Dude, You're Getting Downsized

As we walked in San Salvador's central district, we noticed a huge building just one block away from our hotel. I was shocked. I rubbed my eyes and did a double-take. Could it be? Is it really?

That giant crooked "E" on the side of the building was unmistakable. Sure enough, Austin's largest private employer has a huge call center smack in the middle of downtown San Salvador.

What's Dell doing in this third-world country? Saving a ton of cash, that's what.

A CNN article says call center employees can make at least $600 a month in a country where the minimum wage is about $150 a month. Do the math, and you can clearly see why companies like Dell would rather move as many jobs as possible to places like El Salvador.

As I snapped this picture, my mind flashed back to 2001, when I was a local TV news reporter. I remembered standing with a cameraman across the street from Dell headquarters in Round Rock, watching hundreds of shaken people walk out to their cars with boxes in their arms. Just three years later, Dell would open up brand new call centers in Canada, India and El Salvador.

The only thing that stops companies like Dell from shipping all U.S. call center jobs overseas, from what I can tell, is a lack of qualified English-speaking applicants. The Salvadoran government is working with American companies to try to fix that problem with local education programs. But in case it doesn't work, the CNN article says those companies are now luring young Salvadoran immigrants in the US to come back to their mother country for a nice high-tech job.

Fortunately, the biggest employers in Austin have always been the state government and the University of Texas. But among Austin's private-sector employers, Dell has been the biggest game in town for well over a decade. Now, after what I've seen in El Salvador, I'm wondering how much longer that will that be the case.