In a Country not so far, far away

Everyone working in any IT market with a serious enough  job knows for a fact that the all time champion of outsourcing is by all means the exotic sub continent of India. India has the great advantage, besides the currency exchange differences between USD and Rupiahs, that they have a this huge population of well trained, English speaking people (its entire population is around 900+ million that's 9 times Mexico's ). This makes them the worlds largest talent pool (second after China) for all USA based operations. India also embraces a self improving and study culture that most people adhere to. They also are perceived as a more westernized culture compared to Korea or China which is a bonus for any USA organization outsourcing operations with them because that turns communication flow smoother. USA businesses prefer them for all those reasons and this preference is the cause of the great economic growth they have been experiencing in the last 2 decades.

Moving operations offshore is no easy task as you surely can imagine. It requires infrastructure, process definitions, certifications and a whole universe of mechanisms and bureaucratic leaps of faith for the USA based customer to be able to supervise all relevant activities. Besides that, for IT related outsourcing, specifically for that related to software development of any level,  there is also the matter of establishing effective communication with the offshore team. That communication is always going to be slower and more inefficient than between local-native software developers due to cultural and language differences. This communication overhead adds up to the cost of the total operation along with the required investments on infrastructure (Bandwidth, phone lines, conference  calls, etc). There also needs to be more supervision so this is usually covered by adding onshore managers to serve as communication bridges between onshore and offshore team members. Some times it is worth for someone on the offshore team  to visit the customer so that adds traveling expenses. Add all up and the resulting  additional cost is know as TEC (Total Engagement Cost) which means the additional money customers need to pay to afford an offshore team that they otherwise wouldn't pay if they had only onshore people.

The pretty part of offshore is that even with the TEC, the total operation cost is still lower than a onshore team this to the difference in per-engineer net costs. For instance, consider this data:

Country	Position	Avg. Annual Salary (Local Currency)	Avg. Annual  Salary (USD - 4/25/2012)
India	Java Web Developer - Senior	$744,985 INR	$14,190 USD
Mexico	Java Web Developer - Senior	$242,208 MXP	$18,439 USD
USA	Java Web Developer - Senior	$87,638 USD	$87,638 USD

In operation terms this means that you can have 6 Indian engineers for the same cost as 1 USA engineer or 4 Mexican engineers. So its really obvious why US companies move operations offshore. If you noticed on the above data India is roughly 25% to 30% cheaper than Mexico is, which is one of the main reasons you must certainly work with someone who gets his paycheck from iGate Patni, Tata or Infosys.

Now that's not the whole story, remember the TEC? Well that's a big game changer because according to experts TEC on India is about 25% higher than in Mexico an South-America which levels the playing ground for those of us who live here.

There is where the Nearshore marketing term appears into scene.

What's the difference between Offshore and Nearshore? Easy… a smaller TEC and also time zone alignment (which is not always a good thing as we'll discuss it later) . Another good thing about it has to do with travels. One on the requirements of any offshore manager is to visit its offshore team at least one time a year. This helps him connect with the team and boost their morale. Also it is beneficial to bring someone on the offshore team to work onshore from time to time because of the same reasons specially if there is some delicate matter at hand (alpha testing, new development, requirement gathering for a redesign, etc). Given that premise, consider that commercial flights to Bangalore take 22hr ( plus the additional adjustment time) while a short trip from Connecticut to Aguascalientes or Guadalajara is roughly 3hrs to 5hrs, to Rio de Janeiro is around 8 to 10, so that's another perk you get from having a closer (nearer in this case) team. Another aspect to take into account is that Mexico has a lower turnover rate (10%) compared to India (almost 40%) this to the fact that the Mexican labor market is not as harsh as that of India also working conditions are more endurable at medium term, specially those that have to do with working schedule.. There is also the communication matter, What country (excluding Canada) is more culturally aligned to US that good o'l friendly neighbor Mexico?

Then there is the productivity loss associated to every offshore project. US based companies calculate that the productivity loss with India based teams is around 25% so for they to get the same productivity of 4 US based developers they need to have and 5 Indian developers, While in Mexico and South America the productivity is around 10% so you can basically keep teams the same size than those base d on US. This productivity loss is generally a by product of communication overhead and time zone differences.

Considering the previous this is what customers get when you decide to get a Mexican development team to do the bit gardening:

• Cheaper phone calls.
• Less communication overhead.
• Cheaper and more accessible trips.
• Shorter Trips.
• You can get anyone on your team onsite almost the same day.
• Less turnover.
• Less productivity loss.
• Working in the same time zone without risking team burnout.

So why is India then still the undisputed master of IT? Well it has to do with the fact that Mexico and South America are in the newer in this market (20 years average) and also that the English speaking population is significantly smaller than that of India so on-boarding processes are slower. Also the Indian government has created great incentives and bureau shortcuts to ensured that the IT Industry blossoms like a white lotus (made of cash), while in Mexico, for instance, there is no real support for the IT industry and also historically Mexico has never been a start-up friendly place.


I work with lots of people located on Bangalore and Mumbai, they are exactly as anyone would expected a development team from any place on the world to be. The older and experienced ones are walking encyclopedias with great talent and insight, the newer ones are not that savvy but filled with excitement and willingness to learn, and interns are just keyboard operators awaiting their moment to shine. The same happens here, exactly the same. Also companies here follow the same kind of best practices as any offshore service provider in the world, this practices are in fact enforced by the US companies that hire the services (ITIL, CMMI, SAS70, SOX404, etc) so there is really isn't way of not having them.

The only difference I've been able to perceive is that we are willing to take more risks than they are, I guess the job market pressure there is intense, or so have some friends located there told me so, they need to be very careful with the decisions they make to avoid losing their heads, while our job market is less predatory so there are lots of opportunities here and the competition is not that fierce so losing our jobs for a gut made decision is not something that keeps us up at night. Having this freedom is and advantage in many cases where someone has to take a bullet to prevent a greater damage.

So if you'r planning your big start-up and you are short on resources, why not look south and give a try to a Mexican Development team which you can , we are just as capable, but closer and also we can arrange your visits to happen during big festivities (like "San Marcos Fair" on Aguascalientes, A.K.A. "The World's Biggest Cantina" ) so you can get as drunk as a mule, after all, what happens in Mexico stays in Spanish.

Gracias!