A Series B startup in San Francisco was paying $200K+ for a remote engineer whose only tie to the Bay Area was a zip code. Brian Samson shares the Plugg Technologies case study: the nearshore decision, the talent sourced from Latin America, the cost comparison, and what the transition looked like in practice.
Key topics: nearshore cost savings case study, Series B startup nearshore, San Francisco engineer cost reduction, Latin American developers vs U.S., 60% engineering cost reduction nearshore.
Brian Samson’s case study of a San Francisco Series B startup illustrates the upper range of the savings opportunity: a role paying $200K+ annually in the U.S. was replaced by a senior Latin American engineer at approximately 40% of that cost — a savings of over $120,000 per year on a single hire. He notes that 40–60% savings is the realistic range for senior engineering roles, with the exact number depending on specialization, country, and seniority. The case is strongest for fully remote roles where the U.S. location adds no operational value.
Brian Samson’s case study addresses this directly — the question founders ask most. The San Francisco startup’s nearshore transition maintained output quality because the Plugg placement process focused on seniority and communication quality, not just technical credentials. He notes that nearshore transitions that succeed share three characteristics: the role was well-defined before the hire, the onboarding treated the nearshore engineer as a full team member, and the U.S. team had realistic expectations about a short ramp period. Transitions that struggle typically skip one or more of these steps.
Brian: Hi, I’m Brian Samson, host of the Nearshore Cafe podcast, and I’m also the founder of Plugg Technologies, a staffing company that connects talent from all over Latin America to US companies. Today, I’d like to share a case study of how we worked with a Series B tech company right in San Francisco and moved their business forward and all the attributes that came from that.
So, I want to go back to May of 2020. You guys remember this time period, right in the thick of COVID? We’re wearing masks to go to the grocery store. No one’s leaving their apartment or house. We’re watching CNN all day to find out what’s going on with vaccines and all the scary news out there. But business went on. You know, it’s one thing for this to be late March and business kind of paused. By May, business was back, but it was all remote.
So, I had a Series B company, the CTO and co-founder of this company. They were pretty far along, and he realized right away some arbitrage opportunity because he called me and said, “Hey Brian, I’ve got a guy in San Jose, California, and I’m paying him over $2K a year to work from home. There’s no more benefit of being together in the office.” He was in the office, but now he’s not, and there’s no end in sight. Surely, if I’m just going to have engineers work from their home office, I can get strong engineers for a better price point. Is this something I could get in Latin America?” Big smile came over my face, “Of course!”
So, we had a talent pocket already of senior developers that met his hyper-specific tech stack. In this case, they were in Argentina and Mexico. We went ahead, and within two days, had introduced him to a couple of these people. He was blown away in the interviews. And I’ll say that my buddy, he’s tough: Stanford CS degree and then a Berkeley degree, a Master’s in CS. So, he knows his stuff. He’s tough, high hiring bar. Blown away with the talent level, he ended up hiring two people that month from us.
So, he didn’t need to spend massive dollars on Bay Area engineers anymore. He had huge cost savings, didn’t lose a minute with workday overlap, and most importantly, he moved the needle on his business. These engineers got to work, made stuff happen, pushed the product forward, and eventually, they had a better product-market fit. They were adding features quickly, and he did this at a cost savings, and he was very, very happy. So, this is a reference account for Plugg.
Brian Samson
Founder at Plugg Technologies
Brian Samson is the founder of Plugg Technologies and a veteran tech entrepreneur, with 10 years building successful nearshoring companies. Brian has helped to grow Plugg into one of the leading nearshoring agencies, connecting technical talent in Latin America; including Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua and Colombia with top U.S. companies. Plugg consistently hires and places over 100 LATAM resources each year.
Plugg sponsors and Brian Samson hosts the leading podcast about doing business in Latin America with 70+ episodes, The Nearshore Cafe Podcast. In addition, Plugg brings insight and clarity to clients by supporting them with the details, big and small, to set their team up for success. Everything from currency, customs, hardware, and culture, Plugg provides advice and guidance based on first-hand expat experiences living and doing business across multiple Latin American countries. Plugg Technologies is a trusted partner for businesses seeking future-ready tech solutions including cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, and digital operations positions
Brian holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson and prior, was an expat in Argentina and a VP of Talent for several San Francisco startups with multiple successful exits (IPO & acquisitions). In his free time he supports foster kids and is a dedicated family man.
