🤫🔓 Secrets to High-Performing Software Teams in Argentina 🇦🇷 | 🎙 The Nearshore Cafe Podcast

Welcome everyone to the newest episode of the Nearshore Cafe podcast. I'm Brian Samson, your host, and along with me I have a very special guest today, Patrick Mahaffey. I'll tell you about Pat in just a second. I just want to give a note to our sponsor, uh, Plug Technologies. That's plugg.tech. Plug provides software developers in Latin America for US companies. Uh, welcome, Pat, to the show today.

Thank you. It's great to be here, Brian. It's good to see you, actually.

Yeah, yeah, Pat. You know, you and I have known each other, I think, for 6 years or so, something like that.

Something like that.

Yeah, always good to see you on, uh, on camera again.

Goes by fast. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Pat, one of the, um, the big reasons I, I wanted to have you on the show is, uh, just your vast experience, uh, and with a lot of different things. Um, but I think, uh, interesting perspectives are built from where you've lived, you know, and, and when people have lived and worked and, uh, traveled to a lot of different places, I think that just really builds an interesting point of view. And could you maybe help build a little foundation here for the audience and just give a little background, like where are you from? You know, you've been in the military, you know, where have you lived, stationed, traveled, went to school? I'd love to get a little background on that.

Oh, sure, Brian. I'm more than happy to. I was born actually in a small town in Oregon, which, you I still have a house there and we still go periodically, but I traveled all over. My father was a consultant and he was a Booz Allen consultant, which at the time, I always like thinking about this because he was a Booz Allen consultant when they were the largest consulting firm in the world and they were $60 million in revenue, right? So that was in the mid-'60s or something like that. And so we moved over all over the country. I lived in Rhode Island, New York, California, really lived all over. And then I lived all over the world. I went to school in Ireland, in Cork, Ireland. I was in the military, as you said, I was in the Navy. I was stationed in the Philippines. I traveled all over Southeast Asia, Korea, spent a lot of time in Korea. And then, so my father was a management consultant when I was young. My mother and my stepfather were anthropologists. So we just moved constantly. I've lived all over the world and I've worked on every continent except Antarctica. So, like you said, I have traveled pretty extensively.

Yeah, and I remember, Boston was kind of what you might consider your home city.

That's true. Well, I did. I went to high school in Boston and graduated from Cambridge Latin. And so, you know, I'm still— I know I'm a Celtics fan. I'm sorry. You know, you can't help it if you're from Boston. Boston is a great sports city. And so I grew up with my stepfather taking me to Celtics and Bruins games, etc. So.

Yeah, I remember I had the chance to watch a Super Bowl with you one year when the Patriots— Right. Well— Had to live with your gloating for a day or two.

You know, here's the thing, and I just, in my defense, because being a Patriots fan right now is almost like being a Yankees fan, right? But it's almost as bad as being a Yankees fan. But the thing is, when I was growing up, you know, I used to go to Foxborough, you know, in the snow to watch the worst team in the league lose over and over again, right? You know, now, whatever, 40 years later, I'm just taking some time to gloat, you know?

I guess if you don't go through the trials and tribulations, it doesn't mean as much.

Right, exactly.

Yeah, it gives me something to hope for as a long-suffering Chicago fan.

Right, exactly.

Yeah. And if I remember from our other conversations, you had spent some time in Singapore as well?

Yeah. I did. We lived in Singapore off of Orchard Road. That was amazing. And again, when we worked there, I lived in Singapore, but I worked also in the UAE. I went to Dubai a lot, worked in Jebel Ali Port, putting in warehouses in Jebel Ali Port. So yeah, I have worked a lot of places around the world for sure. And with teams in different places, with a lot of remote teams, and especially in software development. Early on, I got into— the first time I even heard of or thought of remote teams was back when people were starting to face down the year 2000 problem, right, in the '90s. And there were these Indian companies, Infosys and Wipro, and these companies I'd never heard of before. These guys were showing up saying, hey, we got guys who can replace date fields cheap. And I started working with India from those days, right? And those were really early days of working remotely with these teams. And so I've sort of been in that business from, at least as far as I'm aware, since there was a business like that here.

