Without realising it, I’ve recently passed a milestone: I’ve been collaborating with teams in Latin America for over a decade. Although I’m no expert on Argentina, I can certainly offer some real-world insights into working with team members from different countries around the world, and perhaps introduce some interesting research along the way.

The first time I worked with a team from Argentina – and actually, when I first met the founders of Parser – was somewhat forced upon me. It was back in 2014, while I was leading the technical team at reed.co.uk, at the time the UK’s largest jobs and careers site. We had just finished an engagement with a large, prestigious consulting firm – I’m sure you know the kind. They concluded our technology was holding us back. I… disagreed. But I needed a second opinion.

As we were considering partners to help with the review, we found an Argentinian software consultancy, and so began  my journey with Latin American engineering. They proposed something that they called “software archaeology” – a delightfully accurate term for what needed to be applied to our sprawling, interconnected architecture. A group of engineers came from Argentina to London and spent two weeks embedded within our team, working with some of our most experienced engineers and digging into our code. 

The outcome was incredibly valuable, providing the clarity and confidence I needed to push back against the expensive, misguided consulting advice. It also began my decade-long collaboration with Parser as a software development partner.

A background to Argentina

Argentina is the largest, richest, and perhaps the most enigmatic Spanish-speaking country in Latin America. Concentrated around Buenos Aires, a city of over 12 million people, its cultural influences span Spain, England, Italy, and India. In Patagonia, there’s even a thriving Welsh community of about 70,000 people. It’s a genuine melting pot of cultures.

The writer Jorge Luis Borges humorously described his fellow Argentines, saying “El argentino es un italiano que habla español, piensa en francés y querría ser inglés” (which means “an Argentine is an Italian who speaks Spanish, thinks in French, and wishes they were English.”)  

This reflects the complex identity, particularly of the porteños – the people of Buenos Aires – European in outlook, sophisticated yet casual, eloquent yet opinionated. By all accounts, Buenos Aires feels much like a European city, perhaps similar to Paris or Madrid. In fact, Britain was Argentina’s main trading partner until the Second World War. In my own experience, Argentines are warm and persuasive – especially if there’s good food and Malbec involved. They appreciate intellectual debate and respectful disagreement, as long as it’s open and friendly.

Throughout my career, I’ve outsourced software development to global teams – from India and Bulgaria to Poland, Ukraine, South Africa, and I’ve also worked directly with teams in Sweden, Japan and France. And while I’m cautious about using stereotypes – and encourage you to be similarly careful – cultural patterns undeniably matter.

When advising teams who are new to international collaboration, I often share simplified cultural contrasts. For example, in the UK, developers tend toward creative problem-solving, and can even be quite outspoken if they’re not included in design conversations. They don’t like simply following instructions. (But ironically, they’ll also complain if you ask them to do anything that isn’t writing code)

By contrast, it’s not uncommon for a British product manager to provide a slightly incomplete spec to a team of Indian engineers –  who prioritise harmony, avoid open disagreement and may struggle to say no – only for them to diligently deliver exactly what was asked for… and something quite unintended – which leads to mutual frustration. 

Give that same incomplete spec to a team from Eastern Europe who are much more comfortable with direct disagreement, and they’re likely to tell you bluntly it’s not good enough, and refuse to start work until it’s clear – which will also cause discomfort for conflict avoidant British colleagues.

Navigating these cultural nuances matters. To better understand why, I’d like to introduce you to some research on the topic, in the book The Culture Map and the work of Erin Meyer. Erin is a professor at INSEAD who specializes in coaching executives to understand and bridge cultural divides. Erin’s book is really insightful, and I thought it might be interesting for us to explore how Argentina compares culturally to traditional outsourcing locations such as India and Central & Eastern Europe – from a British perspective.

Erin’s “Culture Map” identifies eight dimensions of cultural difference. These behaviours aren’t really ever considered consciously by people in their native cultures, but are learned implicitly, through cultural osmosis. The startling thing about the scales is just how useful they are in helping us understand cultural differences.

