Opening A Software Development Center In Argentina??

[roigr]

Hello All,

I came across this forum as part of my research about Argentina and I would tremendously appreciate your help.

Here's some background:
I work for a software company in California USA and was asked to identify an offshore location for a development center. The reasons for doing that is obviously the cost of developers in the US (I am a developer myself so not complaining...) and also, equally painful problem, the time it takes to find good developers. FYI - its 3-4 months.

So I started looking around. I disqualified India (I have my reasons) and china (the IP and Internet censorship not really working for me) and I am looking at other usual suspects. And then it hit me - why not Argentina? I have some experience with Arg engineers and for the most part I was happy with their performance. Reliable, knowledgeable and capable. Additionally, the time difference is minimal, good level of english and visiting the center will not be a pain

I am considering 3 locations in Arg: Buenos Aires, Cordoba and Mendoza. I would need to build a team of 10-15 people with a mix of Jr developers, mid and senior including team leads. I'll be looking for Java skills (J2ee, REST, Web services, MySQL, Spring MVC, apologies for the non-techies) and QA engineers.

So much for the background, now come the questions part:

1. How hard (or easy) would it be to find these precious developers in the above cities? (measured by the amount of time).
2. What would be the compensation to attract the best (Jr, mid, and Sr.) in BA? Mendoza? Cordoba?
3. Can someone tell me the cost to employer? (I'll probably hire a law firm to help me with that down the road but it would be good to rough understanding)
4. Any advice on things I should be aware off or worry about? War stories welcomed!
5. Would you recommend coming to Arg? Why?

I apologize for asking so many questions and truly appreciate anyone who is willing to take the time and answer.

Thank you!

 

[thomasb]

Hey Yaelon,

I can see why you would think that Argentina would be a good place to do that, I did as well at one point. However things have changed a lot here over the last few years and I would say that it's probably one of the last places I would setup a dev center today. Wages aren't that cheap, taxes are high and employment laws are complicated and gives all power to the employee.

1. Probably not too long to find them, but probably a LOT longer to train them (depending on how "advanced" what you do is). You will also have language/communication issues (even with English speakers).

2. The best? My guess for BA would be roughly: 7-10k/10-15k/20-30k (pesos per month) (I live in the north and the prices are different so hopefully someone else can correct me if I am wrong here).

3. I have no hard numbers - but more than anywhere else I know of.

4. See the forum posts below for good war stories. I think one of the issues to know about is that's more or less impossible to fire anyone - no matter how bad or lazy they are - without paying a substantial compensation.

5. No. I don't mean to be too negative, it's absolutely possible (I am doing it - and so are several others) but the economic and political situation here is just too complicated at the moment.

At this point in time I would probably look at Chile or Brasil (or maybe Columbia?).

The Chilean government welcomes foreign companies and investments, especially in IT (see for example Start-up Chile: http://startupchile.org/ - an impressive and successful start-up incubator). * See this techcrunch article for more info: http://techcrunch.co...-san-francisco/

I have a friend that runs a dev center in Chile and he has only positive things to say about it, also Google recently opened a data centre in Chile (not here which in theory would make more sense).

Here are some earlier threads with relevant information:

http://baexpats.org/...are developmen
http://baexpats.org/...re development
http://baexpats.org/...re +development
http://baexpats.org/...re +development

Some of them are from the opposite angle but read through the entire threads and you'll find loads of great information written by several of the other members on this forum that runs software companies (or other types of companies) or work in the software industry.

Good luck whatever you decide!

-thomas-

 

[citygirl]

You don't want to consider Argentina for the reasons mentioned above. 25% average inflation, budget 25-30% raises for employees every year, very high corporate taxes, very complicated employment laws and an unstable market.

If I could do it over again, I would look at Chile and then probably Uruguay. Brasil is stable but not inexpensive. I don't know enough about Peru/Columbia but would def look into them.

 

[Davidglen77]

Even though the company I work for is Argentine owned I have to agree with some other posters and tell you to look at Chile or Uruguay. Argentina is just too complicated, if your clients are outside of Argentina and you will just be bringing money in to pay to keep your operations center going, it's not that bad in terms of corporate taxes because you will only be paying payroll and social security taxes as your profits are not made in Argentina. However when you wire money in from outside of the country it automatically becomes pesos and paid to you at the official rate which is barely 5:1 right now. For professional programmers between salary and payroll taxes calculate around $15,000 pesos per month, per employee. There are a lot of technology professionals here, programmers, database managers, hardware and telephony techs, so you won't have a hard time filling vacancies. But you may not be happy with the work style and ethic. What you should do is contract a project to a software factory here to see if you can work well with them and then gauge it from there. Good luck.

 

[mrporoto]

I have a friend here who does dev work for people in US,he is argie.If you want to pm an email I could ask him if he can help?
I know nothing about this area,just a thought.

 

[garryl]

Hello All,

I came across this forum as part of my research about Argentina and I would tremendously appreciate your help.

Here's some background:
I work for a software company in California USA and was asked to identify an offshore location for a development center. The reasons for doing that is obviously the cost of developers in the US (I am a developer myself so not complaining...) and also, equally painful problem, the time it takes to find good developers. FYI - its 3-4 months.