Yeah. Yeah. And then we, speaking of remote teams, if I remember right, Eastern Europe as well with one of the consulting companies you had, you were an executive for.

Yeah, that's right. And, you know, shout out to all those guys now in Ukraine. I worked for Cyclam, which was headquartered in Kiev. And they later moved their headquarters to the UK, but their main development centers were all over the Ukraine. Amazing developers, great company. Really, like I said, thinking about them a lot recently and trying to stay in touch with them. They've got a bit of a tougher— what's amazing about them is how tough they are, which is they're not even letting it slow them down. You know what I mean? They're like, yeah, we'll move somewhere. We got a connection. We got an internet connection. If you need anything done, just let us know. I mean, it's insane. Insane. They are really hardy people, you know what I mean? Like, if our internet goes down for 10 minutes, people are crying, you know. These guys are getting shelled and going, hey, listen, I might be offline for a little bit today, you know, I'll get back to you. It's amazing. So yeah, shout out to those guys. They're amazing developers, talented developers, and also just Like I said, they're hardy people.

I think that's a fantastic point. As Americans, not having Wi-Fi work on our airplane for 15 minutes, like a freakout moment. And the last couple of years, the stability of the dollar, you know, it's going to be a question. But a lot of these places that I've lived, you've lived, it's just a Tuesday.

Yeah, Argentina, you know, I mean, the currency, you know, what's it worth today? I have no idea, you know what I mean? It's a— and I knew what it was worth yesterday. I just don't know what it's worth today. Yeah, we really take a lot for granted. And what's amazing is how adaptable the folks are in these places. I mean, India, same way. I mean, you know, you know what conditions are like there and people adapt and do a great job.

Yeah, I'd love to, uh, dig into this part a little bit, um, just because it's, it's so great to have somebody who's been all over the world and, you know, um, uh, the ability to compare and contrast and, you know, think about like different, just different cultures. And, you know, people are people, but like culture, culture matters and yeah, work styles and so forth. And, you know, maybe we'll, we'll start with Asia and kind of, kind of work our way around. Um, You know, and Singapore is a really interesting place. Like, for me, when I, I was going to school in Singapore at the same time I was getting a business off the ground in Argentina. Could not be further apart. Wow. Almost every way possible. I think in Singapore you could start a business in 4 hours, you know, and right, incorporate, bank, and certification from the state and you're off and running and the government is there to help. And, uh, probably the exact opposite in every one of those dimensions in Argentina. Um, but I'd love to hear a little more about your experience in Singapore and, you know, what you thought about the people, the places, the culture, and so forth.

Well, I mean, Singapore is amazing. Singapore, they call it Singapore Inc. for a reason, right? Like when people are discussing how impossible it is to deal with immigration, I say, well, have you ever been to Singapore? Because You know, every system they have seems to work and people follow the rules. And, you know, I mean, again, as you know, they have people who are working from all over the world in Singapore and they have a Ministry of Manpower. And if you hire somebody, you're responsible for their healthcare, right? You're responsible for what they do while they're in Singapore. They're getting paid a wage that they're delighted with. You know, it's also very reasonable. I mean, Singapore just seems to be really good at handling systems and processes in ways that work. You know, again, a lot of people talk about how autocratic it is, and, um, that is true for sure. And you've probably seen some of the same things I did. It was strange, I was on an MRT, and, uh, which is their, their subway system for those who aren't, you know, who didn't live in Singapore, and somebody had a heart attack. And all of a sudden, all these people on the train started helping them and I realized they were all policemen and undercover, but like half the people on the train were undercover cops. So Singapore definitely has that slight feeling of that autocratic state element, but it's not in service, as you know, it's also one of the two least corrupt governments in the world, right? Singapore and New Zealand. It's in service of social harmony. And here, we're so focused on the individual, right, and their individual rights. In Singapore, nobody cares about your individual rights even the tiniest bit. They just don't give a shit. It couldn't be further from America. What they care about is social harmony, right, and about things functioning well. And so I really feel like Singapore is almost diametrically opposed to the US in so many ways, right? You know what I mean? And you know, you've been there, but, you know, we had our, our child was 5 years old and went and caught a bus and went to school, and I never had one second of trepidation about it. Not even one, you know what I mean? It just— so yeah, Singapore, I mean, I loved Singapore, of course. I think that it is difficult. I've had more challenges working with Chinese offshore developers and whatever than anywhere else. Actually in communication and cultural style and whatever. So I haven't found that very effective as an offshoring team, but I did love Singapore.

