Former Insulet Chief Technology Officer Mark Field is now CTO at medtech outsourcing firm ITJ. [Photo courtesy of Insulet]
“It has become one of the most successful medical devices in history, generating over $2 billion annually for the company [and] used by half a million people as the most-prescribed insulin pump in the world,” Field said.
Field has been in medtech for nearly three decades and started working with Mexican teams during his 17-year career at Oracle, and then as CTO of Life Technologies, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Insulet. Through his career he’s seen technologies like software, mobile phones, apps and cloud computing take off and enhance medical devices like Omnipod 5.
In an interview with Medical Design & Outsourcing, Field offered tips for other device developers who want to hire engineers outside of the U.S. (but not too far away).
“What’s unique about Mexico is the proximity, the geography, the time zone,” he said. “Having engineers in the same time zone that is easy to access makes it so much easier for us to help them be successful. It is incredible that we have on our southern border an immense, awesome talent pool of engineers that are just so easy to work with, speak great English, and you can pick up the phone in the middle of the day and say, ‘How’s it going? Can I see the demo?’ We can bring them up to our office, learn a few new things, send them back. That flexibility is just fantastic.”
Field is now CTO at medtech software outsourcing firm ITJ, which helped him build Insulet’s teams in Mexico to more than 300 people.
“They were very helpful for Insulet in finding these engineers and managing them for us,” he said. “They have a build-operate-transfer model, so before you even get your legal entity in Mexico, they can build the team, hire the team, and operate the team. Then if you’re ready and would like to, they just transfer the team over to you. There’s now an Insulet Mexico legal entity who can do payroll and benefits and all that good stuff. ITJ simply transferred the team over and now they’re a strong recruiting partner.”
Field’s comments below have been lightly edited for clarity and space.
1. Start small and stay close.
“Get started. Build a small team. It costs very little. It’s not like you have to build a manufacturing plant with hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment,” he said. “You just need a little bit of space, hire a few people, give them some work, see how it works out. You have very low risk. When people just start building one team, within one year there’s 10 teams. They realize very quickly the economics are there, the talent’s there, the output is fantastic.”
“I honestly thought it would be harder than it was. It was incredibly straightforward and we’ve been very successful, but I think part of that is because we’ve gone all-in on treating the employees like our employees, expecting them to deliver at high standards, caring for them as human beings, wanting them to be successful, and supporting them like we would any other employee in the U.S. Deep engagement is really important. Visit often, invite them to visit you often, care, pick up the phone, watch the demos, engage. If you don’t do that, you risk not getting the most out of the teams. That’s a tragedy for them and for the employer.”
2. Avoid hassles at the border.
“When it comes to outsourcing and nearshoring — in fact, there’s a new term called no-shoring because we don’t cross a shore at all to Mexico — some work is easier to do in that model. Certainly, software testing is much easier. The hardware, where you actually have to have the physical parts, you’ve then got to move things across the border and explain to customs officials about what this thing is, and sometimes the medical device needs various approvals, and that can take a while. I would avoid trying to send finished medical devices across the border if you don’t have COFEPRIS (the Mexican approval for selling medical devices in Mexico). That would take you a long time to sort out. Don’t start there. Start with the software side of the engineers. That’s way, way, way simpler.”
“Digital products — I hope nobody’s reading this — have so far escaped a lot of the tariffs. It’s very hard to control a nonphysical product, so that hasn’t been an issue if it’s just software. Of course, Tijuana is one of the largest medical device manufacturing clusters in the world, and some parts get made in the U.S., they go to Mexico, they get added on in Mexico, they come back to the U.S., they get added on there, then they go back to Mexico, these parts are crossing the border multiple times and each stage they’re adding value and potential tariffs.”
3. Focus on the people behind the technology.
“As technologists, often we tend to focus so much on the technology that we forget to focus on the people behind the technology. Engineers are human beings. They want to be cared about, they want to be liked, they want to know they’re appreciated like everybody. If you want to get the most out of your teams, you have to just be a human being. Talk to them, get to know them, get to understand their personal situations, understand their strengths. Most engineers are very good learners, so give them roles that stretch them, but give them support so they can be successful.”
“Having a really clear vision and clear purpose that everybody can get behind and understand what their part is in that is really important for leaders to do. Manage the day-to-day execution based on a long-term direction. Omnipod 5 took several years, but we were very clear what we wanted to do, how it should work, and were able to just break down this enormous program into its components. Each component was fairly simple. It was the collection that was really hard. What really helped us was the clarity of where we’re going, what we’re doing, how are we going to do it, and who’s going to do what?”
