As of 2005 Mexico already had more than 125,000 engineers with over seven years of experience, and this pool has grown since. The domestic economy supports a thriving market for technology businesses. Their experience spans the gamut of programming languages, system platforms and applications.

This pool continues to grow rapidly as the number of new technical graduates is accelerating.

New graduates learn English as part of their requirements. Earlier graduates have learned it on the job along with other work experience.

We can't speak about "Mexico," but Hermosillo has a pretty good infrastructure; and it is pretty resilient, too. We didn't know how good we had it until September, 2007. That was when Henriette, a Category 5 hurricane went through Sonora.  In the process, it knocked out phone, power and internet access in much of Hermosillo.

Power in our offices was restored within a few hours; phone and internet access were restored by the end of the second day. The storm went through on Wednesday, September 5 and most people were back at work in the office on Friday, September 7.

There's also running water and even indoor toilets :-)

Each situation is different and we accommodate each client as needed. In general, however, we generally follow this outline:

• As soon as the contract is signed (and sometimes, sooner), we assign a Transition Team. This team is made up of one to three senior people with the appropriate skills and technology experience. More importantly, these are people who we’ve identified over time as being most adept at quickly understanding new situations and requirements.
• The Transition Team engages with the client, while, in parallel, we bring in permanent staff. As new staff comes in, they gradually take over.
• One of the functions of the Transition Team is to figure out any gaps in tools and processes (i.e., what we use versus what the client uses) and figuring out what to keep and what to complement.
• The Transition Team will also get started with requirements and architecture. When there's existing software, the Transition Team will review it to identify weak areas and make suggestions for improvements.
• Once the first couple of members of the team are in place, we take advantage of our proximity and usually have an initial on-site visit for training, knowledge transfer and socializing with the client team.
• Other trips are scheduled as needed. Because the flights are short (< 6 hours door-to-door) and inexpensive (~$600), it is easy enough to have engineers travel back and forth for things like re-architecting, new products, etc.

• We normally hold, at least, weekly meetings with clients. Just as likely, we'll hold short, 10-15 minute daily meetings (i.e., sprints).
• Everybody in the team communicates through Instant Messaging (IM) throughout the day.
• Progress is documented in weekly reports that summarize the work done, hours worked, deliverables and open issues, if any.
• Every meeting is summarized in Minutes.
• All of this is done within the context of Feature-Driven Development (FDD) methodology, an agile methodology. We also use Scrum, as appropriate.
• As appropiae, we may use collaboration portals (e.g., Basecamp, Wrike), wikis, online collaboration (i.e., document sharing, whiteboarding), etc.

We work very hard to find people who “think right,” have very good experience and are good team players. This is not just a "motherhood and apple pie" statement. We’ve had the fortune of working with really high caliber people in the US and our expectations are pretty high.

Although the company is fairly young, as individuals we have a lot of experience hiring world-class technical staff. We’ve gotten very good at recognizing and attracting the “good ones.”

Breadth and depth of experience is important and we look for that first, but sometimes we run into young talent with “superstar” written all over and those go to the top of the list as well.

First and foremost, candidates have a to have very good, fluent English, both spoken and written.

They have to fit and work well with the current staff.  Although people are assigned to specific clients, we all have to work well together as a team.

We usually can make the first few hires for a new team within 3-4 weeks of engagement.  For an out-of-the-beaten- path skill, it may take up to six weeks.

This is possible because we maintain a pretty deep pipeline of pre-qualified candidates for various skills. Desirable candidates go through eight out of the 10 steps of our recruiting process before they are positioned in our pipeline.  When we engage with a new client, it is very likely that we already have several candidates identified already.

The other side of hiring is attracting the people, particularly the top skilled people.  This is made that much easier by our current staff, who are very good in their fields and are very enthusiastic about working at Nearsoft and communicate the excitement to new recruits.

It is our stated goal and company mission to become one of the top 10 best companies to work for in Mexico. For two years in a row, we've gotten confirmation that we are right up there with the best of them!

No, we don’t just grab warm bodies.  In fact, we work hard (and smart) to find people who “think right,” have very good experience and are good team players.

We can do this, and do it quickly, only because we are always looking for talent and keep a long, up-to- date pipeline of candidates.

We follow a 10-step recruiting process and the first eight of those are completed as soon as a candidate is identified.  This is a significant, but strategic investment for the company.

