I've closed over 100 engineering roles across Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia in the past three years. The companies that succeed aren't the ones chasing the lowest salary — they're the ones who figured out what actually matters when you're building a remote team 5,000 miles south. A React developer in San Francisco costs around $180,000 a year. In Buenos Aires, someone with similar skills runs $45,000 to $65,000. That gap is real, but if you're hiring LATAM engineers purely for cost savings, you're probably going to regret it. Here's what I've learned from the other side of the table. The Time Zone Thing Nobody Talks About Cost savings get all the attention. Time zone overlap is what actually makes or breaks remote teams. A backend engineer in Bogotá shares 6–8 working hours with a New York team. Compare that to Bangalore, where you're lucky to get 2 hours of overlap.…