Cesar CantuLike many other developing nations, Mexico is no stranger to brain drain. Some of the country’s most promising, young minds find themselves trapped in a landscape that offers very little opportunities for them to take off and fly as high as their capabilities will allow them to. The brightest and most fortunate manage to break away from the curse of unfulfilled potential by migrating to greener pastures, achieving levels of success that would have otherwise eluded them in their home country.
Such is the case of Oswaldo Gómez, a physicist turned ML engineer currently working as a Lead IT Expert at Roche Poland. Oswaldo’s journey has been long and at first unconventional, but there’s no denying that it turned out successful. Three years after migrating to Poland, he looks back at Mexico, giving thought to how things have changed and how they’ve remained the same.
In the following interview, Oswaldo details his journey in the tech industry, shares his thoughts on Mexico’s tech landscape, compares that landscape to Poland’s and provides some pointers on how to make Mexico a land of successful stories.
NSAM: Oswaldo, tell us about your international trajectory in the tech sector.
Oswaldo Gómez: After a rather unconventional start in tech, working as a service desk analyst, I managed to move up the ladder to a position in which I was actually programming instead of resetting passwords, fixing network printers and that kind of thing. It happened real fast. In a few months, I was already programming in a modern language, not Fortran 90. That catapulted my career.
I worked on cloud migration, when that was a relatively new thing. We migrated hundreds of clients to the cloud. Whenever AWS launched a new service, we were using it on that very same day. That gave me a competitive edge over everyone else.
I worked at TCS for a while, and then was hired by a US startup. That’s where my creativity exploded. I was an administrator and the only person managing the cloud of this itty-bitty company, so I could do and undo as I pleased.
That creativity and experience helped me land a job in S&P Global, where I started working as a data analyst. My goal was to combine my knowledge of mathematics with the tech skills I had acquired. Obviously, things don’t just happen instantaneously. Sometimes you have to accept a job that isn’t exactly what you’re aiming for to actually get the job you’re working towards. That’s what I did. I worked as a data analyst, but I dreamed of being a data scientist.
The year and a half I spent at S&P was quite tough for me. I was working in finance as the only tech person in an office filled with 100 financial analysts. Then the company created its own data science academy. That academy was led by a group of engineers and data scientists from Harvard, from MIT, all of them from an S&P-owned company called Kensho. I was accepted into this academy, and that’s how I got my start in data science.
The knowledge I acquired at the academy allowed me to apply for a job as an ML engineer [at S&P]. That’s exactly what I wanted. When I got the job, I began working on and learning all the things I do today.
I was supposed to work in the US. It was going to be my first time working outside of Mexico. But Donald Trump’s election, and a merger in our company, put my plans for migration –and those of so many others– on hold. I was told that I could work remotely, from Mexico. As the sole foreigner in those Zoom calls, it wasn’t optimal. They were all working in the same space, physically. They would be laughing at the start of a meeting because something had happened in the office; something I didn’t know about. It was a weird sentiment. And I still longed to travel and work outside of my country. I felt frustrated.
In Mexico, I had to study four years and a half to get my degree. In Poland, you get a degree and a masters in five years.
I stayed there for two more years. My colleagues were so ahead of me, professionally. They had PhDs in computer science, with 10 years of industry experience. By the time I migrated to Poland, to work for another company, I managed to reach their level in cloud, ML and other technologies.
My colleagues were incredible. They taught me everything. Get this: one of them is working at Microsoft now, another at Meta and another is the CTO of a company in Australia. I was so lucky to be surrounded by geniuses. And that’s the word for it: geniuses. When I was called from Poland, I held a very good hand of cards.
NSAM: How did the folks from Roche Poland find you?
Oswaldo Gómez: It was an incredible thing. I published an article in Medium. A tutorial on how to install what’s known as ML Flow in kubernetes and how to connect those to AWS. It was a bunch of things, difficult things, combined. I posted that article in LinkedIn with a hashtag: #MLOps.
There was very little information on MLOps at the time, so an article with that particular hashtag helped the folks from Roche find an MLOps engineer thousands of miles away from Poland.
In Poland, industry and academia are completely joined together. That barely happens in Mexico.
There were no MLOps jobs in Mexico at the time; zero. There were a few in the US. Actually, in the US, I worked as an ML engineer, which is similar, but not the same. This job in Roche was for an actual MLOps engineer, and I was interviewed by other MLOps engineers. It was such a good match.
NSAM: In what year did this happen? Being hired by Roche.
Oswaldo Gómez: In the midst of the [COVID] pandemic. Sometime in 2021.
NSAM: I’m asking to have a better idea of the job market for ML engineers at the time. One would think that, by 2021, there would be at least some jobs, if not for MLOps engineers specifically, at least for anyone with ML knowledge. And if not in Mexico, for sure in the US.
Oswaldo Gómez: It was barely starting in the US then. I spoke with my team [at S&P] about MLOps. I told them that we should start doing things in a less “artisanal” way; that there was this process called MLOps, which was like DevOps, but for AI. There was a 50/50 reaction. Half of them thought it had no long-term value, and the other half were curious about it. In contrast, over here in Poland, they were already looking for MLOps engineers at the time. Their mindset was so different.
