Mario Corchado on Nearshore Salesforce Teams, Agile Culture & Life in Mexico City

Brian: [Music] Welcome everyone to another episode of the Nearshore Cafe podcast. I’m Brian Samson, your host, an entrepreneur who works and does business in Latin America. Today, I’m very excited about our guest, Mario Corchado. Mario is going to talk to us a lot about leadership – technical leadership from Latin America, working across cultures, borders, a lot of great stuff, a lot of great learnings to come. Before I bring Mario on, I just want to give a thanks to our sponsor, Plug Technologies, plug.tech. Plug is a great way to find talent all across Latin America for growing U.S. companies. Mario, welcome! Great to have you on the show.

Mario: Thank you for having me, Brian. It’s always a pleasure.

Brian: Mario, we’re going to have a lot of fun today. And as I mentioned in the intro, technical leadership is something that I think we’re going to have some great discussion around. Just for those that don’t know you, haven’t had a chance to meet you yet, just give us a little sense on what you’re doing today. Like, where is your career right now? And then we’ll talk about the journey in a moment.

Mario: Sure, definitely. Well, currently, I’m working with Plug Technologies as a Salesforce Team Leader. This is the second time that I have in my career the opportunity to be part of a team and leading it. So, yeah, that’s where I’m standing at.

Brian: Excellent. And you’re based in Mexico City?

Mario: Yeah, exactly. Mexico City.

Brian: Cool. So, the world has changed a lot in the last couple of years. COVID really created, you know, remote, pushed harder into the Nearshore, you know, teams on the same time zone. Where’s the rest of your team today?

Mario: Well, the rest of my team pretty much, most of them are in Mexico City, and the rest of the team is in the United States, in Florida. Well, that’s where we’re standing right now. We have a couple of fellas that are in India, but yeah, we’re just going a little bit into that part as well.

Brian: Yeah, interesting. And can you give a little context? Are they all – so you’re focused on Salesforce today, or are they all Salesforce developers? Who’s in the U.S.? We don’t have to give names, but like, the type of work that’s being done in the U.S., the type of work that’s being done in Mexico.

Mario: Sure, yeah, definitely. Well, basically, the team that we have here, what we’re doing right now with our client, is we’re enabling them. Our client is in the vertical of healthcare. And being in that industry, there’s a lot of urgency because we have patients. It’s something a little bit more delicate to just have a client. And, basically, all the vocabulary that we’re handling with the client is patients itself. So that’s something very important. We’re enabling the team, we’re enabling our client to have different functionality in Salesforce at all levels, front and back end. And of course, we are always helping them in the sense of processes, how to get acquainted with new processes or how to improve new processes they have, what they want to implement, giving them the best practices of Salesforce and giving them the best, out-of-bug products that we are constructing for them. So that’s basically what we’re doing, and where we’re located, and what industry. So that would be it.

Brian: And about how many team members are you working closely with in the States and about how many are in Mexico?

Mario: Well, here in Mexico, it’s about five people that we’re working with. And in the States, we’re working with a large team of, well, I think it’s two, maybe three more Developers, I think another three QAs, the Scrum Master, and two Architects. So that’s how it is.

Brian: Okay, got it. Yeah, I was just going to ask about maybe the hierarchies because there are so many different ways to do this in tech, and you’ve got agile environments. I think you said there was a Scrum Master on the team. You mentioned Architects. Are there Project Managers and Business Analysts, or is that something kind of shared by others?

Mario: Yes, definitely. We have Business Analysts and Product Owners sometimes. Yeah, we have that. We do have a manager, which is the Engineering Manager, and he’s also located in Florida with the team there.

Brian: Great. And help me understand a little bit of just how work gets done. Like, are you guys doing daily stand-ups? And how are you dividing things up? How often are you meeting? That would be a great start.

