Last year I sat down with Chris Snyder on the Snyder Showdown podcast to discuss how companies can leverage nearshore teams to build tech better and faster. It was a really nice and entertaining talk you can listen to here. But if you don’t have the time to listen to it, I’ve summed up some of the most important takeaways from the podcast so you can get some important insights about outsourcing software development – and why BairesDev is the best ally to build tech solutions.
Let’s get to it!
The Pre-pandemic Talent Deficit
Software development is a very difficult and tricky thing, as Chris says. It has been historically so and has remained that way, pandemic or not. What has changed, though, it’s the attitude towards it, especially when it comes to outsourcing. To see what I mean, let’s dial back and think about the pre-pandemic times.
Back then, many U.S. companies had a local-only mentality, meaning that they only liked to collaborate with US-based companies. Thus, their first choices were always either hiring in-house or partnering with agencies from the same city or state. Now, I’m not saying that’s wrong or anything BUT there are a couple of things that have always made me question that decision.
The first was that, for years now, the United States has suffered from a talent shortage in the software development field. It’s not that there aren’t any software engineers in the country – it’s the fact that the demand for them is so massive that they simply aren’t enough to cover it all. So, companies end up competing fiercely for the same candidates in a rather small talent pool, which results in aggressive poaching campaigns and higher hiring costs.
The second thing is that a lot of those companies that have a local-only mentality don’t even want to consider outsourcing to a different country for some fairly ridiculous reasons. Some believe that job quality won’t be up to par, others see it as a hassle, and others aren’t even aware of how far the software development outsourcing industry has come.
And that evolution of the outsourcing industry is key here, especially when it comes to Latin America. Many years ago, a lot of Latin American countries started a shift in their education that veered towards more tech-centric curricula. The goal was to move along with the increasing technification of jobs across the board. That, combined with the fact that college education in many Latin American countries is free (or far cheaper than in the U.S.) gave those countries an advantage, talent-wise.
Now, there are plenty of very talented tech professionals in Latin America, which puts the region as a very interesting alternative for companies lacking the necessary skills to lead their tech projects to success. But talent, as essential as it is for outsourcing, isn’t enough. Fortunately, governments and emerging companies like BairesDev understood the region’s potential and invested in the necessary infrastructure.
All of that happened more than a decade ago, which was crucial for the outsourcing industry in the region. How come? Because, once the pandemic struck, Latin America was already prepared to keep business as usual while helping companies from all over the world accelerate their digital transformation processes.
The COVID-19 Shift
I’m not saying that software development outsourcing wasn’t booming before the pandemic. It was. Businesses from all over finally started to catch on to the benefits of partnering with companies filled to the rim with talented engineers. But the pandemic shifted an underlying dynamic and pushed the outsourcing industry even higher.
As COVID-19 forced remote work on virtually all companies, executives shifted the “local-only mentality” to a more pragmatic approach. Now, the hiring mantra is “go find the best talent, wherever it might be.” The thing is – the best talent for U.S. companies is in Latin America. Given years of preparation before the pandemic, companies like BairesDev already have the talent, the processes, and the methodologies to tackle the challenges of developing software in the new world.
While a lot of companies from around the globe struggled with the forced implementation of the WFH model, we kept moving forward because that model is how we do things from the get-go. BairesDev is the perfect example of that advantage present in Latin American companies. We have been using distributed teams from the moment of our foundation. We have the essential infrastructure in place and the know-how to leverage it all to bring value and quality to all our clients.
Under that light, a lot of U.S. development companies are struggling to catch up with Latin American outsourcing companies. And American companies quickly saw that the best course of action was partnering with us to cover their pressing and increasing demands for tech engineering talent. In fact, American companies were driven in troves to the outsourcing model that best suits them – nearshoring.
That model is the specialization of BairesDev and implies hiring a company in the same timezone and with low to no cultural and language barriers. Being based in Argentina and with offices across the Americas, BairesDev teams can work in virtually the same hours as American teams, have a high English proficiency, and strong expertise and experience in every technology and methodology imaginable. All of that is based on our core value – talent comes first, always.
What Sets BairesDev Apart from Other Outsourcing Companies
The focus on talent is our main differentiating factor amid the many, many software outsourcing companies in Latin America and the world. We pride ourselves on working with the Top 1% of Tech Talent in the world. We do so because we believe that only senior engineering talent can provide the necessary expertise and background to offer maximum value to our clients. I’ll circle back to this later on because we are firm believers that we are as strong as the talent we work with.
While talent is our strong suit, that’s not all there is to BairesDev. The other major factors playing into our success are our processes, our methodologies, and our infrastructure. We’re an agile-driven company that’s tech-agnostic. That means that we have enough flexibility to help our clients with any project that might have, be it a traditional web app development or a cutting-edge project including the latest technologies like AI, VR, blockchain, or edge computing.
