Can a Business Analyst in Mexico really support a U.S. tech team just as well—or better—than someone in Silicon Valley? 🌎

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Welcome everyone to another episode of the Nearshore Cafe podcast.
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This is season three and in season three we touched on a lot of really great topics.
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Today we're going to meet Fernando Soto, a business analyst working from Mexico supporting the US.
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Before we get into Fernando's story and how it all works, we want to thank our sponsor, plug Technologies pluggtech great way to connect talent from all over Latin America to growing US companies.
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Fernando, so great to have you, great Thanks.
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Thanks a lot, fernando.
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For those that don't know you, where are you dialing in from?
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I currently live in Guadalajara, mexico, but I was born and raised in Tijuana, so you could say I've lived half my life in each city, so Tijuana gave me my roots.
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Guadalajara has shaped my career actually, so both have been like instrumental in shaping who I am, so personally and professionally.
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So what else I can say?
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Yeah, yeah, well, maybe let me let me ask so for those who've never been to.
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So, tijuana is an interesting city because it's a place I think a lot of Americans know is like a fun place you go, you party.
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But not many, we don't know many that, uh, that live there.
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So what should we know about Tijuana as as a city to live culture, food, things like that?
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I recently went there and I love it.
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Some people say they don't like it because I don't know they, they haven't lived there.
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Other people have said, yeah, I love it there.
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Anthony Bourdain people have said, yeah, I love it there.
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Anthony Bredain, he's uh, he, he was in San Diego and I think we talked about this now.
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He, um, he was in San Diego and they were interviewing him and they asked him where can you find the best restaurants, the best food?
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And he said not here, go South Tijuana.
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So cuisine is excellent, even better than here in Guadalaj.
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Some, some uh pigs, you know, some, some dishes are much better over there.
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I can you when you go, when you go back to visit, what's like the, the, the number one thing you have to eat while you're there?
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Chinese food.
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I love that answer.
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Tell, tell us more.
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Tell us more about the chinese food scene in tijuana I think there are many Chinese from long time ago.
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They're like behind the scenes in the restaurants, you know, and it's Occidental, occidental it's how to say?
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Occidental Chinese food not real, because if you go to China it's like a whole world of cuisine, but this is like they adapted the Chinese food for for us, you know, and I know a place in Mexico also, I think it's called China Girl, which is similar, but here in Guadalajara I haven't seen any other.
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Like gift tanks can match it, but they give you very small portions.
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Other than that, believe me, every single restaurant is very good and I went there.
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I was like, yeah, I want to go, yeah, and it's not expensive.
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That's fantastic.
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I love it, yeah.
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And then, uh, you know, what do you remember about growing up in tijuana?
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You know, is it a big place for soccer music?
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You know things like that I'm not very good.
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I'm not very good at sports, you know, because they, they actually tell me here in guadalajara, hey, do you like soccer?
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And I say I'm from the north, and they say, oh, you like baseball?
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And I say, wrong.
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Again, I don't know.
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I used to run track and field 100 meters, you know, and teachers, I don't know what's up, you know, like I told them 100 meters, that's it.
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Yeah, just sprint, sprinter.
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They gave me, yeah, I'm a sprinter and I always won.
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I didn't have to practice or anything or train or anything, and they always gave me 400, 800 meters.
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So I just in one place, in one time, I just stopped at the middle of the track and I was winning because I was like 100 meters in and then I couldn't finish yeah, my son is going like this the lactic acid builds up um yeah, so were you always into it and computers no, not really I was.
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I loved animals, so this is a big twist.
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Yeah.
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So, but you know, in Tijuana it was a small city In that time there were not many universities that had a veterinary or veterinary.
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I think I wanted to be a veterinarian, you know, go figure.
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And I think the closest one was in Ensenada was like a marine biologist, something like that, and I couldn't go to the United States.
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You know, I had a passport but you know I can't study there because I'm not a US citizen.
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Plan B, you know it's like what do I like second best.
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And I say, well, computers, let's start.
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And I started going to classes.
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I was very young, I was like 16 probably, and I started liking it.
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So that's, that's what I did yeah.
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And then I went to university and then I came here to Wallahara to visit my sister.
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It was a round trip and she was a single mother with a one-year-old, and somehow I just left everything and stayed with her yeah yeah, that's.
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That's when I I met my, my, my girlfriend, and she became my wife and I stayed.
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They didn't let me leave.
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I weren't taken back to my hometown but walahara and many people know this women from here.
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They will not go, they will not leave this place.
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That's funny, so she won, I stayed.
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Well, I want to ask more about that, but tell us more about the university scene.
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Like the university, where did you go to school?