Mario: Definitely. Yes. There’s a very close communication with the client, of course. Every day we have a stand-up, and we have recurrent meetings that are part of the Scrum ceremonies and all that stuff, because they have a full implementation of the Scrum Agile methodology. And on our end, we are doing the same meetings. We’re doing a stand-up that’s for the teams here in Mexico every day, just before we jump into the stand-up meeting for the client. We’re just aligning the whole team: what’s going to happen, what is happening, what I was working on, what I am going to be working on, any blockers, yes, how we’re going to be handling this. And yeah, then we can jump with the client. We’re ready to jump with the client. So, every time there’s a presence, and everybody has to be there for both meetings. And the rest of the meetings, of course, they’re going to be involved in case we have different stories here and there. And the work itself, it works on how they’re pitching in the stories or how they’re pitching in the work that we have. We have a backlog, stand-up planning meetings; that’s how the work is coming in. And by the time that we are getting the work, we’re getting the story. Sometimes I’m taking all the stories and I start distributing, depending on what the skills are of each one of the members of the team. So, yeah, that’s a little bit on that.

Brian: Yeah, very good. And just you personally, have you worked in like an Agile Scrum environment for a long time, or how has your career gone?

Mario: Yes, actually, that started like six years ago or so, a little bit more about that, because Waterfall was the thing years before. But now it’s Agile. And it first started with Scrumban, and well, it started evaluating into what we have right now with Scrum Agile, and how it emerged with the different methodologies.

Brian: So, Mario, the leadership part is something that I’m quite interested in. And, you know, what’s communicated up, what’s communicated down, what’s communicated across. And with you kind of being like the glue in all this, and a lot of roads lead through Mario, can you talk a little bit more through that, like how information is moved throughout and in your role and all that?

Mario: Sure, definitely. There are certain meetings that the rest of the team are not going to be there for, because they’re going to be working hands-on, completely fully. And the retrospective and the grooming of the stories, I’m part of them. So, I have, and I can – I have the handicap knowledge that’s going to be bringing the team up to speed by the time that they’re getting the stories or the work that they’re going to be working on. So that’s the first part in the sense of the work that we’re going to be having. So once we have the stories on the Sprint, on the current Sprint, I’m going to be getting in with each one of the members and seeing, “Okay, this is your story, this is what it’s about.” In the grooming or in the retrospective or in the, yeah, so when we’re reviewing the stories in the meetings, they tell me all the details of how this is going to be working, how does it work, where does it come in, what’s the importance of each one of the details that’s going to be moving parts of the story. So, basically, my job here is getting one or two steps ahead of them on the information of the stories of what’s going to be happening, what is coming in, as well, to have that visibility. And well, that’s how I react in the sense of work and stories that are coming with the team in how to coach them and what information they need. And there are going to be some questions, of course, and that’s why we’re going to be compiling those questions. See if we can solve them in our team first if someone has any background on that. If not, then I’m going to be asking the client, “Hey, you know something, we have to clarify all these certain pointers here so we can continue and have the stories delivered and completed on time.”

Brian: That’s a really great point you brought up, and it made me think about leadership and delivering just the right amount of information for the team. Because sometimes you can overload them and overwhelm, and other times there’s just not enough, and it really inhibits them. So, there’s kind of a skill set in leadership of delivering just the right information and context at the right time for the right person.

Mario: Exactly. Yeah, I mean, they will have a lot of stories, right? And it doesn’t make sense for them to be in those meetings and exposing them to all this information because they’re bringing a lot of requirements and everything. Sometimes the stories are not ready. So that’s something that I’m going to be as well raising my hands, like, “Hey, the story just has this detail here, and we need more details.” So that brings a little bit of noise to the team if I let it through. So I’m not going to be doing that. I’m just going to be pausing that, talking with the client, “Hey, we need this and that in this story so we can start working.” And we can contact someone, or we have a point of contact, or a Business Analyst, I don’t know, a Product Owner, a manager that we can contact, and we can get the context of the stories. That will be something that I’m going to be jumping in, saying, “Okay, then, this is ready, we can work on this.” So, yeah, it’s a hand-in-hand effort there by the client and our end as well.

