The Nearshore Cafe
Hear from Nearshoring veterans about what it's like living and doing business in LATAM. Join our hosts and numerous guests from LATAM & the U.S. with interesting real life experiences. This podcast is full of great stories and useful advice on how to navigate the world's most untapped talent market along with travel tips.
The Nearshore Cafe
Melei’s Impact to Argentina’s Talent Market
How did Matt Steinberg, a seasoned technical recruiter, find himself at the forefront of a nearshoring revolution in Latin America? Join us as he recounts his unexpected journey into recruiting, which began in Argentina in 2005 when the concept of nearshoring was just gaining traction. Matt shares invaluable insights about the pivotal role communication skills played in his career and reveals his secret to achieving fluency in English through sheer determination and self-study.
Unravel the fascinating impact of Argentina's evolving political landscape on its economy with the rise of Melei, an economist-turned-politician who has shaken up the nation's status quo. From the complexities of Argentina's financial system, including its multiple exchange rates for the U.S. dollar, to shifting economic incentives for Argentine workers, our conversation sheds light on how these factors have opened new doors for outsourcing and nearshoring. You'll hear how Argentine professionals balance local and international opportunities to maintain financial stability amidst ongoing inflation challenges.
Explore Argentina's resourceful business culture, where entrepreneurs quickly replicate successful models despite the uncertainties of hyperinflation. Matt brings attention to the innovative spirit that makes Argentine talent so attractive to U.S. tech startups. We delve into the importance of understanding local market dynamics and the proficiency of Argentine professionals in English, all while expressing cautious optimism about Argentina's economic future with potential external investments and evolving political leadership.
Tune in to gain a comprehensive understanding of the dynamic landscape of recruiting and IT in Latin America.
🔗🔗Connect with Matt Steinberg 🔗🔗
Linkedin: Matt Steinberg | LinkedIn
Company: Lenovo: Overview | LinkedIn
📢 Don’t forget to LIKE, SUBSCRIBE, and TURN ON NOTIFICATIONS for more insights on Latin America’s growing tech scene! 🎧🔥
_________________________
🔗 Connect With Us
🔗 Stay Connected:
✅ Host: Brian Samson | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briansamson/
✅ Sponsor: Plugg Technologies | PLUGG.tech
✅ Follow The Nearshore Cafe Podcast for More Insightful Episodes!
_________________________
Our social pages:
🎵 Spotify podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/6KYcgpmN77fJm6B25469B8
🌎 Website: https://www.nearshorecafepodcast.com/
🔥 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-nearshore-cafe
🎙️ Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-nearshore-cafe/id1775525954
We'll see you next time. 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. Pluggtech 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.
Speaker 2:Great to be here. Thank you for the invitation.
Speaker 1: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 year?
Speaker 2:2005,. There was no nearshoring, no outsourcing really for recruiting. I actually was lucky enough to come across a person from the United States who was a person here in Argentina trying to initiate a company called Averture of all things which is a kind of a famous ATA nowadays, but back then was kind of in a beta testing phase famous ATAs nowadays, but back then was a channel for it 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.
Speaker 2:I was studying, I was finishing off my degree in psychology. I thought this is kind of related, I would be lucky to 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 a conference room, have us call co-candidates and people from different job boards like Monster, careerbuilder and all those others, and so we actually learned the trade from him. He was the old school with the Rolodex kind of recruiter calling people from you know calling Carter stuff.
Speaker 2:So from there on it was just all recruiting. I started doing work as a recruiter within RPO.
Speaker 2:Then you know, nearshore started taking form and taking shape in Argentina. So I was lucky again to be associated and acquainted with people that were actually interested in investing a certain fair deal of money in expanding the RPO and Nearshoring business in Argentina. So ever since it's been like 20 years of supporting the United States, canada, european countries. You know EMEA as a region APAC, so I was very lucky throughout my career to be exposed to those countries and those cultures.
Speaker 1:It's really given you a nice global perspective. I think 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? Can you share just more about your personal journey with English and how you got to the fluency level that you have?
Speaker 2: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, the basic stuff. But there was one day that I actually needed a job, when I was 18, or something like that.
Speaker 2:When I approached a call center that was, you know, starting business in argentina, and I went through the interview without speaking a word of english, just said right, yes and no, in all the right orders, I guess, and actually got the job. So from there it was just practicing. I think every argentina and every guy in latin america who provides 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 a proper understanding of how people talk and then you repeat it. It's just repetition. The more you repeat yourself, the better you get at it.
Speaker 2: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. Now I can't get rid of it. It's more like a speech impediment than an accent really, and most people who are really gifted do have that ability of repeating themselves, getting really best at it and accelerating the learning curve so they really get fluent at it.
