Yet Another Article on BPO (Washington Post)

There's an article on call centers in yesterday's Washington Post.

Nothing terribly surprising -- mostly lifestyle oriented. The one newish feature for an article in the U.S. media is the new awareness of the backlash against the industry within India (i.e., it's good pay, but not necessarily good work).

We spotted one possible error/exaggeration in the following:

The Long Island iced tea plus an order of fish and chips totaled $13, a bit more than the average weekly income in India. But Pundir, the daughter of mango farmers, earns about $20,000 annually. "It is good money at the end of the day," said Pundir, who abandoned her MBA studies because she saw a better career path in call centers. "In 4 1/2 years, I've risen through the ranks."

My understanding was that the starting salary for a call-center worker is about Rs. 40,000 a month (about US $12,000 a year), so this seems a little high.

Still, she's been there for 4 1/2 years -- a lifetime in the BPO world -- so it's probably not impossible that she's making Rs. 70,000 per month. If so, good for her, I guess (the Talking Heads' song Once in a Lifetime" comes to mind...)