NSAM: Since you broke into the IT world, were you interested in ML? I once spoke with a Google engineer who told me it was very difficult to convince students and even professionals to learn about ML, cloud and similar technologies.
Oswaldo Gómez: Really? How odd. This Google engineer was in Mexico, correct?
NSAM: Yes.
Oswaldo Gómez: I mention it because I’m Mexican, obviously, and I’m very familiar with that context. There are loads of engineers here in Poland. It is like a Silicon Valley in the middle of Europe. Their education levels are very, very high.
It isn’t like in Mexico. Over here, you graduate from high school and it takes you three years to get a professional degree. And with two more years, you can get a masters in sciences. Over there, in Mexico, I had to study four years and a half to get my degree. In Poland, you get a degree and a masters in five years. And many are 26 or 27 years old by that time, and decide to go for a PhD. Several of my colleagues have a PhD. What you tell me about Mexico would be such an oddity over here. I can see it happening there, though, because there aren’t many people choosing to study sciences.
In Europe, you have people who graduate fast, with a master degree in computer sciences, and jump immediately into the market. Some of my coworkers are 35 years old –my age–, and they’ve been working in computer science for 12 or 13 years.
Mexican work culture can be both good and bad.
It is hard to describe how passionate people around here are about data science, about statistics. There are congresses everywhere. There’s this company called Allegro, which is like Poland’s Amazon. Allegro has an incredible data science team which builds its own LLMs [large language models] from scratch, in collaboration with Polish universities. In Poland, industry and academia are completely joined together. That barely happens in Mexico. These folks from Allegro publish articles on peer-reviewed periodicals about their LLMs.
And Allegro is only one company. I work with extraordinary people at Roche, capable of competing with the best at a global level. We have such a great mix of talent here in Poland. Being surrounded by such talented people motivates me a lot, pushes me to be better.
NSAM: Oswaldo, I stumbled upon you when you commented on a LinkedIn post, from Intel. You said you were both glad and surprised by how much Mexican tech had progressed since you left for Poland. In general, what’s the perception of Mexican talent in Europe?
Oswaldo Gómez: I’ve never doubted Mexican talent. I know there’s a lot of talent in Mexico, but there are also very few opportunities for them.
The perception of Mexico in other countries is… How honest can I be? It is tough, but I’ll say it anyway. When people here ask me where I’m from and I tell them that I’m Mexican, their response is: Ah, the land of “El Chapo”, of drugs. Everyone at the very least mentions drugs. That’s due to that Netflix series, Narcos, which was very popular here in Poland.
About engineers specifically: unfortunately, I must tell you that they barely think of Mexican engineers over here. They think of Mexico as a whole, and they see the country as a very dangerous place, dominated by drug lords. It hurts me a lot.
Mexico’s main goal should be, more than bringing back expats, developing talent.
My wife told me about this idea of being your country’s own ambassador. I read a lot of bad news about Mexico, and I would share them with people here when asked about my country. I wasn’t aware of how much people relied on me to be their source of information about Mexico. Now I’m more aware of it and make an effort to change their perception. I tell them about places in Mexico that are safer than cities in the US. I let them know that I studied in Mexico, not Poland or some other place. I try to be a good example of the Mexican engineer. I try to show how hardworking we are.
Mexican work culture can be both good and bad. It is bad because we work too many hours, and that ain’t right. On the brighter side, though, in places where people don’t work as hard, you get noticed. That happened to me. I was promoted twice in two years at Roche, and that rarely happens here.
There aren’t many Mexican techies here in Poland, though. I might be the only one at Roche. Maybe there’s some other guy in Warsaw.
NSAM: You could be characterized as a success story, at least in the eyes of Mexican companies and Mexican government officials. What would you recommend to foster the creation and development of stories such as yours?
Oswaldo Gómez: I would look at what was done here in Poland: investment in higher education. It’s a cliché to say it, but that’s the ticket. That was my case. I studied at UNAM and realized how much I could learn and do with my time, with hard work. I realized that I could learn complex stuff.
I would also recommend giving Mexicans working abroad good reasons to return. Poland suffered a period of brain drain. Many of its top talents migrated to Germany, to the UK. Eventually, Poland began to grow. If you look at videos or pictures of Warsaw, you might think you’re looking at New York City. When a country has rule of law, security, good salaries and investment, expats come back. Now Poland is seeing a “reverse brain drain” of sorts.
There’s the phenomenon of nearshoring in Mexico. Now that Tesla will be landing in Nuevo León, for example, authorities should set up the conditions to attract Mexicans working abroad back into the country. Proper conditions should be offered. You must work with companies. Help them get specialized talent.
Mexico’s main goal should be, more than bringing back expats, developing talent. Help public universities grow and push ahead. Connect high schools with the correct people and organizations.
If the Mexican government wishes to cultivate more tech talent, science fairs would be a basic thing that could be done. There are only two science fairs in Mexico: one in the north, and another in the center. In the US, every state has its science fair. We’re light years away from that.
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