Speaker 1: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 near-short perspective.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, I started out my career with IT right within IT technology, information and technology. That was all I mean. When I started, it was all about the cloud. You know it was 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 I mentioned data, NetApp, microsoft. Actually I supported them for a few years. I worked with Lenovo. I worked with another company in the United States that actually manufactured storage devices, intel.
Speaker 2: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 they 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 to line up their paths across, you know, 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 platform, as a service, networking security.
Speaker 2:So I've supported companies in networking like Arista Networks, juniper Networks, palo Alto Networks. I work with Barracuda Networks. I also work 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 all other financial analysis companies that provide 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.
Speaker 1: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 US?
Speaker 2: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 and there's always a certain amount, a fair amount, of technical words 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 depths 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.
Speaker 2:I, at some point in my career, 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 said 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 Sharp. What is Golang? How's that translate to data analysis? Why Python, when you're looking for a data engineer? So the best advice you can give to a person getting started in IT, recruiting or sourcing is learn as much as you know about technology. Don't let it be just a side thing for you. Get deep into it.
Speaker 1: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 I'm maybe this is kind of a silly question, but did the, did most of the engineers in that you you would have phone screens with, did they have any idea that you were in Latin America?
Speaker 2: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'd be mischarged from being Latin America. There's this misconception about Latin America that we all Latin Americans have, which is 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 you just don't want to be recognized as part of another world, so to speak.
Speaker 2: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 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, a good segue into having a proper personal report developed right away that that's fantastic.
Speaker 1:That's really interesting. Let's jump into the economy, matt. So we're about a year or so into Malay. Maybe let's just kind of start big picture and then we'll get into a lot of the pieces of it. What has that meant, I guess, for Argentinians? You know, like this last year, how have their lives changed. You know what has that meant for them.
Speaker 2: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 peronistas versus radicales, right. So it's just left-wing or right-winged, or more to the left than to the center or to the right. There's always been like a polarized thing, but over the last 20 years it really has become a one side or the other kind of a thing. So when Millet 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 Millet.
Speaker 2:For most people who don't know who that person was, he's an economist. He's a proper economist, someone who really studied economy in depth, right. So when he became a politician, he was just coming out of the telly. He was a panelist who would come up on the telly and criticize 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 telly, he was yelling like a maniac and now the guy is the president, but he was welcome. He was welcomed by many people. I would include myself in that, because the 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 shredded to pieces, was crumbling down, it was all shredded down and the guy is trying to pick up the piece and shape it up into something more productive. But with that it became something that maybe most viewers or listeners have heard of, which is the planchassel which affected the economy.
Speaker 2: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 CIPO, which is kind of a blockage that the government put so people can get dollars and get it out of the country. So you couldn't buy anything at that real price. That generated a second price. There was always a parallel market in Argentina for dollars. It used to be black dollar, but they had a very awful connotation so they changed it to blue because they had a better term to read to it. So blue dollar. The value of the currency was much higher than the real price of the American currency.
Speaker 2:That generated a huge amount of opportunities for nearshoring, 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 the 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 getting their wages in American dollars, they could start getting a projection of how much they would earn. And if the change of the price, of 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 can have a projection, you can have savings. So most people started getting their jobs and starting outsourcing services, selling 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.
Speaker 2:Since this guy related to power, things have started to change. They fixed the value of dollar to 1,000 pesos per dollar and the parallel market got stagnant at $1,200. 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 the inflation and devaluation affected your wages. So now the projection you have is still the same. It's still stabilized. So now the projection you have is still the same. You're still stable, stabilized.
Speaker 2:But if you work for the RIT markets, companies start to get wise and they start adjusting your salary every couple of months, because inflation is actually a legal thing they have to go through and is the only way they have to retain employees and reduce their turnover. So nowadays it is incredible how more beneficial it turned out to be, or turns out to be, to work for the local markets, 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 branch other. That's something that happened over the last year and a half that is affecting all of us you know working for the United States To me that seems like it's like flipped the economy upside down because there was so much incentive to export services.
Speaker 1:Now there's this. You know you're almost penalized for it, right? Because you're not going through the adjustments. Matt, from your perspective, you know 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 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?
Speaker 2:Well, what I can tell you is a huge percent I think we'll be closer to 20% exporting, because it still means that you'll get American dollars. No one believes the economy will sustain and will hold, and this is something that comes with the history of the country and the economy. People don't believe in pesos, which is, of course, a reason why 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 in 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 RG economy.
Speaker 1:You know, one thing I'm curious curious about matt is um the rise of bricks and and an alternative reserve currency. Has that impacted um anyone in argentina? Like how? How are you and your friends thinking about that?
Speaker 2:well, it's always been difficult to buy yourself a house in argentina because the price is despite the fact that by comparison they're not really super high they're still kind of unaffordable. It's 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 let's face it, less than 5% of the population. Who could do that? And that has always been the case, right, 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 bricks because that was the most stable currency you would just save by building yourself a house or building a flat or buying yourself a property. The price of property has gone down, whereas the price of bricks has gone up. What 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 what I'll tell you about it, if you don't mind, it's kind of interesting, funny.