“And then marrying the people side of it: caring about the people, hiring good people, expecting them to perform well. Sometimes — 90% of the time — it works out great. There are a few times when you have to take action and unfortunately let some people go because they just aren’t able to do the job or aren’t fitting in or causing problems. Most people are not like that. The vast majority are actually fantastic.”
4. Don’t believe stereotypes about different kinds of engineers.
“Given the physical nature of the electrical and mechanical side of medical devices, they’re often working in the office, in the labs. Working remotely, in some cases, is actually better for some software projects. It’s kind of strange because I feel like the software engineers by their nature are more personable, a little bit more like to work together in teams. It’s a total stereotype: the mechanical engineers and electrical engineers are at the desk with a soldering iron, saying, ‘Leave me alone. I’m working.’ Yet, the way that it’s worked out is those are the ones we have grouped together in person, and the ones who love to be social are actually sitting at home by themselves. It’s really weird, but at the end of the day when it comes to management, I still think the same fundamentals still apply to both.
5. Take advantage of remote work and hybrid work benefits.
“Remote work has allowed us and many companies to hire across the world and get great talent and no longer be restricted to the proximity to the office. That’s been hugely beneficial. I personally would love to work in the office, but If I go into the office and no one’s there or I’m on Zoom calls from eight in the morning till six at night and then have to drive through traffic for another hour, that’s not really worth it. If we want to go back, we all have to go back. You can’t have just a few go back and expect it to be like it was.”
“For software engineers, the productivity is way better at home. When I used to be a developer —I don’t write much code anymore — but 20 years ago, I would work very long hours, because once you get in the zone and you’re working on your problem, you’ve got it clear in your mind and you’re pounding out the code, testing it, fixing it, testing and fixing it. You just want to keep going, and I’ll keep going ’til midnight and just get it done. But if you’re in the office, it’s like, ‘Well, now I have to get home,’ and you stop and don’t really feel like starting up again once you’re home, you have dinner, you see the kids. Whereas if you are working from home, it’s so much easier to keep on working, get your dinner at your desk, ‘Hi kids, I’m busy.’ That drive home just crushes productivity.”
“For some, remote work is great and very flexible and results in a lot more productivity, but there is something to be said for collaborations, conversations, especially how much people learn from observation in leadership and management. When you’re working from home, they don’t get those chances to observe other people and how they’re working and picking up their best practices. That’s something we need to a lot more thoughtful about: How do we bring those best practices in a easy-to-consume way that we just took for granted when we’re all working in the office? I don’t think we’ve figured that out yet. This hybrid approach is a good first step. We can be in the office some of the time and be home other times. We’ve hired people who have been available to us because their companies were forcing people back to office and they didn’t want to go back to the office. Great talent became available because of that.”
6. Measure the output, not time in the chair.
“I must confess that the management side of me wonders whether somebody is actually working. It does bother me that I have these thoughts: ‘Is somebody really doing their work today? Are they watching Netflix or at the gym for four hours.?’ It’s hard to know, but really what I should be worrying about is do you get the work done. Let’s measure the work, let’s measure the output, not how many hours are you at your desk the moment I need you. Management needs to change the way that we’re managing. Set the expectations very clearly for people and be fair to everybody. Different rules for different people could be problematic.”
7. Don’t sweat cultural barriers, but lean into the mission.
“We hire people who can speak English. There are cases where they don’t speak English perfectly, but they learn fast. The language barrier has not been an issue. Culturally, they’re playing video games with people in the U.S., they’re watching U.S. shows, so they really get the culture, but they have their own unique culture, a wonderful culture of collaboration and teamwork. They’ve been a true inspiration for how we should work in the U.S., how we should collaborate, how we should respect each other. The team dynamics there are light years ahead of some of the teams that I’ve worked with in the U.S. — with a lot of politics, a lot of friction — and people really appreciate the job and are hard-working and have a very low sense of entitlement. Especially when you’re working for a company producing such meaningful products. That’s really inspiring. We in the medical device industry, that’s the ace up our sleeve: what we do, the purpose allows us to attract top talent. We’ve got to play that card, get the top talent who are truly inspired and want to make the world a better place. That’s extremely motivating. And so once you get an engineering team, especially in Mexico, really passionate, really inspired, just watch what happens. It’s amazing. It’s magic.”
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