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A janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (2017)

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Re: A janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (2017)

#151

Post by ThomPete »

news_to_me wrote: post #144
starpilot wrote: post #123

My takeaway: there are huge potential markets in people who are not like me. The execs were probably completely unaware of this market, and it took an outsider to hold their hand and bring it to them. I love flaming hot cheetos and know tons of people who do, but there is no way I would have thought of taking the hot pepper / other spices from a traditional Mexican food (elotes, which I had in LA) and adapting them i…

This is why diversity is so important! Not only in business, but in general — everyone has huge blind spots, no matter what background they have. Life is much larger and more diverse than people usually imagine. Interacting and learning from people with different backgrounds than yours is a fundamentally rewarding experience, although it can be hard at times.

The problem with diversity is that it's thought of wrongly most of the times. What people think of is not actually the diversity that creates the value.

I believe many groups that are diverse by gender or race or ethnic composition are actually quite similar if they are the same age even though they might have different upbringings.

I explored this subject in this essay a while back which was based on some reflections I did after an ASK HN i did became quite popular.

https://medium.com/black-n-white/the-problem-with-problems-4...

my conclusion was "which diversity" is an important discussion to have.

Re: A janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (2017)

#152

Post by jameane »

wutbrodo wrote: post #95
camjohnson26 wrote: post #14

This is a fantastic story. There are a few ethical problems including Montañez plagiarizing parts of his presentation and having friends and family buy out the products in the test market, but overall he refused to accept imposed limits and accomplished something phenomenal. One interesting thing is that Frito-Lay had no products targeting Latinos, and no one on the highly paid marketing team did anything about it. T…

(Note that I reductively throw around cultural class labels like "lower-middle class" in this comment for purposes of clarity: I don't mean to suggest that a person's social class is fixed, or well-defined, but it's just a brief way to get at the concept of different subcultures and their mannerisms, as well as the rough income bands that people tend to associate with them) > Also interesting is the backlash he faced…

It is a real thing. On the other side, I am a black female who grew up in middle class suburbia and has a typical Bay Area accent. This affords me a level of privilege because I can easily "class pass" as someone more affluent - even though it is generally assumed black people are lower class. This means I have the "right" mannerisms and speaking patterns for corporate jobs and other things and it is easier for me to be perceived as a good culture fit because I have the right class markers. It also meant, particularly earlier in my career before social media, I would get some interviews and then the interviewer was shocked I was black when I showed up.

Re: A janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (2017)

#153

Post by bshipp »

GuiA wrote: post #147
bshipp wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If my programming tasks--comprised of Github snippets and Stackoverflow answers--were graded by any University TA I'd certainly fail too. But I'm getting appraised by different standards in the workforce than in school. The workplace doesn't care what I've learned, they care what I've done. if I choose to spend 3x the effort writing a library from scratch instead of recycling work that has already been published I wo…

It depends. Eg if you’re copying GPL code in your company’s proprietary code base, the lawyers are going to insist that you spend 3x the effort writing a library from scratch.

Oh absolutely. there are definitely situations where you cannot take shortcuts. I'm just saying that most workplaces weigh productivity far higher than originality.

Re: A janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (2017)

#154

Post by slimsag »

news_to_me wrote: post #144
starpilot wrote: post #123

My takeaway: there are huge potential markets in people who are not like me. The execs were probably completely unaware of this market, and it took an outsider to hold their hand and bring it to them. I love flaming hot cheetos and know tons of people who do, but there is no way I would have thought of taking the hot pepper / other spices from a traditional Mexican food (elotes, which I had in LA) and adapting them i…

This is why diversity is so important! Not only in business, but in general — everyone has huge blind spots, no matter what background they have. Life is much larger and more diverse than people usually imagine. Interacting and learning from people with different backgrounds than yours is a fundamentally rewarding experience, although it can be hard at times.

I 100% agree.

But it's important that diversity be considered in all forms, not just based on race/sex.

If your "diverse" team is made up of different ethnicities and genders but only consists of ivy league members who grew up in California... well, not really diverse then, is it?

Re: A janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (2017)

#155

Post by jameane »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #3

The days when someone can start as a janitor or in the mailroom and climb to the top is done. Companies used to hire everyone in the company. Janitors were part of the company. So was mailroom staff. So were secretaries. Everybody was part of the whole. Now, companies contract out everything but their core thing. Janitors come from a low-paid 3rd party service. Mailrooms are no longer a thing (there's no such thing a…

So true! Now you are lucky is an IC on a team can be groomed to even be a manager.

Re: A janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (2017)

#156

Post by miguelmota »

What a great and inspiring story.

> “Nobody had given any thought to the Latino market,” recalls Montañez. “But everywhere I looked, I saw it ready to explode.”

It's incredible what a new set of eyes with different perspectives can bring to the table.

Re: A janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (2017)

#157

Post by [deleted] »

CondensedBrain wrote: post #104
rosterface wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Mexican family loves Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (for real) and hates the term “latinx”. Just fyi but it’s considered racist in a lot of Mexican communities.

It's mainly used by nonbinary (enby) people of Latin descent in the US who feel like both Latino and Latina are a poor fit. These threads always have the same look as the ones where people complained about singular they. Latinx doesn't have centuries of use the way singular they does, but it doesn't really matter. It costs you nothing to respect another person's self-identification. Whether people should use it as a…

[deleted]

Re: A janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (2017)

#158

Post by friedman23 »

eloff wrote: post #68
g_sch wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested (and somewhat taken aback) by the intensity of the reactions to this term. Maybe it's a generational/political thing? For my part, I know significantly more people who refer to themselves as "Latinx" than "Latino".

Fwiw I lived ten years in Latin America, married a Latina, and have never even heard the term Latinx before. It's probably not common in Latin America.

The term was created by white people.

Re: A janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (2017)

#159

Post by closetohome »

ravenstine wrote: post #149
news_to_me wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why diversity is so important! Not only in business, but in general — everyone has huge blind spots, no matter what background they have. Life is much larger and more diverse than people usually imagine. Interacting and learning from people with different backgrounds than yours is a fundamentally rewarding experience, although it can be hard at times.

It has to be taken seriously by management, however. I've worked at a few places where diversity was king but upper management continued to make the decisions of aging middle-class white folks. Not that I have a problem with that in and of itself, but it was funny how they would hire lots of women and minorities, say that they wanted to target undeserved demographics, but then never actually attempt to do it. Diversi…

The unfortunate result of viewing diversity as a performance metric to hit, rather than a real and decisive advantage.

Re: A janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (2017)

#160

Post by siphon22 »

ThomPete wrote: post #151
news_to_me wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why diversity is so important! Not only in business, but in general — everyone has huge blind spots, no matter what background they have. Life is much larger and more diverse than people usually imagine. Interacting and learning from people with different backgrounds than yours is a fundamentally rewarding experience, although it can be hard at times.

The problem with diversity is that it's thought of wrongly most of the times. What people think of is not actually the diversity that creates the value. I believe many groups that are diverse by gender or race or ethnic composition are actually quite similar if they are the same age even though they might have different upbringings. I explored this subject in this essay a while back which was based on some reflection…

>"Were are problems?"

What is this sentence? I had to stop reading here.

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