Brian: That’s awesome. And how about some of the technologies needed just to run communication? Like, are you guys on Slack or Jira or other tools? And maybe what you’re using for communication with your team in Mexico versus how you’re receiving information from the States?

Mario: Right. Everything runs through Jira. I mean, that’s the main tool because that’s where all the details and questions and pointers and everything that the client wants us to do with that specific work is coming through Jira. We have, if we have to go into a meeting or something, we use Teams directly. So we’re shooting meeting requests every now and then here and there so we can get acquainted with what needs to be done, or if we have to clarify something, or we have to do things differently. That’s something as well.

Brian: Yeah. For companies that are maybe new to nearshoring, sometimes language is the first thing that they worry about, like, “Is my message going to be received? Is the team fluent in English?” Can you shed some light on that, like how that might work, or how much of a factor that is?

Mario: Yeah, well, it is actually a factor. Just right off the bat, saying that when you are hiring people or you’re trying to interview someone who you know has the skills for, but for this platform, which is cber as service, which is Salesforce, you have to go through that part of evaluating them in the sense of, “Okay, what is your level of English?” I mean, can you communicate professionally and technically? That’s a second factor you have to be considering. Yes, there’s some certain challenge there, but once they’re onboarding over here, there’s no problem. And there’s a lot of people in Mexico City and in Mexico all around that do handle the language itself. So, I’ll say it’s not a language barrier. I’ll say it’s just a matter of practice. So, when we’re onboarding over here, it’s something that they will learn in a more organic way. So, it’s not a challenge. They do require a certain level so we can get them acquainted, so we can move forward, but it’s not a challenge.

Brian: Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. And just, kind of forget about borders for a second. Let’s talk about great teams. When you think about some of the best teams that you’ve been a part of or you’ve led, can you talk about them? Like, what were some of the attributes that they had? You know, what makes a great team?

Mario: What makes a great team is different knowledge in different areas of IT, depending on the graduate background. Sometimes we have people that just went out of college, and you’re training them, so they’re going to be learning a lot about you, and you can learn a lot about them because they have really fresh information as well from college. But the diversity of ideas and the diversity of how each one of the elements of the team are going to be, or can tackle a problem – that’s the jewel of having different people working in your team. So the diversity of those ideas and the diversity of getting people from different, you know, they’ve been working, I don’t know, maybe in healthcare, they’ve been working on retailing, or they’ve been working in different ways. That gives you another, you know, another set of fresh eyes for each one of your team members that you have in your team. So that’s one of the elements, I think it’s the best thing. And I can identify each one of them, and the best teams are just about that: everybody pitching in and trying to solve problems together. Communication is one of the factors, I think, that is going to be involved in this. And yeah, that makes a happy project and it makes a happy team as well. Collaboration and friendly.

Brian: And how about engineers in particular? What do you think makes a, or what separates like a great engineer from an average engineer?

Mario: Well, I think, it’s like art. There’s always going to be someone who can jam and bring you this amazing solo and everything, but he’s not jamming with the team, right? I mean, by the time that they’re not jamming with a team, we are not making a song; we are just making a solo introduction to something. So, an engineer sometimes is like they’re very jealous of their knowledge because they have been through a lot, lots of nights and lots of books and lots of documentation. And it’s just part of how they have to engage with the team and how they can become one of the pillars of their team as well. And that makes a good team in that sense, and then for the eyes of the client as well. The key there is to make them part of it without forcing them. So, it’s just a part of being a little bit shy, a little bit, on the part of their personality, most of them. But I mean, it’s people that are willing always to help. So, engineers, we cannot leave without them, and we can definitely go ahead working with them without a problem.

Brian: Yeah, love it. I wanted to talk about the cross-border again for a second. And if you could shed some light on what do you think is the same and what do you think is different, like when you’re working maybe with a team in Mexico or Latin America, and when you’re working with a team in the States? What’s different, what’s the same? Could you share more about that?

