I have spent the last twenty years of my life writing code — among other things. I learned about a dozen of computer languages from C to Java, Fortran, Perl to Python, crossing through few Lisp dialects and other scripting and query languages. In other words, I have made my career writing code since the age of 13.
But yesterday I had to resign to one of the most challenging projects I recently had. No names or culprits. It turns that I had to resign because of the system:
Mexico lacks from a real software industry. Talent is not an issue I have met great coders and I'm not speaking only about Miguel de Icaza — the most famous mexican hacker, great programmers are everywhere but nobody sees them.
Mexican programmers live by the rule of the "good enough" — banks and government have good salary standards and most are above the national average. Most of them just don't see any reason to leave and start a company.
During the 80s the software industry in Mexico was mostly dominated by large system integrators for the government and only one company who developed software for accountants had a great success. It was until the 90s that software factories became popular and offered their services to medium-size enterprises to solve basic CRM needs and operation of their legacy systems.
At the same time there was no Computer Science degree in Mexico, only few engineering degrees with computer related curricula but nothing specialized in software development methodologies or strong background in math and algorithms. IIMAS was and is the only think-thank in CS but is oriented to research.
The dot-com boom had not a great impact in Mexico but it helped few mexicans to flee to the US or Canada when they needed as many programmers as they could. Fortunately I was among them.
The great days of the dot-com didn't change anything either here.
Some large software companies found in Mexico a fertile ground: poorly written code and large problems to solve: SAP, PeopleSoft, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, etc. offered their services and made 7 digits profits from the same clients. They didn't had to write large amounts of code, they only needed to adapt it locally. Talent was disregarded again.
More than forty years of computers in Mexico and what we see is the lack of an industry that needs nothing else than support for the talent.
Government has not given any step forward encourage more education on CS or the creation of software start-ups. PROSOFT, a government fund for development of the software industry only helps the old model of software factories and creativity is not a concern.
I had to resign because of all this. I learned the lesson: If you want to do something big in this country you have to do it by yourself.