1. Identify resume with appropriate skills and experience.
   • We don't invest looking for new graduates, except for "Academy" candidates or as interns.
2. Initial, one-on-one phone interview to spot-check claims made in the resume.
   • Ask candidates to be specific about what they did in their resumes.  Not what the company did, or their team did, but about their individual contribution.
   • Ask candidates to speak some English up front to determine if they are going to be capable of handling the Logic Test.
3. Most likely, we will also ask the candidate to transpose his resume to our format.  This is important for various reasons,
   • to make sure we have complete information on the candidate,
   • to make it easier to identify “holes” or weak spots in the candidate’s background,
   • to normalize our database of resumes, so they can be compared among each other.
4. Candidate is asked to take our Logic test that checks out how the candidate thinks and approaches problem solving, not what the candidate knows (that comes later). The candidate must score 16 or above to continue. This has turned out to be an excellent tool to identify candidates who "think right."
5. Initial, one-on-one phone interview to check level of spoken English.
6. Candidate is asked to take a couple of written tests, including an English test and one or more technology-specific tests.
7. Candidate is interviewed over the phone by one of our engineers to determine if we should do an in-person technical interview.
8. Candidate is interviewed by the folks in Hermosillo, in Spanish. We've already checked English fluency earlier, so at this stage we want to figure out the candidate's depth of knowledge in technical areas.
9. Candidate is then interviewed again, in English. This time one or two client representatives may join the team.
10. An up-or-down decision is made by the interviewing team, including the client representatives.
11. Reference checks happen.
12. Terms are negotiated with the candidate and an offer is made.

Once the offer is accepted,

13. Arrangements are made for the new employee, including the move, temporary housing, desk, computer, telephone, email, etc.
14. Our orientation program trains them in our tools and processes so he/she can become well integrated with the existing Nearsoft team.

Our staff has a wide range of experience with many languages and platforms. However, by design, they are assigned to specific client teams.  Because of that, when we sign up a new client we invariably have to staff a new team from scratch. This gives us the flexibility to accommodate new technologies relatively easily.

So it really becomes a question of whether we can find people with specific experience in a reasonable timeframe.  The answer to that we can make the first hire for a new team within 3-4 weeks on average, six weeks max.

Besides recruiting the right people quickly, we have also demonstrated that we can integrate them into effective working teams just as quickly.

From previous companies, we’ve had the experience of hiring many people, very quickly only to end up with a number of competing approaches to designing and creating software.  Over time, these “camps” found it hard to work with one another, to the detriment of the business. This time around we’ve made sure that we would not go through that experience again.

Because of the nature of our business, everybody is assigned to a long- term team and so when engage with a new client we invariably have to staff a new team with new people.  This gives us the flexibility to accommodate new technologies relatively easily because we can staff the team with people with specific experience.

The overall SDLC and development methodology does not change because of the technology in use.

Also, having expertise in multiple software technologies gives us the breadth to recommend alternatives that may increase your chances of success.

Yes, that's true. And that's why we hire people with experience in the specific technology and eventually form "centers of excellence" (CoE) around the more popular ones. We don't always manage to do this, but our strategy is to hire very senior people first to create Centers of Excellence around them.

Currently, we can claim CoE around Java, .NET, J2ME, LAMP (including Python) and Lotus. That means that for each of these technologies, we have a number people with a mix of experience that can leverage each other.

Having said that, we work very hard at hiring people with a demonstrated ability to learn new technologies quickly and can just as quickly spot the strength and weaknesses in new technologies. Technology changes all the time and critical thinking is the skill for the long run.

It often makes sense to look for a vendor who has some experience in the overall market your product fits into (e.g., healthcare). While the technologies in use may change, the functional demands of these fields do not, or do so only slowly, so you can leverage a vendor&rsquos experience to your benefit.

Nearsoft's turnover rate is very low, less than 3% as of this writing (i.e., 1 person, as of May 2008). That's for voluntary terminations.

Involuntary terminations (yes, we’ve made hiring mistakes) are at 4% in the last 12 months.

This is the result of a number of things, not least of which is that in Mexico people don't jump around from job to job. It is generally frown upon (by friends and family as well as employers). Once you’ve made a commitment is pretty hard to walk away form it.

In particular, it is very, very difficult to get anybody to move while they are working on specific deliverables or specific projects. You have to catch them during transition periods. Even then, leaving a company is a big deal and an agonizing decision.

The one thing that will get somebody to quit is when their employer is not living up to its commitments (explicit or implied). A broken covenant is a license to walk.

At Nearsoft we work very hard at creating an attractive place for innovators. We have won several awards that recognize these efforts,

• For the second year in a row Nearsoft has been honored as one of the Top 20 Great Places to Work 2009 in Mexico. This year we placed #17 among technology companies in IT and Telecom. This category includes more and bigger companies than the category we were in last year. We're pretty excited to be up there with the "big guns," including well-respected companies like Nokia, SAS, HP, Dell, Symantec and SAP. In 2008 Nearsoft placed as #8 among companies with 50 to 500 employees in Mexico.
• Nearsoft has been honored with a place the WorldBlu List of Most Democratic Workplaces™ 2009. This year's list is comprised of 40 organizations from a diversity of industries including aerospace, technology, manufacturing, healthcare, telecommunications, retail and services with combined annual revenue of nearly $12 billion. Nearsoft is the first company from Latin America to make the list.

This is a reflection of our goal to make Nearsoft the best place possible for its employees. From the office environment to the relationship among employees and even the clients we engage with. We are not perfect, but we keep getting better.