Mario: Sure, definitely. Well, the first thing that comes to my mind is the rhythm of work. The quality that the client expects, the expectations of the client, and of course, you have to continue working with those expectations. I think that’s the two things that we have to consider there. In my experience, working in a team in Mexico City, it goes a little bit into part of our culture. It’s a little bit more relaxed and everything. And when we’re working with a client in the United States, we have to adopt their culture of work. We have to adapt to their rhythm, to their quality, because it’s not the same. Of course, it’s not the same, we understand that. And by the time that we’re working with someone in a different country, and you’re delivering product in a different country, that has to be in your mind all the time. It’s an awareness that it’s not the same thing, and we have to cover all the client’s expectations, being that our Priority One.

Brian: Yeah, yeah. You know, working within nearshore, we’ve seen a lot of common misconceptions, right? And, you know, sometimes I think it’s forgotten that Mexico City is a giant, bustling, energetic city. So, even when we use the word “relaxed,” we don’t want people to think like, “Oh, you know, after they have a big lunch and a siesta, you won’t hear from somebody for a couple of hours.” Maybe you can talk about that and any other misconceptions people might have about working with teams in Mexico or Mexico City.

Mario: Right. I mean, working with teams in Mexico City, I don’t want to say it’s just like the same like working with people in the United States or on site. It’s not going to be the same. There are different cultures, yes, there’s going to be a little bit of cultural impacts as well, because we express things in a different way. I’ll say that’s just the thing, right? But in the sense of hard work, responsibilities, awareness, and being there, a presence with the client, I don’t see really a gap or something that will have to be considering just before I take that decision. So, it’s just a matter of getting the right people, getting the right people that are going to be pointing the team, and we can start delivering.

Brian: That’s great. That’s great. I want to talk a little more about you, Mario. And we know what you’re doing today, leading teams. Would you mind just sharing a little more about your journey? We don’t need to get into client names or anything for confidentiality, but how did you get where you are today?

Mario: Well, it’s been a long journey. It’s actually been about 10 years, and 20 years in the industry of IT. And well, yeah, basically it all started with college, being in Computer Engineering. And well, by the time that I jumped, I mean, the first thing you learn here in Mexico, it’s not a rule, but you start with Java, right? You start being a developer in Java. And when I got into Salesforce, it was a cultural impact, technically a cultural impact, because it’s not the same having tables and, you know, Oracle database here and this and that. Everything is in the cloud; you don’t need anything else, everything’s there. So, yeah, what it took me to get here is just being part of different teams, being part of different verticals in the industry, such as banks, automotive, pretty much, I’ve been in banks all the time. So, retail, I’ve been there in retail, and of course, now in the part of hospitality, which is healthcare. So, yeah, it’s been a long journey in the sense of different clients and different ways of working because each one of the companies has their own constraints, they have their own logic, have their own ways to do things, even if they’re in the same vertical. So, that will be amazing, because you think, “No, they’re going to be doing the same,” no, they’re not doing the same thing. Maybe they’re using the same tool, but the tool is being used in a different way. And well, that’s part of the journey. And how do I find myself being a lead? It’s being part of a team, being part of the team at all times. I consider myself as well as part of the team, a peer, someone who’s always hands-on so I can help you as well. That’s been part of my philosophy of how you can get into this point of being a Team Lead, someone who’s going to be enabling you technically and, of course, enabling you in different aspects of the project as well.

Brian: That’s great, that’s great. Let’s talk a little about travel culture, tourist guide, Mexico City. For those who have never been, what are – let’s say they’ll be there for a week. Okay, what should someone first time in Mexico City do that first week? Where should they go? Where should they eat? All that great stuff.