Now, don’t worry – I’m not going to take you through all eight but let’s briefly consider a few particularly relevant ones:

Communication Styles

First, communication styles—what Meyer calls High-Context versus Low-Context. In low-context cultures, effective communication must be simple, clear, and explicit. It perhaps won’t surprise you to know that the United States is the lowest-context culture in the world – followed quite quickly by other Anglophone countries like (some of) Canada and (arguably) Australia, and then our very direct friends in the Netherlands. If you’ve ever worked with Dutch colleagues you’ll know what I mean. 

In the United States and other Anglophone cultures, people are trained (mostly subconsciously) to communicate as literally and explicitly as possible. Good communication is all about clarity and explicitness, and accountability for accurate transmission of the message is placed firmly on the communicator: “If you don’t understand, it’s my fault.”

By contrast, in many Asian cultures, including India, China, Japan, and Indonesia, messages are often conveyed implicitly, requiring the listener to read between the lines. Good communication is subtle, layered, and may depend on copious subtext, with responsibility for transmission of the message shared between the one sending the message and the one receiving it. The same applies to many African cultures, like Kenya and Zimbabwe, and to a lesser degree Latin American cultures (such as Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina) and Latin European cultures such as Spain, Italy, Portugal.

Japan and India are at this far end of the scale – they’re very high context. The communication is much less direct and explicit, and there’s a lot left to very subtle signals. In Japan, this is called ‘reading the air’, and involves everything from subtle meeting traditions – like not actually asking questions if someone says, “does anyone have any questions?”, to reading facial micro-expressions – a fleeting frown or a quickly raised eyebrow. To us, low context westerners, we’re often entirely blind to these signals unless we are at pains to practice and embed ourselves in these cultures.

The directness of Central and Eastern European cultures

Often when we think about teams across central and eastern europe – which is a huge catchment area – we would think of some descriptive words. We might consider them taciturn, disciplined, cautious, determined, persistent and attentive. Perhaps reserved, especially when compared against the rather more passionate latin cultures.

Many Eastern European countries strongly favor direct negative feedback, another of Meyer’s scales which ranges from direct to indirect negative feedback. 

There is a clear cultural expectation that feedback should be explicit and direct rather than soft or indirect, which is significantly different from cultures like the U.S. or UK, which often cushion negative feedback.

The sophistication of Indian culture

In contrast with Europeans, India has a very special and unique culture. There can be a strong sense of hierarchy, with a great deal more humility and respect shown to the listener than in Britain or the US. English is spoken wonderfully, often with more skill and sophistication than by native English speakers. With that sophistication, also comes a great skill in ambiguity, leaving much up to discussion, and you may well find that when dealing with Indian team members, they may be actively disappointed if you don’t bargain and negotiate with them.

Indian teams, like those in many Asian countries, also tend to avoid direct negative feedback.  If you intend to give feedback to an Indian colleague, you should do it gradually rather than directly and all at once. Indonesia – interestingly, is the most indirect of all cultures, and you may actually need to give negative feedback by omission. If you have feedback on four topics and one is negative, you should only mention the three positives and the Indonesian listener will infer negative feedback on the fourth purely by the fact that you didn’t mention it!

If you were delivering this feedback to a central or eastern european team member –  you’d omit the three positives and only mention the single negative! 

Comparing Argentina and Latin America

Latin America broadly tends to rely on high-context, subtle messaging. However, Argentine communication is noticeably more direct, explicit, and clear, which makes it more similar to northern European and North American norms. 

Relationships matter in Argentina – and building them is seen as an important part of doing business, but not to the same levels as some Latin American counterparts. In Meyer’s book, she talks about the confusion she saw in an American team visiting colleagues in Brazil, who spent most of the first two days of their trip at extended lunches and long evening meals! More like British and American professionals, Argentinians are more practical and task-oriented when building trust.

