Trend Story: Job opportunities in the Latin American IT market
By Hector D. Calabia
For Computerworld, USA
BUENOS AIRES – (1/7/2002)
The impact of globalization has been widely felt in the vast region commonly known as “Latin America.” From the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego, by way of Central America and Brazil, Information Technology has served to unify these nations and our research has revealed far more areas of concurrence than divergence in terms of employment in the industry.
As is the case throughout the rest of the world, IT in Latin America is a privileged area of employment. “Traditionally, workers in the technology sector have a different profile in the workforce. Their technical training, linked to advances in the science that has revolutionized the world over the last twenty years, and their interest in professional qualification and personal growth, have served to advance their job opportunities,” says Sergio Marino, a founding partner of Ferengi Syneptic Links, in Argentina. In most Latin American countries, strong demand cannot fully be met by the local market. “While unemployment in general is low in Mexico at the moment (approximately two percent), it is practically nonexistent among IT workers”, says a spokesperson from the Mexican Office of Labor and Social Insurance. The situation is similar throughout most of the region: “The (Chilean) market is perfectly balanced –demand for professionals is met by supply. Chile did not experience the dot-com boom and as a result there was no impact on demand; when the sector ran into a crisis, the IT employment market was not affected,” says Benjamín Toselli, general manager at the Chilean recruitment firm Activa Gente de Informática.
Right now, the great exception to this general rule is Argentina—the third biggest IT market in Latin America, after Brazil and Mexico. It saw large-scale development of dot-coms—to the point where it might be considered to have been the region’s pioneer in this type of commercial development. The collapse of the dot-com market seriously affected the labor market from 2000 on, and the situation was further worsened by the economic downturn of 2001. Carlos Pallotti, vice-president of Datastream Computec for Latin America, paints a serious picture: “Over recent months, recession and, more recently, the acute financial crisis, have triggered a series of lay-offs, and that situation is not likely to slow down in the foreseeable future. I believe that at least forty percent of jobs in the industry will be lost... especially in international companies that have downsized their workforces, or have simply closed down local operations.” Nonetheless, some local firms will capitalize on the ready supply of qualified labor willing to accept lower wages, “to reposition themselves on the market with lower costs.”
Many of these displaced professionals could emigrate to other countries, especially the US. “Unfortunately, the fall-off in jobs in the United States will not aid that trend. [...] In the US, the average level of quality of Argentine professionals is considered to be better than that of other Latin Americans,” says Pallotti, but in general they are looking for higher salaries. The US recession has also affected the other countries in the region. According to a poll conducted among Brazilian employers by the Brazilian American Chamber of Commerce, “the greatest concern is the recession in the United States,” which could affect exports from Latin American countries, with a direct impact on employment.
Despite this, affiliates of US companies are still the preferred hunting ground of IT job-seekers. “The large multinational companies offer an intellectual and professional challenge in attractive technological projects... a stimulating atmosphere and the chance to gain international experience,” says Guillermo Beuchat of Beuchat, Batlle & Edwards Consultores, in Santiago de Chile. In Chile, for example, Microsoft was recently ranked in first position by the “Great Place to Work Institute.” The next two places on the list were also filled by IT firms: Compaq and Ingram Micro.
Latin America shares two outstanding features with the rest of the world: outsourcing and telecommuting. “Over the next few years we will see a gradual move in technology employment toward companies that outsource their services, cutting back on the number of people working in the company’s own departments. Specialized firms can offer better service with greater security and professionalism at a lower cost than in-house departments,” says Sergio Marino of Ferengi. This is especially true in sectors such as call centers, software design for the Internet, network maintenance, and network data storage systems.
In Venezuela, Colette Siwka, of the telecommunications firm Cantv, expresses a clear preference for telecommuting; she says it offers a great opportunity for professional men and women to be just as productive—if not more so—working from home as from their offices. However, the common denominator in telecommuting is not that employees work from home but that they use computers and telecommunication links to work from a distance, eliminating or significantly reducing the need to “clock in”. Typically, the work is “target-based” rather than “time-based.” “Systems developers and workers (are looking for) a contract-free, informal working environment. Most prefer to telecommute, complementing their hours in the office with time spent working at home or from other remote workstations”, says Ariel Hepner, founding partner of Comunicaciones y Telemática (CyT) in Buenos Aires.
The coming year will not be a great one for IT employment opportunities in Latin America, but the outlook is better than for the previous year. “The job market will see balanced expansion in all areas. There will be sustained growth—slow, but steady,” says Marcos Possari, partner at the Prime Group, in Vila Mariana (Sao Paulo), Brazil. “We will see growth in job openings in IT.” To a greater or lesser extent, the outlook is the same for the rest of Latin America, with the sole exception—for the moment—of Argentina. But even there, IT workers have reasons for optimism: international firms generally try to protect their highly-trained key employees, finding positions for them in other affiliates when local operations are downsized. For everyone in the industry, the greatest challenge will be to maintain a high degree of specialization and to keep abreast of change, particularly in Internet-related technology.