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It was in Tijuana, right.
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Yeah, actually I didn't finish it.
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Tell us a little more about that yeah, it's a funny story, because it was called Autónoma Universidad Autónoma de Baja California and it was like not public university, but it was very tied to the industry there.
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So you know, I learned this way.
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After I felt, you know, halfway that the university, I felt really stupid and I said, no, this engineering is not for me.
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And I actually dropped and came to a high and continued to study and finished engineering.
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This is the problem, you know, somehow.
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And I said, somehow the plane I got, my IQ grew Because in the university that I finished it I got like straight A's Over there.
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I studied, studied, studied and couldn't make it.
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So later I found out that there was like a little corruption of the industries over there.
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Maquiladoras are called.
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They say, hey, stop, we don't want engineers anymore, so please don don't, you know, give them a hard time.
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You know like well, that was the answer, maybe from school.
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Uh, we were like 30 in 30 and only like five passed like exams, like with one question, like or two questions.
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So the minimum was seven, from zero to ten.
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The minimum was seven.
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We don, we don't have like AB and we have like zero to 10.
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And with a two question exam, you either got a zero, a five or a 10.
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So in the minimum was seven.
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So I was like, oh, thank you, we had like one question exam, a problem very difficult.
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So, it's like zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero.
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Everyone's zero.
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It's like, wow.
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So I felt stupid that time.
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So I talked with one of my one of my uh friends who also went there and he he's the one that told me because he was in the student uh union or something and and he knew that one of the teachers blabbed it out like say hey, yeah, there's like this company's hour and it's not the case anymore.
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You know that.
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It was that back then and but now that you have to pay for your university, they stopped, I don't know.
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They stopped making things harder for students so they can pass.
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Yeah, there was like an intent of bad intent.
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Yeah, so you're a business analyst today supporting a US customer, and doing it from your home office in guadalajara.
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Yes, tell us about the last couple years and like, like what.
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What led to this point today?
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You know, even in the role itself is interesting.
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You know you're kind of at the crux of business and technology and working with users yes, yes yes, so tell us more.
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I need to tell a little bit about the history there.
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So, you know, my journey in tech started at HP, hewlett-packard here in Guadalajara.
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So there I spent around 16 years and then, you know, I started as an engineer, developer engineer.
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So back in 2010, I was working as a developer when and when I asked to join a project as a business analyst and my honest reaction was cool you know what the hell is that?
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So I didn't know and actually nobody knew back then.
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Right now, it's a role that is like everywhere.
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At that time, the only real growth path most of us saw was becoming a project manager or a manager, if you pull some strings there.
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You know, as I started learning more about the ba role through, you know, hands-on experience and later certifications, I realized I really liked it.
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You know, to me a business analyst is the unsung hero of it.
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So it's a low-key role, but the impact is huge and at it helped me.
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You know.
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I helped formalize a role internally and even created a dedicated career path for other VAs, you know many, many of whom had been doing the work for years without knowing the industry even recognized it as a distinct profession.
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I went on to get my CBAP certification.
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You know I have it here Probably you know the first in Jalisco at the time, which is considered, you know, on par with the certification for project managers.
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So I was even invited to speak at a PMI conference to talk about the BA role.
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Funny enough, you know, after the talk, some folks from IBM because remember that here in Guadalajara we have like all the tech companies are here came to me and said Hank, thank you.
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Now I finally understand what I do.
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So over the years I've worked on global projects across the US, latin America, brazil, europe and Asia.
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You know I've worked on global projects across the US, latin America, brazil, europe and Asia.
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You know I've worked under both Waterfall and Agile methodologies and I truly believe in the model where, you know, pm, ba, qa and Dev all operate together.
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We have that synergy, regardless of the methodology, you know, and it leads to strong outcomes and excellent projects that we deliver.
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So yes, very quickly, a memorable challenge.
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I once led a project with a team in Brazil.
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They didn't speak Spanish or English.
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Oh wow, Tell us, how did you navigate that?
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That's funny yeah.
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And I didn't speak Portuguese, so Portuguese is very similar to Spanish, but if they speak fast, it's like any other language that you don't understand.
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So we spoke slowly, we typed in chat and we made it work.
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So it was slower.
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Yes, we got it done.
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That's the reality of Nearshore collaboration there.
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So which language were you typing in the chat?
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Portuñol.
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We invented a language typing in the chat Portuñol.
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We invented a language yeah, it was like a mix of Spanish and Portuguese, you know, because English was out of the question.
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We didn't speak English, spanish and Portuguese.
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I like it.
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That's great.
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How big was that team?
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I think it was about 15 people and it was a tax project.
