Guest Blog: How & Why Latin America is a Game Changing Talent Market for Companies | RTI ft. Brian Samson

Originally featured on the Recruitment Transactions International podcast with Simon Child | Guest: Brian Samson, Founder of Plugg Technologies

The Perception Problem

Most American executives have never set foot in Latin America, and their entire mental model of the region comes from Netflix. That is the uncomfortable truth Brian Samson laid out when host Simon Child pushed him to explain why U.S. companies are suddenly rethinking where they build their engineering teams. Samson did not dance around it. Child kept circling back to the same question throughout the conversation: what is actually driving this shift, and why now?

Samson’s answer cuts against the popular narrative. It is not the population that scares companies away from Latin America, he argued, it is a perception problem built entirely on cartel dramas and inflation headlines. “It’s not the population, it’s the government, the institutions that are doing this. Bad decisions by institutions, but the population is unfairly judged based on that,” Samson said. That single reframe, separating a country’s politics from its talent pool, is the thesis running through everything else he covers.

Samson has the track record to back it up. He has spent 11 years building nearshore staffing businesses, made more than 500 placements, and built three separate companies to $4M ARR each. He moved to Buenos Aires with two suitcases, grew a software development team to 80 engineers, and eventually exited that business. Today he runs Plugg Technologies from Hawaii, placing senior Latin American developers with U.S. companies that have grown tired of the tradeoffs that come with offshoring further afield.

From Two Cells to One: How COVID Rewired the Sales Pitch

Samson framed the entire nearshoring industry as having gone through a structural shift, and the way he described it is worth sitting with. For his first five years in the business, every sales conversation required two separate pitches: first convince a prospect that Latin America was viable at all, then convince them to work with his company specifically. He called this the “two cells” model.

Post-COVID, that changed. Companies stopped needing to be sold on distributed teams in general because the pandemic forced them to figure it out on their own. What they learned in the process, according to Samson, is that offshoring and nearshoring solve different problems. Offshoring can offer real benefits, but companies discovered there is no substitute for getting immediate feedback on live work, no substitute for jumping on a same-day Zoom call or WhatsApp thread when something breaks. That realization collapsed the old two-step sales process into one, and it is a big part of why Plugg’s growth has become more predictable over the past few years.

The Resilience Dividend

One of the more interesting exchanges in the episode came when Simon Child pressed Samson on what actually makes Latin American engineers different, beyond time zones and cost. “We’ve talked before offline about the characteristics of your workforce,” asked Simon, and Brian’s response was one of the more thoughtful moments in the conversation.

His theory is that volatility builds a specific kind of professional. Engineers who grow up navigating currency swings, unpredictable inflation, and institutional instability develop a resilience that is hard to train into someone who has never had to. Samson described the resulting workforce as scrappy, gritty, and comfortable with ambiguity, the kind of team members who do not need a 21-step process spelled out for every problem. Clients, he said, consistently comment on how little hand-holding is required and how often his engineers arrive at creative solutions on their own.

Sleeping Through the Fire

The most concrete illustration of the nearshore time zone advantage came when Samson walked through what a typical night actually looks like for him. He is seven hours ahead of Argentina and a few hours tighter with Mexico, which means customer issues that surface on the U.S. East Coast get picked up by his Latin America based managers while he is still asleep in Hawaii. By the time he checks his email the next morning, the problem has often already been identified, investigated, and resolved, all without his involvement.

That is not a small operational detail. It is the difference between a founder who has to be everywhere at once and a business that can run itself across a full workday he never sees. Samson credited this dynamic with letting him rely on Latin America based leadership even during a period when his business had no U.S. based president at all, a role that came later when a partner joined to run day to day operations from Atlanta.

Bootstrapped and Balanced

When Simon Child turned to the growth mechanics behind Plugg, the conversation got more candid. “What are the constraints on growth for you? My understanding is that you’re self-funded,” asked Child, and Samson did not shy away from the tradeoffs of building without outside capital. Every hiring mistake, he explained, comes directly out of his own pocket, whether that money would have gone toward a vacation, a mortgage, or his kids’ tuition.

