Safety concerns at home in Rio de Janeiro and a bumper pay packet convinced Bruno Ribeiro to join the burgeoning ranks of Latin Americans moving to California to work in information technology (IT).
Software engineer Ribeiro used to work remotely and had no intention of emigrating, but a harrowing incident changed his mind.
“It was one night that my wife and I witnessed four robberies. We didn’t want to see that violence so close to our children,” he said from his home in Los Angeles, where he works for entertainment giant Disney.
Photo: AFP
In Latin America, like elsewhere, demand for software engineers, developers and programmers has exploded.
Last year, the Latin American IT market grew 8.5 percent, said market researcher International Data Corp, adding that it expects it to grow another 9.4 percent this year.
However, firms face an “enormous” deficit in skilled IT professionals, said Diego Bertolini, human resources director at digital marketing agency Raccoon.Monks.
International companies “are being extremely aggressive in terms of salaries and benefits” to capture Latin American talent, providing the region’s firms with “a great challenge,” Bertolini said.
Global consultancy PageGroup said the upshot is that by the end of this year, Latin America would have 48 percent fewer IT specialists than demand requires.
One of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic was the devaluation of Latin American currencies, which made international work opportunities that pay in US dollars or euros more attractive.
At the same time, companies hiring remote workers found that they could save costs.
“It suits everyone ... I’m happy and they’re happy,” said Bolivian Adriana Zegarra, a self-taught programmer who works for a Canadian firm from La Paz.
“Contracts for international consultants in my post are between US$2,000 and US$3,000 a month,” Zegarra said. “Here there are ministers that earn that.”
She said she would earn “three times less” if she worked for a Bolivian company.
The losers in the story are the thousands of small and medium-sized start-ups in the region that struggle to attract or retain staff.
Jhon Montevilla, 39, wanted to launch an online marketplace in Bolivia, but his application “never saw the light of day.”
“When you need to invest in marketing, you’ve already spent your funds on salaries in an attempt to be competitive,” he said.
Faced with this problem, Latin American firms often opt to train staff with little or no experience.
“We make a big internal effort to get them to what we need” but even “while we’re still training them and they are becoming ready, a better proposal arrives,” Bertolini said. “They don’t think twice before accepting.”
Local governments and higher institutions are starting to react.
Colombia, for example, has put in place a plan to train 100,000 young people, but they have a long way to go.
Brazil trains 53,000 people a year in IT, but the industry needs 159,000 new professionals a year, said Brasscom, a company that promotes the IT sector.
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