Foreigners gain thousands of jobs on Dell US staff

El Salvador lives the American Dream

By Ashlee Vance in Chicago • Get more from this author

Posted in IT Director, 9th March 2005 01:14 GMT

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The Texan flavor that once permeated Dell has been totally overwhelmed by the rich tastes of India and Central America.

An amazing 30,600 of Dell's 55,200 workers are employed in foreign countries. Dell could find only 24,600 positions in 2004 for US workers, despite incredible incentives from states such as North Carolina. Foreign staffers now make up 55 per cent of Dell's workforce compared to 51 per cent of the workforce in 2003, according to a recent filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Dell was busy with its non-US operations during 2004. It started building new call centers in Canada, India and El Salvador. Many of the soon-to-be staffers from Dell's El Salvador plant are currently in Round Rock, Texas, enduring seven weeks of training, a source tells The Register. The workers are no doubt learning the proper way to pronounce "ya'll" and "Texas-sized memory upgrade."

Despite its focus on foreign staff, Dell still makes most of its money in the good old US of A. Dell's net revenue in 2004 was $49.2bn with $30.3bn coming from the US and $18.9bn outside the US. This compares to total of $41.4bn in revenue in 2003 with $26.5bn from the US and $15.0bn in foreign earnings.

There was a time when Michael Dell's college dropout-to-billionaire story had a really nice ring to it. But now that McDell looks more like Michael's Naan and Pupusa Palace it's hard to see as much of the American Dream in the PC operation. ®