IT Trends :: Thursday, June 15, 2006

Opinion

One Night @ the Call Centre: Don’t Forget the 35:10 Rule

By Terry Calhoun

Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat was a good read, insightful, and thought-provoking. I read his columns in the New York Times regularly and can count on more of the same each time, but I don’t recall that he addressed the 35:10 Rule. He may not even know about it. Ditto for William Gibson; he of “The future is here. It’s just unevenly distributed.”

I hadn’t previously realized that out in some of those “other” places, people might think we Americans are pretty stupid. I can sort of handle people envying us, or hating us due to ideological beliefs, or their own ignorance, but I can’t handle the fact that they think we’re stupid.

I’ve probably never been as shocked, in recent memory, as when I read about the 35:10 Rule. Boiled down, this rule (allegedly taught to Indians in overseas call centers outsourced from the U.S.) represents the belief that 35-year-old American consumers are about as smart as 10-year-old Indian kids...

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UPCOMING EVENTS

Campus Technology 2006
in Boston, July 31-August 3, 2006

Events Calendar

Featured

  • data professionals in a meeting

    Data Fluency as a Strategic Imperative

    As an institution's highest level of data capabilities, data fluency taps into the agency of technical experts who work together with top-level institutional leadership on issues of strategic importance.

  • stylized AI code and a neural network symbol, paired with glitching code and a red warning triangle

    New Anthropic AI Models Demonstrate Coding Prowess, Behavior Risks

    Anthropic has released Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4, its most advanced artificial intelligence models to date, boasting a significant leap in autonomous coding capabilities while simultaneously revealing troubling tendencies toward self-preservation that include attempted blackmail.

  • university building with classical architecture is partially overlaid by a glowing digital brain graphic

    NSF Invests $100 Million in National AI Research Institutes

    The National Science Foundation has announced a $100 million investment in National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes, part of a broader White House strategy to maintain American leadership as competition with China intensifies.

  • black analog alarm clock sits in front of a digital background featuring a glowing padlock symbol and cybersecurity icons

    The Clock Is Ticking: Higher Education's Big Push Toward CMMC Compliance

    With the United States Department of Defense's Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification 2.0 framework entering Phase II on Dec. 16, 2025, institutions must develop a cybersecurity posture that's resilient, defensible, and flexible enough to keep up with an evolving threat landscape.