How a San Francisco Startup Cut Dev Costs 60% with LATAM Engineers | Nearshoring Success

What happens when a Series B startup in San Francisco realizes they’re paying over $200K per year for a remote engineer—and getting no extra value from being in the Bay Area?

They go nearshore.
 And they win. Big.

In this episode of The Nearshore Cafe Podcast, host Brian Samson (Founder of Plugg Technologies) shares the true story of how one founder turned to LATAM developers to scale faster, cut costs, and build better—without sacrificing time zone alignment, communication, or talent quality.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• Why hiring remotely in the U.S. no longer makes financial sense
• How this CTO hired top-tier engineers in Argentina and Mexico—in just 48 hours
• The real benefits of nearshoring over offshoring
• How cost savings + faster delivery = competitive advantage in product development
• What makes Plugg’s talent pipeline so effective for high-growth startups

If you're a founder, CTO, tech recruiter, or startup operator, this episode will reshape how you think about hiring, scaling, and building elite engineering teams.

• 🎥 Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/mpMt4kEX2gk
• 🌐 Visit: https://www.nearshorecafepodcast.com/
• 💼 Learn more about Plugg Technologies: https://www.plugg.tech
• 🔗 Connect with Brian Samson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briansamson/

#Nearshoring #LATAMDevelopers #RemoteHiring #StartupEngineeringTeams #OffshoreAlternatives #ArgentinaSoftwareDevelopers #MexicoEngineeringTalent #CostEfficientHiring #PluggTechnologies #NearshoreSoftwareEngineers #ScalingStartups #RemoteTeamManagement #ProductVelocity

📢 Don’t forget to LIKE, SUBSCRIBE, and TURN ON NOTIFICATIONS for more insights on Latin America’s growing tech scene! 🎧🔥
_________________________
🔗 Connect With Us

🔗 Stay Connected:
✅ Host: Brian Samson | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briansamson/
✅ Sponsor: Plugg Technologies | PLUGG.tech
✅ Follow The Nearshore Cafe Podcast for More Insightful Episodes!
_________________________
Our social pages:
🎵 Spotify podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/6KYcgpmN77fJm6B25469B8
🌎 Website: https://www.nearshorecafepodcast.com/
🔥 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-nearshore-cafe
🎙️ Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-nearshore-cafe/id1775525954

Episode Transcript

Speaker 0 (00:00):
I am Brian Sampson, host of the Near Short Cafe
podcast, and I'm also thefounder of Plug Technologies, a
staffing company that connectstalent from all over Latin
America to US companies.
Today, I'd like to share a casestudy of how we worked with a
Series B tech company right inSan Francisco and move their

(00:23):
business forward and all theattributes that came from that.
So I want to go back to May of2020.
You guys remember this timeperiod, right in the thick of
COVID, where I'm wearing masksto go to the grocery store, no
one's leaving their apartment orhouse.
We're watching CNN all the day,all day, to find out what's

(00:46):
going on with vaccines and allthe scary news out there.
But business went on.
You know, it's one thing forthis to be late March and
business kind of paused.
By May business was back, butit was all remote.
So I had a Series B company, theCTO and founder, co-founder of
this company.
They were pretty far along andhe realized right away some

(01:11):
arbitrage opportunity because hecalled me and said hey, Brian,
I've got a guy in San Jose,california, and I'm paying him
over a year to work from home.
There's no more benefit ofbeing together in the office.
He was in the office, but nowhe's not and there's no end in
sight.
Surely, if I'm just going tohave engineers work from their

(01:35):
home office, I can get strongengineers for a better price
point.
Is this something I could getin Latin America?
Big smile, I came over my face,of course.
So we had a talent pocketalready of senior developers
that met his hyper-specific techstack.
In this case they were inArgentina and Mexico and we went

(01:57):
ahead and within two days hadintroduced him to a couple of
these people.
He was blown away in theinterviews and I'll say that my
buddy, he's tough, stanford CSdegree and then a Berkeley
degree, a master's in CS, so heknows his stuff.
He's tough, high hiring bar.
Blown away with the talentlevel.

(02:19):
He ended up hiring two peoplethat month from us, so he didn't
need to spend massive dollarson Bay Area engineers anymore.
He had huge cost savings,didn't lose a minute with
workday overlap and, mostimportantly, he moved the needle
on his business.
These engineers got to work,made stuff happen, pushed the

(02:41):
product forward and eventuallythey had a better product market
fit.
They were adding featuresquickly and he did this at a
cost savings and he was very,very happy, so this is a
reference account for Plug.