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Brazil taxes are part of the, you know BRICS, and they're part of the difficult to understand, so they had to like explain to us.
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Yeah.
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Many times, you know, and I was like, okay, so they had good presentations.
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So you know, one I want to.
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I was I'm going to say the truth.
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You know, like I was there 16 years, you know, for me, I thought I was.
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You know, I was going to be there forever.
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You know, like I was going to retire there and everything.
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So there's this I got laid off somehow, you know I got.
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I was jumping between departments.
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There was a split in HP because there were like 300,000 employees worldwide.
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They split into HP Enterprise and HP Inc and I went to HP Inc, so my team was divided in two and I and they, my manager, told me hey, you know, with everything you've done with uh, with the ba role and everything you know, and I thought I was going to be a manager or something, but nope, they said you're going to go to hp and it was like an art, business, architecture role.
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That didn't work out.
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And then I ended up where I didn't want to like as a pm.
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I liked it, yeah, but you know I did again the ba role in secrecy.
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So all the requirements I did it myself.
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So same, same project.
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You know I was doing probably all of those because I didn't have that dynamic of pm ba.
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I was in finance.
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Funny part there was that there was this manager who was a micromanager and I honestly didn't like that one.
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I tried to go to another team.
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I went to another team and I landed on another manager the same way.
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And then that's when I was there a couple of years and then I was why, that's what that's when, uh, I it was, I was there like a couple of years and then I was, I was laid off and for me was uh, that was yeah, sorry uh 16 years.
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You know my heart and soul to that company.
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And then I was laid off.
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They didn't say it was, it was me.
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They said you know this is happening all around and and it was true.
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You know, I recently learned that they're also laying off people with 16 years or something.
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Yeah, I know it's a tough thing to go through.
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You know I'm curious from your perspective, Fernando, because you've worked across so many different borders.
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The role of the business analyst is it universally the same, no matter what country you're doing it from, or have you seen any like nuances or flavors that are put on it?
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Yeah, this is recent, but before usually the business analyst is a liaison between business and tech team, because I don't know if in projects, if you want disaster, you take the technical team like developers and put them in a room with the stakeholder who's asking for the requirements.
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So they're like more business.
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Yeah.
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So you know, this tech developer guy is going to start talking about databases, talking about spreadsheets, talking about, you know, very technical stuff and business.
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They want everything high level.
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So we are like in the middle, like a translator.
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Yeah, I can relate.
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Do you feel like it's well?
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I guess in your world there's maybe two translations, right?
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It's like maybe you're doing Spanish to English and then you're also doing business requirements to the technical requirements.
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Yeah, well, I actually the way that I learned English.
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And then you're also doing business requirements to the technical requirements.
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Well, I actually the way that I learned English.
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I learned it at a very young age and I don't think in Spanish like other ESL, I still think it's.
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My mother language is Spanish, but you know, and they've told me that I have good pronunciation.
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I don't know, and sometimes they've told me, hey, I can detect your accent.
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Okay, yeah, Thank you.
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Didn't ask you.
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That's funny.
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Well, I want to ask you, you know, as someone who's been in this world for a long time, in the technical world, what are some best practices you know for, like, we've got people listening that are maybe nearshore, curious.
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They're thinking about, you know, putting a team of Fernandos, you know in Mexico and maybe they're in the States.
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What are some best practices or advice or guidance that you give these people to kind of set up their nearshore operation, their nearshore technical teams, for success?
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Well, let me see when, I you know when I, what I can say is we have a very good talent in Mexico.
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There are a lot of universities here and they teach like to global, not that they don't teach like, oh, you know this company, local companies asking us for like what happened to us and to me and my university, that local companies are asking the university to do this, do that.
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You know they were like leading us, so here, no, it doesn't happen.
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Here in Guadalajara or other other big cities here in Mexico, like Monterrey, mexico City, querétaro, the universities are aware of that global, you know, global companies that need talent.
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And now you know this, this new trend, I think since, since, since the pandemic, you, you know, they realized that we can actually work from home and it's some of the.
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I love it.
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You know, I was like I've been since the pandemic.
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They told us go home, it's gonna be a week, and I'm still here.
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Since then, two companies, two different companies.
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So I got, I got fired in my home yeah and then I started a new company.
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I started in in this new company with, uh, you know, they actually saved my life actually.
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So I, I'm really grateful to them and um, and they, they really appreciate it and I'm like I've been telling, like my wife and my friends, you know, this is how I've been doing.
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I did, I did the same effort, you know, the same kind of job, same effort where I was, but I, it was not appreciated.
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So I'm like I'm not doing anything.
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So it was like it was not me.