Speaker 2:Actually, there's always been a model of work, of business that works in argentina. It's not something you can study, it's not something that financial analysts will tell you. There's something that just happens. We call it the flash business model. It happened back the 90s with tennis and paddle courts. It happened with something we call the parry portion, which is kind of a grill where people 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, hits it and just hits it big, everyone starts copying that.
Speaker 2:Now you can't save in bricks, you can't set in property, so what people do is they just start initiating businesses even though there's not real projection, they're not real figures that will tell you, even if you crush the numbers again and again and again, no, 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 you know it hits big and it's just, it's just paid up, it's just paid. You're not going to get the the again. Chances are you're never going to get it again, but go and play it again. It's the same thing. I think it's the same phenomenon.
Speaker 1:You know, I mean in the States we often think about diversifying our investments. I almost feel like it's diversifying your currency in Argentina, you know, whether it's bricks, pesos, dollars, crypto.
Speaker 2:Exactly. It's a very good analysis actually. Yeah, exactly like that. Now there's something called plazo fijo, 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 the 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 percent interest in a short period of time.
Speaker 1:Matt, for those in the States you know 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 for the last 10, 20 years? What does that feel like?
Speaker 2:I can tell you a story. I went to this shop because I needed to buy a replacement for one of my sawing. I had a saw. I wanted to saw something. I had to get a replacement because it was 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. The price on the wall was, I don't know, $50. Equivalent equivalent in pesos. Right, it was actually, uh, in pesos. I can't remember the figure, but it was. It was not really crazy, but it wasn't cheap either.
Speaker 2:So I wait in line and it's taking time. It's taking 20 minutes, 25 minutes, 30 minutes. And I ask 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. $80. In 30, 40 minutes that's how it feels like.
Speaker 2:There are moments where that happens. There are moments where you know the whole thing becomes a bit more stagnant and you don't really feel it that way. There were times where 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 that you won't be able to know how much you'll be spending next month in groceries, in services and expenses.
Speaker 2:So there's really like a day-to-day kind of a mindset, which is why Argentinians 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 you know, most american companies look in 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, really could have solved problems. Whatever the problem is, we'll find a way. We have a word in Argentinian, which is which is tied up in wire, because when you can't get the replacement part, just tie it up two wires together and make it work somehow, and that we do right. I do that every day, for that matter.
Speaker 1:It's a very interesting thing. That's great. That's great. Thanks for explaining 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 you know, 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?
Speaker 2:Well, that's an excellent question. The problem with the economy, as you well know we were talking about it 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 short-term 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 will want to have when I mean everything in written, it's 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 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.
Speaker 2:In terms of talent. Well, english is a huge part of it. So Argentina hasn't got that problem. People in Argentina speak rather well. So Argentina hasn't got that problem. People in Argentina speak rather well and they don't really have this struggle where they have to go and learn and then come back to the markets, but they're ready to go and play right, so that won't be a problem. As for talent, argentina hasn't received many investments in IT like Brazil has. So supercomputing-wise, which is getting started HPC, high-performance computing there are certain languages people don't really get developing or they haven't been developing in for years, like you know. You talk about Databricks, or you talk about ClickView, clicksense, 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, learn 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 would say.
Speaker 1:Matt, are you bullish on the economy right now? Do you think the country will be in a better place in two years? It's still hard to say what do you think.
Speaker 2:It's always hard to say. I've been here for 41 years and it'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 our people outside investments and to the talent of our people, and I hope that these new breed of politicians have an objective in mind which is, you know, 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.
Speaker 1:There's just need time, I think, uh, what I'm most interested in is, uh, among many, many things, is uh, uh, importing of, you know, different goods from around the world. Um, I, I had a beer of a time trying to get hardware into argentina and I'm curious um, uh, is anything changing with that? Do you do you think that will be easier to move stuff in and out?
Speaker 2: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 and said 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 kind of creates a dent in your business endeavor, but it is understandable because people abused it for many years.
Speaker 2: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 got big and heavy hands I'm just kidding. It just 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.
Speaker 2: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 of people doing this all the time and because of the customs. You know the taxation is huge but Millet has come up with a plan and you know there's not. Millet know the government administration has come up with a plan of reducing the cost for at least the first 400 of imports in products and the health. People bring things in, and not just enough to 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 it's getting better.
Speaker 1:Well, Matt, this has been an incredible conversation. I can't believe how much I've learned. This is fantastic. Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Well, this is the Nearshore Cafe podcast sponsored by Plug Technologies P-L-U-G-G dot tech, and we'll see you next time. Thanks for listening.