Yeah, can you tell me more about that experience with Chinese software developers?

Yeah, I guess for me, working with China has been the most challenging of anywhere, and I don't really do any offshore development there these days. And it was simply that, as you alluded to earlier, Culture is more important than technology because the technology— I've almost never seen a project fail in the last 20 years just due to technology and technology selection, right? It's always been due to cultural issues, teams not forming well, requirements moving constantly. And so the kind of clear, crisp communication and execution and back and forth is really important and it just very challenging for non-Chinese or for at least for me. I don't know, I can't speak for everybody, right? But, and then, you know, there are copyright issues with China. We would go to China and find our software when we were at Brightware, they'd be selling it by the side of the road, you know, a $10 disc or software that was tens of thousands of dollars, you know? So, I mean, you know, there are those kinds of issues too, right? That you face those copyright issues, at least at those days, they didn't have a lot of respect for copyright laws and, So it was just a tough place to do development.

Yeah, and Pat, did you find that to be system agnostic, like it didn't matter if they were doing Agile like everybody else, it was still, those things were still concerns?

Yeah, I don't think that your development method really does much for that sort of thing, I really don't. Again, it was the same thing, it was just sort of cultural challenges and getting requirements communicated correctly and working in a way that would produce good working code quickly and simply, right? It just was tough to do. Again, I don't mean to make any overarching claim about China. That's just my personal experience. You know what I mean? They're great engineers, right? Some of the top computer science schools in the country are in China and in Singapore.

Yeah.

And—

Yeah, don't worry. We're not making any enemies here today.

Well, no. But I just, I definitely want to caveat that your mileage may vary, right? What works for me may not work for everybody. And the thing that worked in Singapore, of course, because I was working at a commodities firm, and what worked in Singapore is everything bureaucratic. I mean, it was, it's funny because it was, you know, you think of it as an autocratic bureaucratic state, but bureaucracy is very streamlined there. To your point, getting something done is fast. It's effective, you know what I mean? So yeah, I'm a big Singapore booster. Again, I—

yeah, yeah, same. I think, uh, user experience in, in all ways of life matters. Yeah, they really think, uh, um, it's not about the government, it's not about us, it's about the end user and what, what's going to make them more productive, which will ultimately make society more productive.

Yeah, yeah, no, I think so.

So Yeah, well, let's, uh, jet over to the other side of the world, uh, which, which is, uh, contrasted with Singapore for better or worse. Um, I'd love to hear about your experiences with Latin America. Um, first off, maybe where have you been in Latin America?