• We are very careful to make clear commitments and then live up to them religiously.
• Nearsoft is also a fun place to work at. People like working with each other and it shows.
• We encourage people to take charge and be themselves.
• Nearsoft is very attractive to technical people because we work with very innovative clients that keep us at the bleeding edge of technology.
• We have very nice, comfortable offices (OK, the parking lot is too small).

All of this has helped us get these awards,

• For the second year in a row Nearsoft has been honored as one of the Top 20 Great Places to Work 2009 in Mexico. This year we placed #17 among technology companies in IT and Telecom. This category includes more and bigger companies than the category we were in last year. We're pretty excited to be up there with the "big guns," including well-respected companies like Nokia, SAS, HP, Dell, Symantec and SAP. In 2008 Nearsoft placed as #8 among companies with 50 to 500 employees in Mexico.
• Nearsoft has been honored with a place the WorldBlu List of Most Democratic Workplaces™ 2009. This year's list is comprised of 40 organizations from a diversity of industries including aerospace, technology, manufacturing, healthcare, telecommunications, retail and services with combined annual revenue of nearly $12 billion. Nearsoft is the first company from Latin America to make the list.

On average, the hourly rates are higher for equivalent experience. However, due to the time and geographical proximity, the Total Cost of Engagement (TCE) is lower in Mexico, by as much as 20%.

We will be happy to discuss this further. Please, contact us.

This attitude is changing, but in some cases it may still make sense to outsource to an offshore location, just not software development. Call Centers, Business Processes, and other back room activities may even benefit from the time separation. Software development, however, is most definitely not an activity that benefits from this separation.

Under the best of circumstances, software development is hard to do well. Splitting the development team across 12-13 time zones makes it even harder, almost impossible to do successfully.

If you plan to outsource software development, you should first consider doing it onshore, within two time zones of your US-based team. Your Total Cost of Engagement (TCE) will be lower and the risks will be much more manageable.

If you plan to outsource the development for a substantial number of projects/products, you should consider having teams in at least two locales to hedge your risks. This way if one locale develops endemic problems (e.g., high staff turnover), you would have a team in the other locale ready to take over. This also has the added benefit of keeping your outsourcing vendors on their toes and performing at their best (i.e., competition works) .

The best approach, technically, is to keep all development co-located. If it makes sense to outsource, depending on the situation, onshore might be a good choice. In Life 2.0, author Rich Karlgaard describes 150 “reasonably priced US cities and towns you might consider.”

Even then, keep it within two time zones. Going beyond that makes it extremely more difficult to keep everybody in sync and working as a team.

Alternatively, you can also combine onshore and nearshore solutions to get the best of both options. Working with a nearshore vendor with operations in Canada or Mexico, you can also place some of the outsourced staff onsite in the US for extended periods of time if that’s important. The special, TN (NAFTA) visas allow credentialed professionals from these countries to work in the US for an indefinite period of time years (i.e., three years for first issue, renewable every 12 months afterwards).

If you are building widgets, then this model may work for you. It may also work for back office functions (i.e., functions that don’t require a whole lot of interaction between the people in the US and the people offshore).

However, if you are developing software, this does not apply. “Working around the clock” is as big a myth as “the mythical man-month.” Even trying to do system QA offshore is problematic, particularly when the teams’ working hours have no overlap whatsoever. Try having daily Scrum sprints with people who are more than a couple of time zones apart—it’s just not sustainable.

Engineers need to talk directly to one another, as often as possible. Product Managers need to be in direct, close contact with engineers and not through an offshore Engagement Manager. Everybody needs to talk to everybody all the time.

In the traditional offshore setting, the teams will play email ping-pong, sending questions and counter-questions back and forth. One team will ask a question today only to get a request for clarification to the question the next day. This is very frustrating to both teams and causes delays and quality problems.

On the other hand, doing development or QA in Mexico, or even Central America gets rid of the these negative side-effects. In this scenario, everybody will be at work at the same time and they can talk with each other and clarify any issues throughout the day.

This is true given the sheer size of those countries, even after taking into account the different definitions of what an “engineering” degree is.

However, India and China also have a lot of demand for these engineers. This means that offshore vendors will have a heck of a time finding and retaining experienced engineers and project managers.

India’s outsourcing industry has doubled every year for the last four years and the unfortunate side-effect of that is extremely high turnover as offshoring companies compete for experienced people. Also, the rise in salaries and the valuation of the rupee vs the dollar has pushed the three major Indian outsourcing companies, TCS, Wipro and Infosys to establish offices in Latin America.

Besides of all that, the critical success factor for software development is proximity in time and location. Having access to a large number of engineers is a moot point if they are more 12-13 time zones and half a world away.

Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora state, is a nice, quiet city south of Phoenix.  With over 700,000 people, Hermosillo is a safe, family-oriented city. This, plus a low cost of living makes Hermosillo attractive for young families.

Hermosillo is a “High IQ” city with over 17 universities and colleges, 12 of which have software engineering programs at the BS, MS and PhD levels. This includes a Tec de Monterrey campus. The “Tec” is the top school in Latin America.

There are daily flights to Los Angeles, Phoenix and Houston, the city is within easy reach of Western and Mountain states.