For a long time now, NXS has preached about the computer programmer demographic in Latin America. Our experience is that Latin America is filled with the “dream candidate” that companies are looking for in the US: someone who is a free software geek, has a passion for code, uses free software in their everyday life (meaning that their skill set is constantly being improved as part of day-to-day activities) and keeps up with all the latest trends and developments in the free software world.

A recent webinar by Evans Data has confirmed through research what we have known through experience. In a presentation entitled “Contrasting Software Development Trends Between the Emerging Markets and the Rest of the World,” Evans Data CEO John Andrews released their findings that 74% of developers in emerging markets use free software, where “use” is defined as “personal use or corporate use, and could include both developer tools and desktop or server applications.” That’s 11% higher than the rest of the world — and it’s a meaningful 11%. While software development jobs are growing worldwide, they are growing three times faster in emerging markets such as Latin America. The presentation is further analyzed in this post on IT World.