Mexico has sustained a strong economy highly fueled by its manufacturing industry during recent decades. Its many factories "maquiladoras", manufacture products in great scale for the U.S. and other markets. Mexico is the 13th largest export economy in the world and the 11th largest economy.
Throughout the beginning of the information age in the 90's and the first decade of the 21st century, Mexico lacked a presence in the software development industry mainly because it was a new field and still lacked leadership. Also because tech talents generally fled to other countries. It was not until this decade that Mexico has set a strong foot into the global software development industry, having today quality firms and leaders contributing value to this industry and the economy.
Take Metric Impact, a world class software development firm based in Mexico city. The firm offers full stack development services for high-end systems demanded by its customers in Mexico and across the globe. When we asked Pepe Kamel, Metric Impact's CEO, about his thoughts on the growth of the industry in Mexico he humbly said "As Andreesen once said 'software is eating the world', so it is really not about Mexico, every growing economy should have quality software development companies in their core. For us, it has been very rewarding to be part of the transformation of this industry in Mexico, which now proudly owns a space in the global tech scene."
The software industry is growing and evolving at a fast pace.The ship has sailed in this industry and seems like Mexico got itself a good seat in it. This situation provides evidence that it is the passion and the minds of the people inside the companies the ones who truly shape and transform the future.
The demand for Mexican talent in the software industry is highly aggressive, the truth is that companies are currently paying $US 2,000 referral fees just to attract qualified staff. Also, regions in the north of the country strongly push the competition and attract foreign capital by employing Mexicans who remotely serve companies operating in other countries, but mainly in the United States. In a labor scenario, which has been transformed in the last 10 years. Further, there is another type of software production potentially very important for Mexico because of the importance of its electronics industry exports, which is the production of software as an input of manufactured electronic devices by the industry known as ("embedded software"), either in the form of direct production by the brand company itself like IBM or Hewlett Packard or its subcontractors, or its main contractors, such as Solectron. It is a type of production of the electronic industry and, in Mexico, the export electronics industry is a very large one.
A final question regarding the global software industry that I want to address is the one of the international trading and transfer of software. These are very important points to address in government decisions because of the very vital nature of (especially of "packaged" programs) for the operation of the electronic equipment at a global scale, and concern of the high concentration and specialization of software production in just a few countries. Policymakers will need to take a look at this to avoid breach of international trade agreements in the software industry.