So I started looking around. I disqualified India (I have my reasons) and china (the IP and Internet censorship not really working for me) and I am looking at other usual suspects. And then it hit me - why not Argentina? I have some experience with Arg engineers and for the most part I was happy with their performance. Reliable, knowledgeable and capable. Additionally, the time difference is minimal, good level of english and visiting the center will not be a pain

I am considering 3 locations in Arg: Buenos Aires, Cordoba and Mendoza. I would need to build a team of 10-15 people with a mix of Jr developers, mid and senior including team leads. I'll be looking for Java skills (J2ee, REST, Web services, MySQL, Spring MVC, apologies for the non-techies) and QA engineers.

So much for the background, now come the questions part:

1. How hard (or easy) would it be to find these precious developers in the above cities? (measured by the amount of time).
   
2. What would be the compensation to attract the best (Jr, mid, and Sr.) in BA? Mendoza? Cordoba?
   
3. Can someone tell me the cost to employer? (I'll probably hire a law firm to help me with that down the road but it would be good to rough understanding)
   
4. Any advice on things I should be aware off or worry about? War stories welcomed!
   
5. Would you recommend coming to Arg? Why?

I apologize for asking so many questions and truly appreciate anyone who is willing to take the time and answer.

Thank you!

I was once a high tech guy. I know Intel has a team like that in BA on hardware design (simple stuff).
I have to say China is way better than Argentina as far as the business is concerned. The news
censorship is only on news in Chinese, not English papers. But you may have more fun in BA as
Shanghai/Beijing is very different from BA.

Oh, BA is the only place, hard to find good people outside BA. Once you own these employees,
your headache start immediately. You are better off to write the code yourself.

I would say do it if you company is paying for it, and no cares about the results.
So far, companies have R&D and support team here only because they selll products
here, and the R&D is only for support.

 

[garryl]

Hard to mix business and pleasure, my ultimate goal!

 

[fifs2]

Hello All,

I came across this forum as part of my research about Argentina and I would tremendously appreciate your help.

Here's some background:
I work for a software company in California USA and was asked to identify an offshore location for a development center. The reasons for doing that is obviously the cost of developers in the US (I am a developer myself so not complaining...) and also, equally painful problem, the time it takes to find good developers. FYI - its 3-4 months.

So I started looking around. I disqualified India (I have my reasons) and china (the IP and Internet censorship not really working for me) and I am looking at other usual suspects. And then it hit me - why not Argentina? I have some experience with Arg engineers and for the most part I was happy with their performance. Reliable, knowledgeable and capable. Additionally, the time difference is minimal, good level of english and visiting the center will not be a pain

I am considering 3 locations in Arg: Buenos Aires, Cordoba and Mendoza. I would need to build a team of 10-15 people with a mix of Jr developers, mid and senior including team leads. I'll be looking for Java skills (J2ee, REST, Web services, MySQL, Spring MVC, apologies for the non-techies) and QA engineers.

So much for the background, now come the questions part:

1. How hard (or easy) would it be to find these precious developers in the above cities? (measured by the amount of time).
   
2. What would be the compensation to attract the best (Jr, mid, and Sr.) in BA? Mendoza? Cordoba?
   
3. Can someone tell me the cost to employer? (I'll probably hire a law firm to help me with that down the road but it would be good to rough understanding)
   
4. Any advice on things I should be aware off or worry about? War stories welcomed!
   
5. Would you recommend coming to Arg? Why?

I apologize for asking so many questions and truly appreciate anyone who is willing to take the time and answer.

Thank you!

Our Argentine partner, ex President of Oracle Southern Cone tried this very venture in 2003/4. His idea was 1000 CMMI trained developers in a converted warehouse in Puerto Madera rivalling India and China with their capacity. He hired 200 engineers and a few PMs, managers etc in 2003 and about 50 in the Tech polo in tandil. He flew contacts from India for the training and went on multiple sales trips to China and India to secure large contracts with companies there..he was interviewed on Cnn Latam discussing his plans to revolutionalize the SW industry in Argentina. The company folded in 2005. Staffing & quality issues - he couldn't secure enough large scale resources to meet demand. He spent about $3m of his own money on the venture. Maybe the volume of work he was aiming for was the issue - I know a couple of small local development houses that do well with about 15-20 staff here in Bsas.

 

[Climber]

Hello All,

I came across this forum as part of my research about Argentina and I would tremendously appreciate your help.

Hello Yaelon, did you consider to find a small outsourcing software company here in bs.as. push devs stuff to them and just supervice what they do?
There are a lot of companies here like that. This way you can avoid a lot of innecesary things to do.

 

[roigr]

Thank you all for your valuable input.

I must admit, I am a bit surprised that overwhelmingly people here recommend not to come to the Arg. For my company, and personally for me, quality is everything. Our line of business doesn't allow production bugs nor delays in delivering high quality software. I am worried because many of you mention people's quality as a major issue.

I have considered using an outsource company in Arg but there are 2 main problems with that:

1. I am very concerned giving control over our source code to another company (yes we own it, but KNOW and understand it).
2. Their overhead makes it less attractive.

@citygirl - what do you mean 25% raises to employee on a yearly basis? This sounds almost fictional???

Anyone knows about salaries in Cordoba or Mendoza?

Again, thank you all for you input!