We’ve already mentioned styles of negative feedback, and again Argentina is an outlier in Latin America. Unlike most Latin American cultures that prefer softer, diplomatic criticism, Argentines strongly favor direct, clear, and straightforward feedback—more similar to Eastern European teams, and significantly different from the indirect approach typical in India.

Argentinian teammates are also likely to embrace open debate comfortably, making discussions frank and productive. This directness contrasts sharply with the indirectness and harmony-focused style seen in Indian teams, which may see them being reluctant to criticise a bad idea, or say no to too much work.

So who is Argentina like?

So if Argentinian teams aren’t like the rest of Latin America, and not like India or Central or Eastern European teams, who are they like?

Perhaps the most intriguing insight for me was discovering how closely Argentina aligns culturally with Spain and Portugal. Across Erin Meyer’s cultural dimensions, Argentina consistently maps much closer to its Iberian cousins than to the rest of Latin America. Communication styles, feedback preferences, openness to debate, and the attitude to timekeeping strongly resemble working with Spanish and Portuguese teams, offering clarity, directness, and predictability but still with Latin creativity and flair.

Tech Talent and Training

There is one other important aspect that matters to us as technology leaders :  technical education. How does Argentina’s technical education compare to these other big outsourcing regions?

In India, prestigious institutions like the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs) have global reputations, producing graduates with strong theoretical foundations. Admission is incredibly competitive, creating graduates exceptionally strong in theory but often lacking practical, industry-ready skills. Historically, practical programming, agile methodologies, and the latest technologies were often learned post-graduation or through additional training, with larger employers creating their own bootcamp programmes to train graduates.

Alongside these elite institutions emerged many private engineering colleges, resulting in an oversupply of graduates and variable educational quality. Engineering, once a guaranteed path to success, became oversaturated, complicating the search for genuinely skilled, job-ready talent.

Central and Eastern Europe, by contrast, benefit from a rich tradition in STEM education inherited from Soviet-era polytechnics. Countries like Poland, Ukraine, and Serbia emphasize rigorous theoretical knowledge—advanced mathematics, algorithms, and fundamental engineering principles. This strong theoretical grounding translates into deep problem-solving skills. Furthermore, these countries often encourage participation in programming competitions and hackathons, providing graduates with valuable practical coding experience alongside their theoretical studies. This balance makes Eastern European developers highly adaptable and technically proficient from graduation.

Looking back at Argentina, we find an educational environment characterized by strong public universities and broad accessibility. The open-access policy leads to high initial enrollment but demanding coursework, meaning only the most committed and capable students graduate. Argentina produces around 6,000-7,000 engineering graduates annually—modest compared to India but marked by consistently high standards.

Argentine universities increasingly blend theoretical foundations with practical industry collaborations, and  there is still a legacy of academia partnering with industry thanks to US tech giants like IBM having big outsourcing programmes in Latin America in the 90s and 2000s. Argentine tech firms often engage students early, creating strong industry-academic ties through internships, sponsored lab facilities, and coding competitions. As a result, Argentine graduates frequently complete their education with significant practical experience, often having spent a year or more working in real-world projects before graduation.

Why Argentina is well suited as an offshore destination for British companies

It’s notable how remarkably well suited Argentina is as a destination for British companies – it’s on a convenient timezone (only 3 or 4 hours away from GMT, and perfect for companies working across the US and UK), there’s a skilled talent pool, with the highest English proficiency in all of Latin America, all with the benefit of not paying western European salaries.

Perhaps most importantly, and as we’ve explored through Erin Meyer’s framework, Argentina culturally resembles Spain and Portugal closely, making it easier for teams in the UK to integrate and collaborate smoothly compared to teams from India or Eastern Europe, especially if they haven’t had any prior experience with working across cultures.

Perhaps the biggest opportunity for us? Recognising Argentina as a relatively untapped pool of highly skilled, culturally compatible, creatively motivated talent.

References: https://erinmeyer.com/tools/culture-map-premium/