Let's say you run an adtech company in NYC, are constantly looking for Java engineers, and are sick of getting into insane bidding wars and blowing your recruiting budget on a few developers.
What would I do? I would open an office in Guadalajara, Mexico.
For the geographically uninitiated, Guadalajara is Mexico's 2nd biggest city and considered its tech hub. It's also known for Mariachis, Birria, and a sandwich that is drowned in tomato sauce. It's about a 3.5 hour flight from LA and SF. And around a 4.5 hour flight from NYC.
It also happens to have a giant office teeming with Java engineers - Oracle.
Oracle opened a massive office in Guadalajara 6 or 7 years ago. According to developers I've spoken with, they approached every engineer and offered a substantial raise on what they were currently making, around 30%. This obviously got them the cream of the crop.
The result all these years later, is that there is a massive pool of mostly Java developers based in Guadalajara, working in this large corporation but often not particularly fulfilled.
Here is an idea of the candidates in Oracle Guadalajara right now (most of these are tech) -
And if you want to get a bit more nitty-gritty, let's take a look at some of the profiles, and career trajectories.
As you can see, several large US tech firms are already fishing for talent down here. Microsoft notably has been very successful in getting people out of Oracle Guadalajara.
What are the salaries in Guadalajara? They are similar to the rest of the large cities in Mexico
Last week I spoke with a guy who has 4 years of experience making 65k pesos per month or around 32k USD per year.
Another guy I spoke with makes around 85k pesos per month or around 44k dollars per year. He has around 10 years of experience.
For a fraction of a coastal US city cost, you would be able to pay over market for the best talent here.