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So I was like because you know you doubt when they fire you.
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You feel like, yeah, you get a little insecure and wonder Exactly exactly and, like now, I do the same and I've been working the same as I always have, and they really appreciate it and the culture is great.
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So maybe, like a couple of the takeaways that I'm getting is that Mexico really teaches to a global technology world and best practices in Chicago or San Francisco or London or wherever the same things they're teaching in Mexico.
00:18:52.106 --> 00:18:54.580
So there's really not a whole lot of like adaptive.
00:18:54.580 --> 00:18:59.095
I need to change my style or framework or methodology.
00:18:59.095 --> 00:19:01.201
These guys are going to be able to plug right in.
00:19:01.201 --> 00:19:11.759
And then maybe the other thing, the other thing that I'm hearing is, um, that there is the same things that humans need everywhere, that employees need everywhere.
00:19:11.759 --> 00:19:15.667
They need acknowledgement, recognition, appreciation.
00:19:15.667 --> 00:19:21.647
It's no special thing we would just do for Mexicans in the IT world.
00:19:21.647 --> 00:19:23.241
It's the same things we would do for anybody.
00:19:24.298 --> 00:19:27.257
Yeah, that's it, you got it.
00:19:27.257 --> 00:19:36.691
I don't know if it's across all companies, but this company that hired me is their culture.
00:19:36.691 --> 00:19:41.146
They have like a growth mindset, culture, which is awesome.
00:19:41.146 --> 00:19:44.201
They've never treated me any different.
00:19:44.201 --> 00:19:51.047
I'm a contractor Now, I'm not an employee, and I was the first one that they hired and they told me hey, guess what?
00:19:51.355 --> 00:19:52.348
You're going to be our guinea pig Actually.
00:19:52.348 --> 00:19:52.621
And they told me hey, guess what?
00:19:52.621 --> 00:19:53.873
You're, you're going to be our guinea pig.
00:19:53.873 --> 00:20:00.481
Actually, the agency told me that you're going to be a guinea pig and if that works for you, um, we will hire more.
00:20:00.481 --> 00:20:01.483
We're we're going to clone you.
00:20:01.744 --> 00:20:17.821
Okay, it worked and I think I did, I did, I did things well, so, and uh, and they, they asked me to hire other VAs from Mexico and we had a bad experience with one of them and it's you know, it's something that happens.
00:20:17.821 --> 00:20:23.804
Working from home, it's like for me, it's a big perk and some people don't really take that for granted.
00:20:23.804 --> 00:20:27.075
Yeah, and we had this guy who was replaced For me.
00:20:27.075 --> 00:20:31.679
You know he was like you know, for me, you're done, I'm done with you Because you know, for me, you're done, I'm done with you.
00:20:31.858 --> 00:20:37.544
Sure, because you know it was his attitude and actually the company gave him another chance.
00:20:37.544 --> 00:20:43.890
Oh my God, I was like, wow, it's like you know, he doesn't deserve it and he blew it.
00:20:43.890 --> 00:20:46.632
So just imagine, for me he was done.
00:20:46.632 --> 00:20:51.019
You know, for me I was like I don't want to work anymore.
00:20:51.019 --> 00:20:53.226
So but it's not the case, you know, it's not always the case.
00:20:53.226 --> 00:20:57.066
You know, we hired someone else and we're doing great.
00:20:57.066 --> 00:20:58.480
There are three people from Mexico.
00:20:58.480 --> 00:21:01.644
We have actually one of them lives like five minutes from here.
00:21:01.644 --> 00:21:02.365
Oh cool.
00:21:02.365 --> 00:21:06.124
Recently I went to a barbecue that he invited me.
00:21:06.586 --> 00:21:06.826
Yeah.
00:21:07.496 --> 00:21:08.640
And we got together.
00:21:08.640 --> 00:21:11.460
So yeah, yeah, so it's good, yeah, so it's.
00:21:12.221 --> 00:21:14.267
Good, yeah, good.
00:21:14.267 --> 00:21:17.343
Nothing like an asada to bring everybody together.
00:21:17.884 --> 00:21:34.815
Yeah, carnasada, yeah, and you know, in work I'm like leading that, because when I entered I was alone and my manager he was like very, very busy alone.
00:21:34.815 --> 00:21:37.800
And my manager he was like very, very busy because managers were also doing, doing like the work, like requirements management.
00:21:37.800 --> 00:21:45.963
You know uh writing tickets in jira, uh design, and in uh figma, you know all that talking to the making percentages to the client.
00:21:45.963 --> 00:21:55.607
And I was like home when I was in hp managers, they just managed, they didn't do like work.