So mostly, well, I've been, you know, the three places I've really spent time are Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina. And those are— I haven't done work in Brazil, which is a big hotbed. A lot of people have a lot of success with Brazil. And I know that Walmart e-commerce, Walmart.com, they did a lot of their mobile development in Brazil and were very successful and had a great time. And I hadn't done much nearshore. Nearshore development was sort of new to me because I was struggling with the relative to my career. India has its challenges, right? And Eastern Europe has its challenges, a lot to do with time zone, but also culture. And that's why getting back to the claim that anthropology is more important than technology in these regards, because there is nobody better educated or more technically astute than these Ukrainian engineers. That's where the Soviet Technology Center used to be. That's where their rocket science and their nuclear programs were and everything. And those guys are just top-notch engineers, but communicating with them sometimes, getting them to do what you wanted to do and not what they wanted to do, it was, it was, it was challenging, right? It wasn't easy to do. There are a lot of cultural challenges, although they are amazing engineers. So, um, you know, I was fascinated to try out the nearshore, the time zone advantage of nearshore and Latin America. And I found a small company with some really great founders who were willing to take me on and help me with that. I think you're familiar with that. And so that was my start of engaging with Latin America is working with you, really. In that area, and it was amazing. It was, you know, I mean, I found that to my surprise, having never been to Argentina previously, they were the most culturally similar to the developers in Silicon Valley, right? It seemed like just more than anything, the whole vibe, the lifestyle, the way they thought about things, the way they approached things was so similar that there wasn't there wasn't much cultural disconnect at all, you know what I mean? It was—

Yeah, I'd love to hear a little more about that, you know, like what are some of the things that you think about when you think about a Silicon Valley engineer and then, you know, where that connects with, with La Tam?

Well, okay, that's a great question, that's a great way to phrase it. And I guess what I would say, and I say Silicon Valley engineer, which is just meaning culturally like me, you know, like I'm I'm here and doing things and you have a way of talking about things, whether it's user experience, requirements, expectations for how a project is managed and run, how people respond. Those things are very culturally specific and culturally dependent, and you find that out when you start working with India or you start working with Ukraine, right? And you realize, oh, they don't, this is not the same there, right? And even how Engineers support each other. There's a spectrum, and I don't want to dirt anybody, but like there's a spectrum that goes from sort of one far end all the way to like Swedish engineers who like, we've talked about this, Swedish engineers who I worked with fairly extensively, they won't let one another fail. Like they'll help each other with their work, they'll pitch in, they've got this tremendous communal spirit. You know, there's a whole spectrum and it's pretty culturally based. And so, I would say that Argentina falls right about where we do, right? Which is, they're pretty supportive, they're pretty team-oriented. They, again, just the way they organize as a team and the way they execute and the way they talk about their projects is very similar to the way we do.

Yeah. Yeah, one thing that I was thinking about as you were talking, I'd love to get your thoughts on mine is, You know, when we're talking about global engineering teams and Ukraine, for example, you know, Eastern Europe, and there is no doubt, like, when you even— even I think the perception of engineers there is like the rocket scientist, right? Igor is, you know, the smartest guy in the room, and, you know, he's doing these crazy calculations, and And, uh, but if we have a disagreement on the way to do things, um, I have a feeling that I'm gonna— I'm gonna be told by Igor that, man, that is stupid.

Oh yeah, yeah, what are you thinking? And 100%. Yeah, or he might not even tell you, he might just do it his way and not your way, right? Right.

Now, um, what I did love about, um And maybe I'll even go into India for a second. You might not hear that in India because of the hierarchy, right?

Right.

The client is king, boss is king. You don't send negative feedback upwards. What I thought was interesting about at least my time working with Latin America and Argentina specifically is the Uh, they will certainly disagree, and they'll certainly ask why a million times to understand, uh, what, uh, what you're trying to achieve and, um, uh, the strategy and so forth behind it, the user experience, the product. Um, but I think with their team-oriented approach, they might do that a little friendlier but still push back if they disagree with you. And I don't know if you've had experience.

Oh yeah, no, 100%. And that's why I'm saying it's very similar in style to how we do things here, right? And like you said, I mean, in India— and this is a challenge everywhere, honestly, especially if you're in a position of authority, if you're a CTO or you're doing something— but, you know, you want to be informed of important events. And, you know, when often when you're working with a team that's really hierarchical, right, like an Indian team, there's only green lights and the house is burning down. Like, there's nothing in between. You don't get any gradients. You don't get any information to let you know that things might be in trouble, right? Until it's a disaster. It's a 3-alarm fire. And that's really cultural, right? Nobody wants to give you bad news. Nobody wants to. And, you know, again, I think that the communication styles with the Argentinian teams and with the US teams are very, very similar, you know.

