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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)

#161

Post by whatshisface »

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's been my experience that the most zealous enforcement of class segregation in social contexts is from the bottom-up

You perceive subtle rejection a lot more strongly than you perceive someone else being subtly rejected. The effect you perceive could be explained by pointing out that all of the negative interactions involving you were "bottom-up," while the ones involving the "random lower-middle class friends," were top-down.

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

#162

Post by eridius »

twic wrote: post #135
CondensedBrain wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The only thing that puzzles me is you wouldn't just say "Latin", which is already an English word and doesn't imply a gender.

Because nobody calls people from Mexico "Latin". If someone walked up to me and said "Hey I'm Latin" I'd be really confused. You're... a dead language?

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

#163

Post by rconti »

mentos wrote: post #133

Read the whole article but did not see any mention of if he was compensated at all for his idea?

It didn't say anything about him being compensated directly for the idea. Presumably as he moved up the ranks he got compensated via profit-sharing. In the same way the highly paid guys who were SUPPOSED to be inventing new things like this (but didn't) were also compensated. And the same way they would have been compensated if they developed some hot new product (eg, at their same rate relative to the profit sharing of the whole org).

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

#165

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

> 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.

It may be used that way, and that may be it's original use, but I don't think that's it's main use: AFAICT, the main use is as as a general gender-neutral alternative to “Latino” or “Latina” (i.e., basically equivalent to “Hispanic” or “Latin”, but awkward to pronounce either as an English or a Spanish word), often by people who are neither enby nor of Hispanic/Latino/Latina/Latinx ethnicity.

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

#166

Post by opportune »

slimsag wrote: post #154
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.

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?

Class diversity is pretty hard to achieve because you usually need some baseline class to actually be able to succeed in a role, i.e. you can't show up to a meeting with customers or shareholders chewing dip and wearing camo jorts. And social mobility from lower classes into corporate-ready roles is rather low in this country, so while there certainly are people who grew up poor and would be useful for companies to figure out what lower class consumers might need, there aren't many of them; furthermore, for the people who did grow up that way and into being a person able to function in the corporate sphere, it's probably in part due to their rejection of their poor background.

Maybe we just need more focus groups.

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

#167

Post by rolltiide »

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 think the cultural ideal of meritocracy needs to be addressed, and this is conflating two separate issues:

1) People of certain backgrounds want to and need to prove they CAN compete.

2) People of certain backgrounds should be helping make decisions even without credentials.

so there are both competent and less competent people that need to be included.

"wait what why? I wasted way too much of my life to accept why less competitive people should have such lucrative roles"

because the profit engine doesn't really need to care about the human worker's competency, it only needs to expand the addressable market. having already reached peak engagement, the business processes have already reached the evolutionary zenith for the incumbent nepotism and meritocrat talent's way of tapping into human consumptive conscious. Expanding that market further requires perceptions that people in those markets can relate to.

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

#168

Post by clairity »

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’s good to hear that you recognize your privilege. now what will you do with it?

self discipline (class-based, in your description) is something foucault explored quite a bit.

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

#169

Post by JamBramble35 »

JimBrimble35 wrote: post #17

The real hero of this story is the CEO who decided to take this guy _and_ his idea. He could have easily taken the idea and ran with it on his own, with Montañez spending the rest of his life mopping floors. I wonder how likely this scenario would be in today's world. I have found personally that many companies are unwilling to take risks on employees who aren't formally qualified, even if they demonstrate the skills…

I didn't understand why this post was so controversial, but now I get it. If you undermine the idea that individual dynamism (the american dream) is solely responsible for individual success, you'll get downvotes.

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

#170

Post by dragonwriter »

eridius wrote: post #162
twic wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing that puzzles me is you wouldn't just say "Latin", which is already an English word and doesn't imply a gender.

Because nobody calls people from Mexico "Latin". If someone walked up to me and said "Hey I'm Latin" I'd be really confused. You're... a dead language?

> Because nobody calls people from Mexico "Latin".

Yes, they do, “Latin” and “Hispanic” were the dominant terms in English before “Latino” and “Latina” took over and are still current though less common; the main reason Latino/Latina took over is because they respect terminology used in the described community, in a way Latinx (used generically, use as a label for enby members of the ethnicity may be different) does not.

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