Why Mexico City Is a Hidden Gem for Tech Talent with Brian Samson | The Nearshore Cafe Podcast

Brian: Welcome everyone to the Nearshore Cafe podcast. I’m Brian Samson, your host, and today we are going to talk about Mexico City and my personal experience there. I was there just under two months ago. Before we get into it, let me thank our sponsor, Plug Technologies. Plug is a great way to connect software developers and tech-adjacent roles all over Latin America to US companies.

So, let’s get into it. In September, I had the chance to go to Mexico City. Now, I’d been to Mexico before, like many of you have, either tourist places like Cancun and Acapulco and otherwise. Obviously, many people have been to Monterrey, but Mexico City is the place that I went, and I want to tell you all about it. First of all, the size. Mexico City, believe it or not, is bigger than New York City. There are 9 million people living in Mexico City. Crazy, right? It is absolutely enormous. It’s like if LA and New York had a baby, because you’ve got LA’s sprawl and size—Mexico City takes up a lot of space. Then you also have the Manhattanization of it. You know where LA has got all these different pockets? So does Mexico City. But Mexico City also has a major financial district, city center, historic areas, amazing subway—everything kind of converges into a dominant downtown section.

So, I’ll tell you all about what I had to eat and my personal experience and everything. But I wanted to make something really clear: there is a myth about Mexico City, and I think it’s the way it’s portrayed in the media. We think a lot about some movies like *Traffic*, for example, or *Man on Fire*, where there’s almost this like brown tint, or *Sicario*, this like brown tint over the screen, and Mexico just looks dusty and dirty and old and chaotic. I got to tell you, that’s a media thing, not a real thing. It is green. I might say Mexico City is the greenest city I’ve ever been to, maybe tied with Singapore, which is very, very green as well, and I’ve been around a little bit. There are parks everywhere you go, these beautiful green pedestrian walkways, tree-lined streets, cafes, old-growth trees. So, as you can imagine, a city with 9 million people has a lot of cars, a lot of pollution, a lot of pedestrians, but they manage it really well. You could walk down these busy thoroughfares, and they’ve got—it’s almost like a park in the middle of these busy roads, so you’re protected. You know, you’re not on the side of the street as these buses zoom by; you’re actually kind of in this protected center, cocooned by these large old-growth trees, these beautiful green, leafy trees. It’s great, benches, little kiosks. It’s really, really nice.

The city is also very high up; it’s 7,000 feet up. So, if you think about the US, you might go to Denver, the Mile High City, 5,280 feet above sea level. Mexico City is almost 1.5 times as high up, over 7,000 feet. So, it actually takes a second to get used to, just with the altitude, acclimatizing. The airport is not far away. Like if you’ve flown into other Latin American cities like Buenos Aires, there are two airports in Buenos Aires: there’s Aeroparque Newbery, which is a little closer, but it’s not for massive international flights, and then you’ve got Ezeiza, which is the massive international airport, but it is far away; it’s a good hour, 90-minute drive. This airport here in Mexico City, it’s the major airport, it’s a nice modern airport, looks really cool, and it’s 20 minutes with no traffic, maybe 40 minutes with traffic. It’s quite easy to get to.

Let me talk about what makes this an interesting place for hiring. So, if you decided to hire there, first off, you’re not taking a huge risk. A lot of the major companies from the US have already been there. We’ve got companies like Cisco, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Google, General Motors, GE, Honeywell—some massive companies. And then you also have a whole host of tech startups that are there, either started and invested by other residents of Mexico City or VC firms, maybe even from the States that have invested. Then you also have this large swath of talent. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of technical talent that are working for what we call consulting shops or IT staffing places, and they’re working on contracts and long-term projects with companies in the States. So, this means you’ve got all this talent that’s been vetted, validated; their English is strong enough. Mexico is a very large trading partner with the US across the board, whether they’re making autos or they’re programming computers. Mexico is a huge exporter of talent to the US.

When I think about the quality of life there—so, we already said it’s very green—but you know that Mexico City has a lot of Michelin-rated restaurants because it’s very cosmopolitan. You’ve got people coming from all over the world to start restaurants in Mexico City. It attracts creative types, chefs, culinary arts, and it’s a city that favors artists, period. There are 173 museums just in Mexico City alone; I’m not even talking about the rest of the country. 173 museums in Mexico City could take you a whole couple of years to visit all of them, even if you’ve got tons of time on your hand. Amazing. It’s really a place for creative types. It’s also a place with some great universities. The most famous is UNAM, that’s a top 100 university worldwide by QS. Mexico City has seven universities that are globally ranked by QS. It’s a feeder of talent, and it’s a place that talent wants to live. You know, they’ve got this beautiful green, leafy place, great restaurants, art museums, quality of life, good coffee, all that. And a place where the world exists; it’s not siloed. You know, you’ve got Japanese culture and culture from the Middle East, and all over the world kind of comes and meets in Mexico City. It’s also easy to get to; there are direct flights from almost everywhere into Mexico City. I’d say almost every major airport in the US has a direct flight to Mexico City. The food, as I mentioned, a lot of great culinary arts, amazing steakhouses. The meat is very good, and it’s very high quality, very high quality. They’ve got everything else you’d want: pizza, great sandwiches, like easy-to-eat food. The street food is tremendous. How could I have forgotten to mention the tacos, the street tacos? Absolutely out of this world. The two most popular popular areas that you might go to if you’re a tourist in Mexico City are Polanco and Condesa. And these areas are not just for tourists, though. These areas attract a lot of working professionals, and they’re very nice to look at. There are parks everywhere, green everywhere, beautiful modern architecture, five-star restaurants, people outside on the sidewalks, cafes. And the weather, by the way, because it’s so high up, the weather is quite moderate. It kind of feels like perpetual spring or perpetual fall. Doesn’t really get too hot, but also not crazy cold either. Kind of think like 50-60 degrees year-round. Really not too different from San Francisco, but I actually preferred Mexico City’s because San Francisco has that bone-chilling fog that you might be aware of.

So, if this is the first time you’ve heard about Mexico City as a real great city with tremendous quality of life, I hope this inspires you to come check it out yourself. And if you’re interested in learning about technical talent in Mexico City, Plug Technologies, of which I’m the founder, has placed over 50 people just in 2024 alone that are in Mexico City. We know it intimately. We know all the neighborhoods, the *barrios*, the universities, the great companies that feed this type of talent, the cost bases, what sort of benefits are most attractive, how to find the people that are working with all the US companies already, so you can mitigate some of your risk. So, Plug Technologies is our sponsor. We’d be happy to help you on this journey to get introduced, no risk, learn more about Mexico City, learn more about the talent in Mexico City. I’m Brian Samson, founder here of the Nearshore Cafe podcast. Thanks for listening, and I hope you’re inspired to check out Mexico City as a talent hub. Thanks again.