Yeah. The other thing that I, I found interesting, um, in, in a positive way was the critical thinking skills. Um, you know, and my theory on this, um, you know, having spent some time there is, uh, to reinforce your earlier point about inflation and like bad governance and high corruption and gray area, everything is a gray area, is that something breaks and they just find a way around it because that's innate part of their culture. It's just a Tuesday for them, it's no big deal, let's find a workaround because they have a workaround for everything. You know, they take the ferry to Uruguay to get US dollars, they, you know, have a workaround for just about everything. Did you see that as well in your time there?

Oh yeah, and in fact, I still work with teams in Argentina actually, because I just found it really pleasant to do that. The teams that I work with now offshore, literally today, are Argentinian. And one of the things is they're used to— to your point, I mean, I'm only going to reiterate what you said, but they're used to problem solving. And also, every day there's some kind of fire when you're developing a system. and they don't respond to it by freaking out, right? They don't hide it and they don't freak out. They just go, hey, yeah, we've got some challenges. Here's what we're doing about it, right? And again, that's, you know, that's what you want when you're working in a project of that sort, right? They seem to have a really nice balance between, you know, paying attention to the necessary things but not, you know, losing it when things aren't going perfectly.

Yeah, that's a great description, I think, of a high-performing team. And if you don't mind, I'd love to just go back to your time in the military where you were part of a very important team and known as the teams. And I'm sure that had a lot to do with how you think about high-performing teams today. If you don't mind sharing a little more about that.

Yeah, no, I don't mind at all. Form a good portion of how I view putting together a group of people to work with, right? And so it is important, as you know. It's not something I usually go into a lot of detail about. But one of the things that I discovered was— and this is the way I usually explain it to people when I'm working, which is a very small focus team can do incredible things, like truly incredible things, things you wouldn't imagine, right? Smaller teams than you would imagine can have the force of, you know, a team of 14 people can have the same force as a battalion, right? But what's required for that to happen is that you all have to be 100% aligned in the same direction. So if we're all, you know, we're on mission, we're all trained, right? We all have the exact same goals. I know that I can count on you for a no-look pass, right? And we're going in. There are incredible power generated, right? There's incredible power generated and there are amazing things that team can do. To the degree that you, Brian, say, yeah, you know, I'm not sure really, and you peel off to the left and somebody else says, you know, I'm not that excited by this, you know, you lose power with each one of those, you lose power, right? You lose that momentum and that velocity. And so that's what I really learned at SEAL Team, which is that a small group of motivated people who are completely aligned and dedicated can do extraordinary things, right? And that's really— that was my takeaway for my whole life, that it's always all about getting that alignment and getting that shared, you know, vision is one way to put it, but just shared set of goals and beliefs and commitment And then you will do extraordinary things. But again, to the degree that you're not getting that right, you're just— you know what I mean? You can't— it's very difficult to get anywhere.

Yeah.

So, so that was sort of my— that was my big takeaway from the whole thing, you know?

Yeah. Now you've been involved— I'm not sure if you still are— but with a high-performing team in Argentina called Accelerate.

Right.

Yeah, would you mind sharing a little more about who they are, what they do, and the nearshoring model that they have?

