Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

thehustle.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 379 posts

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

#341

Post by rchaud »

shearskill wrote: post #107
cycrutchfield wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s either sour grapes post-hoc rationalization or it’s just alt-right fanfic. If it were actually real, he would have filed a lawsuit for wrongful termination.

This post about Cheetos seems to have attracted a lot of complaints about imaginary leftists and ideological bubbles. Very odd.

Not odd so much as remarkable.

How does a story about a minority janitor who started at the literal bottom, get turned into a grievance thread about the damage done by "diversity hiring" policies?

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

#342

Post by stronglikedan »

scarejunba wrote: post #290
RomanBob wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>even the lowest employees Why is the janitor considered "the lowest employee" by you?

Amusing aside: once I was talking to this engineer on the phone and he was talking about driver development and I, in an attempt to relate, remarked that that sounds rather hard and that it's been a while since I wrote low-level software like that. Somehow that came across as insulting what he did as of low skill level. Oops! Awful faux pas. I think I managed to clarify but I've decided to use less ambiguous words ne…

If he was an engineer who didn't know what "low-level software" meant, then he was also a low-level engineer, so you weren't wrong either way.

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

#343

Post by Izkata »

suprfnk wrote: post #303
qazpot wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are unnecessarily censoring yourself. Low-level software in computer circles means that it is closer to the metal and no computer engineer in their right mind will consider low-level software to mean software that require less skill to write.

> no computer engineer in their right mind will consider low-level software to mean software that require less skill to write. In my experience, it's generally the opposite. Low level is seen as very hard and arcane.

> > low level does not mean less skill to write

> low level is very hard and arcane

> the opposite

Umm...

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

#344

Post by ken »

BurningFrog wrote: post #317
bzudo wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Viewpoint diversity? Republican/conservative seems to be the default state in most corporations.

You clearly don't work in Silicon Valley :)

Yes, it's possible bzudo is one of the 99.9% of people who does not work in SV.

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

#345

Post by ukyrgf »

m463 wrote: post #195
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…

Went to the east coast, couldn't find spicy chips/snacks of any kind in the grocery stores. Finally found Takis at... Home Depot.

Home Depot is targeting day laborers, I would imagine. I live in the southeast where there are lots of migrant workers, and it's like described in the article, with entire aisles of gas stations dedicated to these kinds of snacks.

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

#346

Post by ken »

slg wrote: post #224
kortilla wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a fantasy. The reality is that there aren’t enough diverse candidates to reach the diversity goals of every company without hiring incompetent people. If every company wants 50% women and the graduates with interests in CS come out at a 4:1 male to female ratio, the strive for diversity either needs to give up and hire what the pool provides or start giving underqualified women. TL;DR - Companies absolutely ne…

The pipeline problem is a concern long term, but I don’t think it is the primary problem at the moment for a couple reasons. First, it assumes that the pool of diverse candidates has already been exhausted. Anecdotally I have not seen evidence of that. If it was the problem you claim, we would expect female engineers to make much higher salaries than their male counterparts. There is no evidence that is happening. Th…

> If it was the problem you claim, we would expect female engineers to make much higher salaries than their male counterparts.

Or it just means one of the other stated assumptions is wrong, e.g., that companies don't really want 50% women. Every company I've worked for has been happy to hire women for any job, but none has ever made it a quota.

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

#347

Post by rchaud »

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…

Steve Jobs told engineers to hardcode a full signal strength indicator on the iPhone for his launch presentation, because the actual phone couldn't maintain full bars.

In the real world, speed, timing and practicality matter. I can't get too worked up because a janitor didn't use APA citations for an internal business proposal.

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

#348

Post by scarejunba »

stronglikedan wrote: post #342
scarejunba wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amusing aside: once I was talking to this engineer on the phone and he was talking about driver development and I, in an attempt to relate, remarked that that sounds rather hard and that it's been a while since I wrote low-level software like that. Somehow that came across as insulting what he did as of low skill level. Oops! Awful faux pas. I think I managed to clarify but I've decided to use less ambiguous words ne…

If he was an engineer who didn't know what "low-level software" meant, then he was also a low-level engineer, so you weren't wrong either way.

Haha, you know I felt that way too, but I didn't want my pre-existing biases to intrude.

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

#349

Post by mensetmanusman »

mindcrime wrote: post #327
neotek wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Good. We need more of this kind of thing around here, and less negativity and the "luck is everything, effort is irrelevant, sit on your ass and wait for the government to fix all your problems" bullshit that we've been overrun with lately. What a thoroughly disingenuous strawman.

No it isn't. You see that attitude around here every single day. It's become just short of prevalent from what I can see. Everybody wants to push this agenda that "all of success is luck" and frankly it's absurd.

I believe it is because more people who are ‘smart’ have stopped believing in free will.

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

#350

Post by mensetmanusman »

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?

You’re right, it’s not diverse in the sense of ‘diversity of education.’
Post reply on HN