Rather than chase venture funding, Samson built a partnership model that lets him grow without taking on risk he cannot control. Plugg now works with roughly a dozen U.S. staffing companies that lack a Latin America delivery engine of their own, filling that gap so those firms can offer nearshore talent without investing in payroll infrastructure or recruiters. On the other side, Plugg also maintains around 25 direct clients. Samson said he deliberately keeps that split close to 50/50, using the staffing partnerships to fund the harder, slower work of winning direct customers. He noted that buyers evaluating the company someday will likely value the direct-client base more heavily, which is part of why he protects that balance rather than letting the easier partnership channel take over. Anyone evaluating nearshore staffing partners for the first time will recognize this as a more disciplined growth model than the typical land-grab approach in the space.

As for where it all leads, Samson was candid that an eventual exit is not off the table. He gets approached regularly by M&A advisors and investment bankers, but he is holding out for the business to reach a size where the buyer pool matures and the transaction itself becomes more professional rather than opportunistic.

How to Get Started

For companies weighing whether nearshoring makes sense for their own engineering or operations needs, Samson’s conversation with Simon Child points to a few concrete first steps.

1. Separate the country from its headlines. Before ruling out a region based on news coverage, look at the specific institutions and track records of the companies you would actually be working with.
2. Ask about time zone overlap, not just hourly rates. The real value of nearshoring shows up in same-day problem resolution, not just lower costs.
3. Decide whether you need a partner or a direct hire pipeline. Companies without in-house recruiting infrastructure may be better served by a staffing partner who already has boots on the ground.
4. Start with a single hire before scaling a team. Samson’s own clients often begin with one placement and expand once they see how their new hire operates.

The Bottom Line

The throughline of this conversation, and the reason it resonates beyond Samson’s own business, is that nearshoring succeeds when it stops being treated as a cost play and starts being treated as a collaboration model. The engineers, the time zones, and the institutional realities of Latin America all point toward the same conclusion Samson has spent 11 years building a business around: proximity still matters, even in a remote-first world.

Listen to the full episode: Recruitment Transactions International 

Learn more about nearshore hiring: plugg.tech  The Nearshore Cafe Podcast.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is nearshoring, and how is it different from offshoring? Nearshoring means hiring talent in nearby countries, typically in similar or overlapping time zones, rather than in distant regions. Brian Samson of Plugg Technologies describes it as a way to get the cost benefits of hiring outside the U.S. while keeping the real-time collaboration that offshore teams often struggle to provide, since immediate feedback loops matter more to most businesses than raw hourly savings.

Why do U.S. companies choose Latin America over Asia for outsourcing? Time zone overlap is the main driver. Latin American countries like Mexico and Argentina share close to the same business hours as the U.S., enabling same-day communication over Zoom, Slack, or WhatsApp. Brian Samson of Plugg Technologies argues this synchronous collaboration, not just labor cost, is what convinces companies to shift work to Latin America instead of Asia after trying offshore models first.

What roles can be nearshored to Latin America? Software engineering and IT roles are the most common, and they are the primary focus for companies like Plugg Technologies. Businesses also nearshore product management, QA, DevOps, and technical support functions. Brian Samson notes that mid-market tech companies and staffing firms without their own Latin America presence are typically the ones filling these roles through nearshore partners.

How much can companies save by nearshoring instead of hiring domestically? Savings vary by role and country, but nearshoring generally costs more than offshoring to Asia while still costing significantly less than U.S. based hiring. Brian Samson of Plugg Technologies frames the value proposition as arbitrage rather than pure discount, meaning companies pay somewhat more than they would offshore but receive substantially more collaboration and delivery speed in return.

Why does Brian Samson split his business between staffing partners and direct clients? Samson maintains roughly a 50/50 balance between working with U.S. staffing companies that lack a Latin America delivery engine and serving direct clients himself. The staffing partnerships help fund growth without external investment, while the direct client relationships build long-term enterprise value. He has said this balance also matters to future buyers evaluating Plugg Technologies.

What does Plugg Technologies do? Plugg Technologies is a nearshore staffing company founded by Brian Samson that places senior software engineers and IT professionals from across Latin America with U.S. based companies. The firm has made more than 500 placements over 11 years and works with both direct clients and U.S. staffing companies seeking a Latin America delivery capability. More information is available at plugg.tech.

Brian Samson is the founder of Plugg Technologies and host of The Nearshore Cafe Podcast. This post is based on his appearance on Recruitment Transactions International.