Yeah, I would love to do that. So, you know, these were a couple of folks, and, you know, I actually love this story because of them. There were two young people who— two young men who came when I worked at Sicklum. I was the US CEO for Sicklum, which was this big Eastern European developer, and said, Hey, look, we can do this outsourced sales model for you. And here's what we do. And I hadn't really seen that before. And they were in Argentina. And they talked me through it. And I said, well, I'll give you a chance. It sounds interesting. I haven't seen it. Let's do it. And they are just extraordinary at the toughest part of the sales cycle. So I don't want to burden this with sales stuff. But the toughest part of the sales cycle usually is just getting the meeting these days because there's so much noise in the environment that it's difficult for people to get to the decision maker. Once I've reached you and you're the right potential buyer and I have a great story, you know what I mean? That's the easy part these days. The hard part is getting someone's attention. And they had a method for that. So I employed them and they did a great job. They really They really did fantastic work. They exceeded the expectations. And when I was leaving Cyclam, they said, hey, listen, you know, we know how to do this, but we don't know anything about growing a company, like nothing, zero. And so could you come in and be the CEO and, you know, help us put a real company together? And I said, well, yeah, I could do that. Goal though is that, you know, you would take the company back over when you, you know what I mean? It's more like a mentorship role and that they would take the company back over. And so, you know, that's what happened. And, you know, the founders of Celerate are Mariano and Duncan, the two young guys. And again, they've just grown that thing tremendously. I mean, they work for a whole host of really blue-chip American companies, Akamai, etc., and in the tech space usually, and they do that and they've grown tremendously. I think they're up, I don't know, I think they're over 100 people now or something. They've been growing tremendously. I don't have the latest statistics, but they've really done a great job and they've really done very well. Yeah, they've done very well.

And their labor force is all Latam and some of the characteristics that we've talked about.

Yeah, and so one of the things that's happened recently, as you know, COVID accelerated this, but I mean, it was— they were in Buenos Aires, in Palermo, in the same, you know, neighborhood that everybody wants to be in with their spaces. And then they expanded to Colombia, to Medellín. And then once COVID hit— and they had some people in Uruguay, I think, too— and once COVID hit, they realized, you know, people could be anywhere, just Yeah, doesn't matter. I know they don't have offices anymore. I mean, they've gone completely remote. It works really well for them. And, um, but they are in LATAM. That's where their folks are. And they're, you know, they're crushing it. So it's, it's great to see. Again, that was back to my theory. If you're gonna sell, you better be pretty culturally attuned to the place that you're selling into, right? It wouldn't work otherwise. It just wouldn't work at all. And so you can see the alignment between, you know, those LATAM countries and the US sort of culturally just by seeing that that's even something you could do.

Yeah, that's great. That's great. I just have a few more questions. These might be a little more fun for us.

Of course.

So in your travels to Argentina, so for our audio listeners who might not be able to see Pat, Pat's an athletic guy. He's— I'm not sure if you're still doing it, but when I knew you, a competitive powerlifter. The gym is a big part of your life. Tell us about your time working out and then also rewarding yourself with food. What was the workout culture and the food culture like there?

Well, Buenos Aires, I mean, I would gladly move to Buenos Aires. You know, it doesn't have the gym. I, you know, I live in California, right? It's sort of the mecca of gym culture, right? And, you know, I mean, I have a real powerlifting gym here. But amazingly, when I was in Buenos Aires, first of all, I believe I've never been anywhere— and this is including in the Philippines, being in places in Malaysia where the houses were on huts— I could find a gym. I could find a gym. It is my belief that whether I have to manifest it, I can find a place to train hard anywhere in the world, right? I've always been happy that way, even in Singapore, you know. But, um, but Buenos Aires had a good gym culture. There were some— there were a couple of really serious strength gyms right in Buenos Aires within a mile of the office, um, that I could walk to. Um, it was fine. Um, and the great thing is, if you were on a high protein diet, Argentina might be the best place in the world in terms of being able to eat a high protein high-quality meat diet at a price point that in America seems just ludicrously, you know, affordable, right? I mean, eating in Argentina is a treat. If you were a vegetarian, it would probably be a really rough go, but if you are a meat eater, Argentina is delightful. You know that. I don't need to tell you that. That's, you know, but it's fun.

It's fun to talk about. Did you have a preference on Ojo de bife, the ribeye, or the New York, or entraña, or any, any particular piece of meat that you enjoyed?

