be the contributors are going to help you hit the goal. And so especially when you're talking about early stage startups, oftentimes they need people who are nimble, can wear multiple different hats, can jump on something, shift gears at a moment's notice. So we want to make sure when we're talking to people and talent that that's something that they have experience, that they enjoy doing, that it's a right fit. They tell me, no, I like working at big companies and I like just doing my thing, going, hey, you might be an awesome developer, but it doesn't mean it's necessarily the right fit. And then the other thing as well is like, you know, not every developer is set the same. I always kind of put them into two buckets. You have your architects who love to get up there with your, you know, your CTOs and founders and design things and get really nitty-gritty. And then you have what I call the workhorses, which are just like, hey, give me all the tickets, what do you need me to do, what are these sprints, and I will like bang them out for you, right? Both are great, it just depends on what you need. And so we really try to identify like what's the right mindset and fit, and that's why we have so much more longevity and role, because it's, it's not just, you know, the technical component.

Yeah, that's a great point. Well, let's talk more about Brazil. Uh, you know, for most Americans, uh, 25% of us have passports. Uh, uh, Brazil, what they— what most of them probably know is it's a huge country and they speak Portuguese, um, but anything else is icing on the cake. So tell us, what, what should people know about Brazil? And then maybe you could dive into some of the, the major cities, talent pockets, things like that.

Yeah, yeah, I can tell you right away about Brazil. It's just very, very warm and accommodating people, right? I mean, it's like I've made so many friends that I've, you know, I've never met face to face, you know, down in Brazil, just because they just— they're so engaging and accommodating, their personalities, you know. I've helped them with their resumes. They've helped me kind of work through some technical ideas that I'm building. And it was just it's a spirit of collaboration and success for each other. You know, what really resonates for me is, you know, again, and this is regardless of country, but just like I felt this in Brazil in particular, you know, their moms, their dads, they have bills, they have kids, and they just dream of wanting better opportunities in their career and growth. And so they work really hard. They upskill, you know, not just their technical, you know, prowess, but like their, you know, their soft skills, their English speaking abilities, and just really to provide a lot of value. And it's just been, they're very humble, right? Everyone's just like ultra, ultra humble. And so, and the infrastructure down there is phenomenal, right? So, you know, you're talking like, you know, Florianópolis is just kind of like the Silicon Valley of, you know, Brazil. And then you have your, you know, your major, you have your Rios and São Paos, and then, you know, those are probably like your 3, you know, Santa Catarina major concentrated hubs. But, you know, the infrastructure is really, really strong. The universities and just like the technical training that they go through is just like top tier. And so, you know, it's just very, very humbling for me every time I talk to somebody and just how amazing their skill set is. And it just makes me want to like help them find a great opportunity that makes them happy.

As you talk about Florianópolis as the Silicon Valley, um, does that mean there's a lot of tech startups, a lot of domestic companies operating out there?

Yeah, yeah. So there's like a lot of, um, yeah, a lot of agencies, tech, Brazilian tech startups are, are right down there. So it's just like an emerging young, vibrant hub away from sort of the big metropolises of like São Paulo and Rio. And so, yeah, it's just a very, very up-and-coming tech. I always say sort of like the Austin, Silicon, like it's like the next hub, Austin, Salt Lake City, sort of emerging hub down in Brazil. Yeah.

So if you're a new CS grad, out of Florianópolis or São Paulo, Rio, what is, what does that path kind of look like? Are you joining a Brazilian tech startup? Are you going right to working with the US, maybe like a domestic big oil company? You know, what are some of their options?

Yeah, I would say probably your best bet is to really kind of cut your teeth and gain some experience, you know, working locally, right? So a lot of amazing Brazilian startups. FinTech is really huge down there. Getting that under your belt. And then what I would say is like if you have aspirations of working in a North American company sooner rather than later, really start like upskilling, you know, your English, your English game. And again, you don't need to speak flawless English, but just being able to communicate strongly your your thoughts and your ideas is going to be really, really critical. What I would also say is just making sure that, you know, you continue to network as well, right? So I would totally, you know, if you're dreaming of working in the US, reach out to US hiring managers and developers and just connect with them on LinkedIn and just kind of create awareness So then that way it's just like you, you start to immerse yourself more in their culture and what they're looking for as well. So that's what I would say.

If you're a technical company in the States and now you've listened to this pod and you're interested in Brazil, what does that mean for budget? You know, and obviously there's nuances and seniority levels and English, but yeah, what does that mean? Like I can hire one person and San Francisco, or—

yeah, so I always say like Latin America is sort of that sweet spot for everyone where it's the best bang for your buck. It's that kind of nice intersection of talent, financial cost, output, and kind of like time zone overlap. It's like kind of right there. Um, you know, I think the, the big thing that I would always kind of educate tech companies on is that they're absolutely not going to be as inexpensive as, you know, the Philippines or India or, you know, or whatnot. But they sit right there in the middle and they're going to give you the best value for your dollar, right? So when I'm thinking about, okay, I need to hire up, you know, a founding engineer, you can go spend that $175 and and bring somebody on locally around the table, or, you know, for, you know, half of that, you can bring one person on, maybe even two people or a pod, right? And get just as much done. Because what I'm looking at is like, are you right now in those early stages, are you truly looking to build a team or are you really looking to build a company? And a company means its product, its runway, It's capital, it's, you know, sales, and it's a team, right? And so while we love the idea of I'm building a core local team, what I always say is think about your financial flexibility. And working with global talent really gives you the ability to kind of shift because again, administration, economy is constantly in flux. We don't know necessarily what things are going to look like. And so just having talent in place like, you know, Brazil, Argentina, it just gives you more flexibility to be nimble.

Tony, I wanted to ask, as you've been doing this for 4 years, what are some of the maybe myths or like things that biases that people constantly get wrong about Latin America that maybe come up in conversations?

So they're going to have an accent, guys. It's just, it's unavoidable, right? And so, you know, people can have an accent and speak excellent, be excellent communicators, right? So surprisingly, I hear that a lot. You know, they had a thick accent. I'm like, did you understand what they were talking about? Did you? Well, yeah, right? So I think that that's a huge component right there. The other thing as well is just like the time zone overlap. Really, Brazil is no more than 3 to 4 hours difference with like your West Coast teams. So you actually are able to maximize overlap with, you know, whatever resources you have in the US. Um, so I, I think that's a big thing. And then, you know, there's this whole concept as well of, um, you know, um, working multiple jobs at the same time, right? Like timesha— I've seen that just as much in the United States. And really that just becomes a matter of you as a CTO or whatnot, making sure you have your processes in place. What I always coach early stage companies, it doesn't matter if you're hiring in Brazil or United States, you don't have your processes and your procedures in place to be able to bring them on to be successful. They're not going to be successful. And it's always easy to blame, well, they were overseas as a reason why. That doesn't work. So before you spend any capital, deploy any capital on, you know, any sort of technical talent, just make sure you've got your processes in place to make sure like, hey, is the code clean? Is it my code? Are they working exclusively on, you know, so it's just, you have to have those in place before you start like scaling up talent.

All great points. Well, Tony, this has been fantastic, super informative, learned a ton about AI, Brazil, so forth. We'll make sure we drop your LinkedIn in the show notes so people can connect with you. Really appreciate your time today.

Thanks, Brian. It's always good to catch up with you, man. All right.

Well, you're listening to the Nearshore Cafe podcast. I'm Brian Samson, your host, and this podcast was sponsored by Plug Technologies, plugg.tech. Great way to connect developers, even ones in Brazil like Tony talked about. With US companies. Thanks again for listening, everybody.