Being tech-agnostic means that we aren’t “married” to a particular technology or tech stack. We adjust our development process to the project at hand and can offer tech talent in any technology needed. The only constants for us are the ability to provide value to our clients from the first moment and the quality of the solutions we deliver. We can be flexible with everything else but those things are unnegotiable to us.
As if all those things weren’t enough, there are other factors that turn BairesDev into the best software development partner for American companies. Being a Latin American-based company, we have an increased travel readiness, meaning that we can meet with our clients at a moment’s notice and without lengthy travels. Though that mechanic has been limited due to the pandemic, we believe that meeting in person with our clients is key, as doing that cements the relationship and strengthens the collaboration between both parties.
Finally, there’s the ability to quickly scale to meet changing talent needs. Having a large talent pool of senior engineers of all ages and from all backgrounds, we can build any engineering team in record times. We can add new team members anytime and with record-setting speeds. What’s more – depending on the needs, our teams can be 100% plug and play: our clients hire us and we form a team that seamlessly integrates with their in-house teams.
Our Strict Hiring Process
As I said above, our focus on talent is one of the best things we can offer our clients. We know that the success of a project directly depends on the people working on it, which is why we are extremely cautious with the people we hire to work with us. That has led us to spend 3 times more on talent acquisition than on client acquisition. It’s also why we’ve developed a strict hiring process that has many different considerations built into it.
First and foremost is a guiding principle – we hire “complete” tech professionals, not just technically proficient ones. We know that our people aren’t cogs in a machine, so we’re always worried about the human element of our collaborators. That translates into a hiring practice that allows us to select only professionals that represent us from a technical and a human standpoint. We don’t force people into a role nor are instantly charmed by impressive resumés: our applicants have to go through a strict vetting process that evaluates them thoroughly in both soft and hard skills.
Another major aspect of our hiring process is that it relies heavily on our proprietary AI recruitment solution that allows us to sift through more than a 1 million applicants per year to pick only the very best among them. With its aid, we can quickly cherry-pick the ones that truly stand out that then go on down our hiring funnel to more personal instances with our HR team.
And then there’s the way in which the hiring process is arranged. BairesDev uses a mix of automated and personal instances to fully analyze a pre-selected candidate. There are automated tests that let us evaluate a candidate’s tech skills and English proficiency. But there are also other instances through which we analyze other important factors such as situational awareness and IQ. We know that there are several types of intelligence that help in successful software development – it’s not just about logic but also about communication, empathy, and teamwork.
Some of the candidates we’ve seen in the past talk about “a grueling selection process.” I don’t truly like that representation, as it makes our process seem like it’s some kind of torture. But I agree with the underlying sentiment – becoming a BairesDev team member isn’t easy. It’s a process that lasts 2 to 3 months and that requires multiple evaluations. We are aware of its difficulty because we designed it like that – it’s the only way to get to the Top 1% of Tech Talent.
The Future of Outsourcing and BairesDev
As Chris appropriately pointed out in the podcast, the software development industry is one of the most competitive industries out there. This means that there are a lot of outsourcing companies out there expecting to engage with companies in need of tech talent. That’s a very good thing, as that level of competition raises the bar and forces everyone in the game to improve and evolve on a constant basis.
Unfortunately, the huge popularity of software development outsourcing in post-pandemic times has also attracted a lot of people that see it as something of a gold rush. That directly translates into companies appearing out of nowhere trying to cash into the outsourcing trend. But a lot of those agencies don’t take things seriously as their main concern is money. BairesDev isn’t like that at all.
One of the reasons for that is that we’ve been doing this for more than a decade and have a strong client portfolio that speaks for itself. But there’s also the fact that we’re privately held, which means that we aren’t subjected to the pressure of investors or the market – we do our own thing, we pursue the goals we deem valuable. As I said above, that goal is providing value and quality to our clients, nothing more.
That has positioned us in an unbeatable position – we can offer partnerships to our clients to ultimately grow together. We’ve been doing so for quite some time and our partners believe in us simply because we deliver what we promised them, time and time again. But we’re also aware that the only way to keep going in that direction is by evolving every step of the way.
That brings me to the future of BairesDev and of the outsourcing industry as a whole. I think that the industry will keep growing, thanks to the digital acceleration processes that a lot of businesses need to get through to adapt themselves to the new digital normal. But, as we grow, we all need to develop a new essential capability: oversight from the delivery perspective.
The software development industry provides a difficult product to manage and control. And though we’ve come a long way in terms of oversight, we still need to invest in governance and structure that responds to the new global context. Only by securing that structure can we truly achieve the ultimate outsourcing goal that is a global workforce that can collaborate remotely with anyone without friction.
I know we still have a lot of room for improvement in that regard but I’m proud to be part of a software development company that’s leading the way to walk that walk. Because that’s precisely what BairesDev is doing – not running to catch up with the present but already preparing the way for the future of software development. And that, simply put, is the main reason why BairesDev is the best ally to build tech solutions: because we’re already thinking in the world to come.
Thanks for reading. And remember to listen to Chris’ podcast – it’s amazing and has plenty of valuable insights!