Well, I liked that all the cuts are not the same cuts as ours. And so, you know, I don't know why, but I'd grown up assuming that that was how you butchered. There was one way to butcher a cow, and that's what you did, and those were the cuts of beef you got when you butchered a cow. I know it sounds naive. I got like, you know, many decades without knowing that you could do it a lot of different ways, but You know, that was interesting to me is seeing how they did cuts of beef differently. And I had, I even liked the sweetbreads. I liked everything in Argentina. And I will say this, that although I know this, man, Argentinians, Argentinians don't know how to make pizza. And I know that that is good. Any Argentinians watching this, I'm going to get death threats and hate mail. And they really believe that they do. They really believe they know something about pizza. You're from Chicago, I'm from Boston, they don't know anything about pizza. But I will say this, that everywhere I've been before, somebody said, let's get a hamburger, like when I'm out in a different country and I say, no, I'm not going to get a hamburger because it's going to be a disappointment. I'm an American, I'm going to go get a hamburger, it's going to be this crappy hamburger, I'm going to be sad, I don't want to do it. And you, you know, no, you can go, go. And so I had the best hamburgers I've ever had in my life anywhere in Buenos Aires. And that really shocked me. That surprised me. I never thought that would happen. But you know, if you're in Buenos Aires, do not be afraid to have a hamburger because they're delicious. I cannot vouch for the pizza. If you have the pizza, just remember I warned you on this show.

No, that's great advice. I, uh, I don't know if we went to the same places, but I'll give a shout out to my favorite burger in the world, which Burger Joint in Buenos Aires.

Absolutely. Same place. Absolutely. I have pictures from there. You know, I definitely sent them to my wife. I was like, hey, it was amazing.

Even Burger King, they use real Argentine cow down there.

I didn't know that. I never went to a Burger King.

Burger King was excellent. But yeah, just to hit on that pizza for a second. You know, maybe we'll be able to show the visual on the video portion. It's about this thin of crust, like normal, you know, thin crust pizza, and about this much cheese.

It's insane. It's insane. I don't know what they're thinking. And they do. They love that pizza. They stand by that pizza. It's my one serious point of disagreement with the Argentinian people. I'm sorry. I just can't get behind that. I'll even, I'll eat a deep dish pizza. Like, I'm not going to fight with people from Chicago about deep dish pizza. It's delicious. I'll give it to you. I'm not even going to have that argument. But in this case, I think we could unite on this, right? Am I wrong, Brian? Am I wrong?

We are fully united about that. I've just got two more questions for you, Pat. Your favorite Spanish word. Wow.

That's a— Huh, I might have to come back to that. That really stumped me, my favorite. I have so many, and most of them I can't use on this show.

That's okay. In the years that I've known you, I don't know if I've ever seen you not have an answer.

Right, that really stumped me. That was a good one. That was a good one, because I'm like, my favorite. Well, you know. Thinking about them, I didn't want to— I wasn't really excited about putting them out there.

And then the last one, I'm sure a lot of the themes we've already talked about on the show might resurface, but for somebody maybe brand new to nearshoring, we're seeing a lot of nearshore curious people like, "Oh, this LATAM thing looks pretty interesting." Any advice for those types of companies or folks that are looking at that for the very first time?

Yeah, I mean, obviously you have to do your own due diligence and your mileage may vary and it always helps if you speak Spanish, etc., etc. But honestly, I would say find a pilot project and give it a go because you could study it forever, right? But the culture works, the time zones work, talented people at, you know, reasonable prices. And I have found that it is absolutely possible to build an extraordinary high-performance team in, you know, anywhere in LATAM probably, but certainly in Argentina, in Colombia, you know, very, very possible. And I highly recommend it. Today I work for with people. Actually, you know the person who does my SEO today who is from Argentina, and she's amazing and still does my SEO today.

That's fantastic. That's great. That's excellent. Well, Pat, I just wanted to say thank you again for being on the Nearshore Cafe podcast. Just a quick thanks to our sponsor, Plug Technologies. That's plugg.tech. They provide software developers all over Latin America to US companies. Pat, thanks so much for your time today.

Thank you so much, Brian. Appreciate it.