00:21:55.607 --> 00:21:57.750
You know like what we did.
00:21:57.750 --> 00:22:09.884
And I tell these guys, you know like, take advantage, you're being trained in your language, because I'm trained in Spanish and all the time you know, because for me I don't know what happened, but am I smarter?
00:22:09.884 --> 00:22:10.949
I don't know, I don't know, but you know they have.
00:22:10.949 --> 00:22:11.952
I don't know what happened, but am I smarter?
00:22:11.952 --> 00:22:16.845
I don't know, I don't know, but you know they, they have me, maybe they have me and it's like they're.
00:22:16.944 --> 00:22:20.359
They're asking me like, hey, this, hey that, hey, hey, every.
00:22:20.359 --> 00:22:24.367
And I didn't have that and I'm like what you know, you guys have me.
00:22:24.367 --> 00:22:33.728
I didn't have myself when I, when I came in this, this work, so I said well, that's good for that, that's great.
00:22:34.067 --> 00:22:37.719
Well, let me throw one more piece out there before we go.
00:22:37.719 --> 00:22:46.265
A lot is going on in the tech world AI I'm not even you know, so maybe in like a quick kind of rapid fire.
00:22:46.265 --> 00:22:54.701
How is AI impacting the role of the business analysts today and then, what do you maybe see coming up in the next couple of years?
00:22:54.997 --> 00:23:07.188
Actually, ai is for everyone, because people think that AI is like cheating yeah, sam, but I see it as hiring a very good assistant.
00:23:07.188 --> 00:23:17.048
Of course, this assistant has complete framework of computers, but the AI and I just discovered it because I used it, but not as you used to.
00:23:17.048 --> 00:23:32.580
So I went to this course, I took a course and I was like, wow, you know, we can reduce time Like one fifth of what we do actually with AI and companies are not catching up.
00:23:32.580 --> 00:23:33.102
Actually.
00:23:33.102 --> 00:23:34.906
That's what I'm saying my, my niece.
00:23:34.906 --> 00:23:44.183
She's working in this company with I think it's a real, a realtor, and they have, like this AI, they have chat.
00:23:44.183 --> 00:23:47.540
I can say them chat GPT but, as a community.
00:23:47.595 --> 00:23:51.335
I didn't know that you can use it, and so they upload all the documents of the company.
00:23:51.335 --> 00:23:53.895
But whenever I didn't know that you can use it, and so they upload all the documents of the company.
00:23:53.895 --> 00:24:02.518
But whenever, because it's just doing things faster, because whatever an AI robot can, I can call it a robot, I call it a robot yeah, Can do.
00:24:02.518 --> 00:24:05.338
A human can do a robot can do it faster, that's all.
00:24:05.719 --> 00:24:05.979
Right.
00:24:06.239 --> 00:24:13.121
That's all because they, instead of you going into the SharePoint of the company and looking at all, reading all the documents, ai does it like this.
00:24:13.121 --> 00:24:15.721
Right, it's just the same way.
00:24:15.721 --> 00:24:25.864
Yeah, ai, if I see it this way, 20 years ago, if you didn't know English or use a computer, you were illiterate, somehow Digitally illiterate.
00:24:25.864 --> 00:24:40.627
Today, if you don't go into AI and I don't mean just asking how's the weather or you know, just programming it, because you can program to whatever you want.
00:24:41.448 --> 00:24:43.769
Believe me, just go into take a course.
00:24:43.769 --> 00:24:46.869
There are free courses everywhere for AI.
00:24:46.869 --> 00:24:54.432
Go there, Because if you don't do it, you're going to be left behind in technology.
00:24:54.432 --> 00:24:55.991
So yeah, that's mine.
00:24:56.672 --> 00:24:58.613
I think that's great advice.
00:24:58.613 --> 00:24:59.692
Great advice.
00:24:59.692 --> 00:25:03.094
Well, fernando, this has been a lot of fun.
00:25:03.094 --> 00:25:03.993
I knew it would be.
00:25:03.993 --> 00:25:08.844
I knew you'd have a lot of great stuff to say.
00:25:08.844 --> 00:25:22.482
You're listening to the Nearshore Cafe podcast sponsored by Plug Technologies, luggtech a great way to connect talent from all over Latin America with US companies, and great talent, like Fernando, in Latin America.
00:25:22.482 --> 00:25:23.705
Thanks again for listening.
00:25:23.705 --> 00:25:24.586
We'll see you next time.
00:25:24.586 --> 00:25:25.449
Thank you, erwin.
00:25:25.449 --> 00:25:30.109
Thanks for joining us at the Nearshore Cafe podcast.
00:25:30.109 --> 00:25:30.752
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