Mario Oliveros Figueroa has spent his career doing one thing: building sales teams across Latin America. Today he's the Global Director of Latin America at Niyamo, one of the largest payroll services companies in the region. In this conversation, we get into the "sales triangle" of Mexico's three business cities, how sales talent differs from Colombia to Argentina to Brazil, the AI tools changing the game for outbound teams, and what U.S. companies almost always get wrong when they first try to sell into Mexico. You'll walk away with a real map of how commercial Latin America actually works.

🎧 Host | Brian Samson – Founder of 💻 Plugg Technologies
🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/briansamson/

🎙️ Sponsored by Plugg Technologies – Connecting U.S. companies with top-tier software developers across Latin America.
🌐 https://www.plugg.tech

🌎 Follow The Nearshore Cafe Podcast
🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6KYcgpmN77fJm6B25469B8
🎙️ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-nearshore-cafe/id1775525954
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-nearshore-cafe
🌐 Website: https://www.nearshorecafepodcast.com
🔗 All links: https://linktr.ee/nearshorecafepodcast

Victor Fernandes is a data platform engineer from Fortaleza, Brazil — and his path to get there is unlike anything I've heard before. Seven and a half years automating power plants and steel factories, then a single phone call in 2021 that pulled him into the data world. We talk about what it's like building for U.S. teams from Northeast Brazil, the cultural shock of his first American standup, and how he thinks about AI on production systems. You'll come away with a very different picture of what Brazilian engineering talent actually looks like up close.

🎧 Host | Brian Samson – Founder of 💻 Plugg Technologies
🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/briansamson/

🎙️ Sponsored by Plugg Technologies – Connecting U.S. companies with top-tier software developers across Latin America.
🌐 https://www.plugg.tech

🌎 Follow The Nearshore Cafe Podcast
🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6KYcgpmN77fJm6B25469B8
🎙️ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-nearshore-cafe/id1775525954
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-nearshore-cafe
🌐 Website: https://www.nearshorecafepodcast.com
🔗 All links: https://linktr.ee/nearshorecafepodcast

The H1B conversation is loud, political, and often full of half-truths, so we wanted a clean, practical breakdown from someone who has lived it from the staffing side. We sit down with Robert Richard, Chief Digital Officer at Tier 4 Group and the creator behind the H1B Guy, to talk about what is actually happening inside high-skilled immigration and the labor market right now.

We unpack how H1B hiring works in the real world, including the staffing agency supply chain, why sponsorship became a strategy for filling niche technical roles, and how the USCIS lottery and annual H1B cap create winners and losers. Robert explains the recent shift toward wage-based selection, why selection rates changed as application volumes moved, and what the four wage levels mean for employers trying to hire software engineers, data talent, and other hard-to-find specialists. We also dig into the big picture: India and China’s dominance in H1B and international student pipelines, what the US education and training gap looks like, and why the green card backlog signals a system that needs reform.

Then we zoom out to the business response. When access to US work authorization tightens, companies look to nearshore and offshore delivery, and we break down why Latin America nearshoring can be a strong option: time zone overlap, bilingual communication, and deepening tech talent across markets like Brazil, Mexico, and Costa Rica. We close with what recruiters and staffing leaders need to know about AI in recruiting, from sourcing agents to digital recruiting agents, plus the biggest mistake buyers make when they treat AI like set-it-and-forget-it software.

If you care about recruiting strategy, high-skilled immigration, nearshore talent, and the future of recruitment technology, hit subscribe, share this with a hiring leader, and leave a review. Where do you think the balance should land between protecting local jobs and keeping the innovation pipeline open?

🎧 Host | Brian Samson – Founder of 💻 Plugg Technologies
🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/briansamson/

🎙️ Sponsored by Plugg Technologies – Connecting U.S. companies with top-tier software developers across Latin America.
🌐 https://www.plugg.tech

🌎 Follow The Nearshore Cafe Podcast
🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6KYcgpmN77fJm6B25469B8
🎙️ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-nearshore-cafe/id1775525954
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-nearshore-cafe
🌐 Website: https://www.nearshorecafepodcast.com
🔗 All links: https://linktr.ee/nearshorecafepodcast