Latin America faces the challenge of retaining its technological talent

Rio de Janeiro's insecurity and a juicy money supply convinced software engineer Bruno Ribeiro to move to California, the great technology hub of the United States, whose companies are increasingly recruiting Latin Americans.

It was a few years ago, he worked remotely and did not plan to emigrate, but one event changed his mind.

“It was a night when my wife and I witnessed four robberies. We didn't want to see this violence so close to our children,” she tells AFP at her home in Los Angeles, where she works for entertainment giant Disney.

“The big change today is that people prefer to stay in Brazil working for foreign companies because of currency depreciation,” says Ribeiro, 39. “Now the offers are much better.”

The digitization of life triggered the global demand for software engineers, developers and programmers, a trend that was finally entrenched by the pandemic.

Now the general shortage of these professionals is “enormous,” emphasizes Diego Bertolini, director of human resources at the digital marketing agency Raccoon.Monks.

To attract them, international companies “are being extremely aggressive in terms of wages and profits,” which poses “a big challenge” for the region, he tells AFP.

This appetite reconfigured the labor market by blurring traditional borders and increasingly incorporating remote hiring.

The result of this equation: by the end of 2022 there will be a 48% shortage of digital workforce to meet Latin American demand, according to international consultancy PageGroup, which specializes in talent selection.

- Earn in dollars -

The economic impact of the pandemic resulted in the devaluation of Latin American currencies, which made foreign offerings attractive.

Working at home in exchange for dollars or euros became more convenient than leaving, and allows companies “from abroad” to save costs.

“It suits all of us: it suits me, it suits them. I am happy, they are happy,” launches Bolivian Adriana Zegarra (44), a self-taught programmer who works for a Canadian company without leaving her home in front of the snowy Illimani in La Paz.

“The contracts for international consultants for my position are between 2,000 and 3,000 dollars per month,” he explains to AFP. “Here are ministers who win that!”

A Bolivian company “would pay me three times less for the same,” he adds.

The big losers are thousands of small and medium-sized startups that bid to be born or grow in the region and face the difficulty of obtaining or retaining staff.

This is the case of Jhon Montevilla (39), Zegarra's friend and technology entrepreneur. He wanted to open an ad platform in the style of OLX and MercadoLibre for the Bolivian market, but the application “could never see the light”.

“When it was time to invest in marketing, the funds had already gone into our salaries for seeking to be competitive” with what similar companies offer in more important markets, he says.

Faced with this reality, emerging or consolidated Latin American firms often choose to train workers, some with little or no previous experience.

“A great internal effort is made to get them to what we need” but “while we are training them and they are prepared, a better proposal comes”, explains Bertolini.

“They don't think twice before accepting,” he regrets.

- In search of skills -

An example of this dynamic is Uruguayan Guzmán Freigedo (31), who has just been signed by the Dutch firm Picnic, an online supermarket, as a “network engineer”.

In his previous company, “they needed someone more senior and more experienced, and practically the first year they trained me for everything I had to do afterwards,” he says. Three years later he left.

In Amsterdam he will win “three to four times” what he won in Montevideo. But it clarifies to AFP that it is not going “because of an economic issue” but to “have another experience” and work with “more international” groups.

In Uruguay, the sector has an unmet demand for 5,000 technicians, “a number that has increased in recent times,” Matías Boix, vice-president of the People Talent Commission of the Uruguayan Chamber of Information Technologies, told AFP.

In Brazil, 797,000 information technology professionals are expected to demand between 2021 and 2025, reports Brasscom, the organization that groups the sector. Currently 53,000 people are trained per year for this sector, but the market has an annual need of 159,000, he adds.

According to the specialized firm IDC, the region grew 8.5% in the information technology market in 2021, and this year it will reach 9.4%.

Although some observers warn of the lag of universities and public policies in Latin America in terms of technology training, in the last five years the region's IT workforce has grown nearly twice as fast as that of the United States, according to PageGroup.

Mentioned as a good example of actions to address the lack of professionals, Colombia has launched a plan to train 100,000 young programmers.

For Sarah Stanton of the Education Program of the Inter-American Dialogue Expert Center, the private sector and state institutions should work together and even establish regional exchanges to address these “skills challenges”, which are essential for moving forward.

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