Last quarter, I watched a director of engineering at a Series B startup spend three weeks trying to fill a temporary Senior Backend Engineer role. The rate? $89/hour. The problem? Every qualified candidate in the U.S. wanted a $110 / hr minimum rate, and the budget wasn’t moving.
So he did what a lot of teams are doing right now: he looked south instead of west.
For 20+ years, the conversation has been binary: hire in the U.S. for quality, or hire offshore for cost. But that playbook is breaking down. U.S. salaries have detached from reality in most tech hubs, and offshore teams (while cheap on paper) come with friction that erodes those savings faster than finance wants to admit.
There’s a third option that’s gaining traction: nearshore staffing. And if you’re not exploring it yet, you’re probably overpaying.
The U.S. Hiring Math Doesn’t Work Anymore
Let’s talk numbers: a Senior Engineer in San Francisco’s hourly rate averages $100 – $160. In Austin, it’s $80 – $113. Even fully remote U.S. roles are commanding ~90/hour because candidates know they have leverage.
Meanwhile, the cost of living in those same cities has jumped 30 – 40% in the past five years. Housing, healthcare, childcare, everything is up. Companies are stuck paying inflated salaries just to cover inflated living costs, not because the work itself is worth more.
Remote work didn’t fix this, it just spread the problem: Engineers in Des Moines still want Bay Area comp because they’re competing with Bay Area roles.
The result? Onshore hiring isn’t the default anymore. It’s a luxury.
Offshore Saves Money. Until It Doesn’t
Offshore outsourcing still looks good in a spreadsheet. You can hire senior engineers in India or the Philippines for around $25-$40 per hour, which is a fraction of U.S. rates.
But here’s what the spreadsheet doesn’t capture:
- Time zone hell. When your team in Bangalore logs off, yours is logging on. Decisions take 24 hours minimum. Product cycles slow to a crawl.
- Communication gaps. Misaligned requirements lead to rework. Rework leads to frustration. Frustration leads to churn.
- Cultural friction. Different workplace norms, different communication styles. Small things compound.
- Higher churn rates. Offshore hubs are saturated. Your best engineers get poached every six months.
- Management overhead. You need dedicated PMs just to keep things moving, which adds hidden costs fast.
I’ve seen companies “save” $400K on engineering salaries, then spend $200K on extra project management and $100K on rework, and as a result, the ROI evaporates.
Why Nearshore Is the Smart Middle Ground
This is where nearshore changes the equation (specifically, Latin America). Here’s what makes it work:
Real-time collaboration. Most LATAM countries are in EST, CST, MST or PST-adjacent zones. Your team in Mexico City or Buenos Aires is online when you are, which leads to same-day feedback loops and actual agile sprints.
Cultural alignment. LATAM professionals grew up watching the same shows, using the same software, and working with the same U.S. companies. There’s less translation (literal and cultural).
Better cost-to-quality ratio. Yes, hourly rates in LATAM are a bit higher than offshore (think $45 – $60 per hour, depending on seniority and location). But the total cost of ownership is lower because you’re not bleeding money on rework and coordination overhead.
Deep talent pools. Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil have strong Computer Science and Engineering programs and a generation of engineers who’ve worked for Google, Microsoft, and startups. They’re not junior, but legitimately senior.
No U.S. cost-of-living penalty. The economics just work better because you’re hiring excellent engineers who aren’t trying to afford $3,500/month rent.
I talked to a VP of Engineering at a fintech company who transitioned 40% of her team to nearshore over 18 months. Her feedback: “We went from waiting a day for answers to getting them in an hour. Our velocity doubled, and we saved $1.2M annually.”
That’s the kind of result that makes CFOs pay attention.
When Nearshore Doesn’t Work
To be fair, pure remote isn’t perfect for everyone. If you’re building something that requires in-person collaboration (hardware prototyping, deep research, highly regulated environments) you might assume you need fully onshore teams.
But here’s what most TA leaders don’t realize: if you need Mexican talent onsite, there’s a much easier path than H1B.
TN visas allow Mexican (and Canadian) professionals to work in the U.S. full-time: no lottery system, no $100K sponsorship fees, no multi-year wait times. The process is straightforward, the approval rate is high, and you can fill critical onsite roles without the nightmare that H1B has become.
This changes the calculus completely. You’re not choosing between “remote offshore” and “expensive onshore.” You’re getting access to senior talent who can flex between remote and on-site depending on what your team needs.
For most roles? Nearshore remote is the play. But when you do need boots on the ground, TN visas give you flexibility that traditional offshore markets simply can’t match.
The 2026 Playbook
Here’s what forward-thinking TA leaders are doing right now:
1) Start with one or two roles. Test the model. Hire a senior engineer in a LATAM country and see how it goes.
2) Prioritize time zone overlap. Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina are your best bets for U.S. teams.
3) Work with specialists. Recruiting internationally is hard. Companies like Fast Dolphin focus exclusively on placing bilingual tech talent from Latin America, which means they’ve already vetted candidates and understand integration.
4) Invest in onboarding. Remote is remote, whether it’s Texas or Bogotá. Good onboarding matters everywhere.
5) Track total cost, not hourly rate. Cheaper per hour doesn’t mean cheaper overall. Measure productivity, quality, and retention.
The companies adopting nearshore early are building more scalable, more financially sustainable teams. The ones waiting are still trying to justify $200K salaries for roles that don’t need to be that expensive.
Bottom Line
The question for 2026 isn’t “onshore or offshore?” It’s “how fast can we integrate nearshore into our hiring strategy?”
If you’re serious about exploring this, start small. Hire one engineer through a nearshore partner like Fast Dolphin. Run a 90-day pilot. Measure the results.
You’ll probably wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.