Mario: Well, if you’re not a fan of tacos, you’re going to have a bad time. That’s for sure. I mean, in Mexico City, especially, you can find tacos 24/7. There’s no place you wouldn’t find any tacos. So, yeah, basically, there are very, very nice restaurants. There’s a part of the big city, downtown. There are very, very nice sites and streets. Basically, Maser is one of the streets that I would recommend because it’s a very nice place. I mean, it’s a very nice avenue. It really reflects the glamour of Mexico City in all its extent. If you want to go a little bit into archaeology or something like that, there are very, very good museums you can visit, which is the Anthropology and History Museum that’s located in Chapultepec. And from there, Chapultepec, there’s a castle. So you can walk all the way from the museum to the castle, and then you can get some tortas ahogadas, which is, you know, it’s bread, meat, and it’s squashed with some sauce there. And, yeah, definitely, you can find from tacos to very nice restaurants here as well. And I can recommend different sites like going to the pyramids. It’s just like 45 minutes, an hour or something. You can go to the pyramids. It’s three long pyramids, which is amazing. It’s a very interesting place to be. There’s an Avenue of the Dead, Avenida de los Muertos, which is all the way down, you can see the pyramid at the end. It’s an amazing sight. And you can do a – I think it’s a balloon tour around the pyramids, which is amazing. I haven’t done it, but it’s in my plans, but I have friends that have done that, and it’s impressive, it’s amazing. So, yeah, in Mexico City, I mean, we have pyramids, we have tacos, we have very nice restaurants, and you can go even to the ones that are just crossing the street in the corner. You can find that as well. So, it depends on how – I mean, it accommodates to all your budgets. So, Mexico City is very, very, very dynamic in that sense. So, yeah, definitely, it’s something you have to experience.

Brian: Yeah, and it’s a big city, a lot of people there. Is it – would you say it’s like a 24/7 energy, 24/7 vibe to it?

Mario: Yes, definitely, especially downtown. It’s a city that never sleeps. And yeah, that’s something that’s been around for, you know, lots of years. Especially when we had this, you know, the only time that I will consider Mexico City being a little bit more relaxed in that sense, it would be in the times of pandemic, when COVID just hit and struck. That would be the only time that it’s like a, you know, it’s a time and frame in Mexico that nobody wanted to go there. But yeah, after that, it’s just like once again Mariachi, once again tequila, and just like party on. So we had to inous H. Yeah, it is, it is very, very, very glamorous. We have different sides, the different budget. And yeah, it’s completely a city where you can do and you can find anything that you want.

Brian: And if I remember right, the altitude is up a little bit. Does that moderate the climate a little bit? Like, are there certain times of year that are better than others to visit, or is it about the same weather throughout the year?

Mario: Well, I think it can be cold, you know, the part of December, January. But the rest of the year, it’s going to be very nice weather. It rains, but it’s not that bad, and the sun is great here. I mean, we have very nice weather over here. I’ve been in different parts of the world, I think Mexico is a blessed place to be when you are searching for very nice weathers throughout the year. It can be cold, but not that cold, it’s not going to be snowing, and there’s going to be some sun, but it’s not that hot. So, all the time, it’s a very nice weather to be.

Brian: Excellent. Mario, how do you like your tacos prepared? Steak, chicken, fish? Yeah, what do you like on there?

Mario: Well, I think it’s called Tacos al Pastor, which is, I think, pork. And they just season it with different stuff, so it ends up being a little bit red. So I love them. My son is actually one of the go-to for the Pastor tacos. So, yeah, that’s how it is. It’s like, you know, onions, some cilantro, and lots of salsa, man. The spicier, the better.

Brian: Amazing. Well, Mario, this has been an absolute blast. I really appreciate you making time to talk about technical leadership, tacos, all things Mexico City. What a great time. Thanks for coming on today.

Mario: Thank you, thank you for having me. It’s been an honor and it’s been very nice to meet you, Brian. Thanks so much.

Brian: Absolutely. Well, thanks again to our sponsor, Plug Technologies, plug.tech. Great way to find technical talent all across Latin America for growing U.S. companies. This is the Nearshore Cafe podcast. Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you again soon. [Music]