Readable version: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1341193051184611331.html
Even more readable, the source article from three years ago: https://thehustle.co/hot-cheetos-inventor/
How a janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos (2017)
101–110 of 279 posts
Re: How a janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos (2017)
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is not "an insight a child would have". Good ideas mean nothing unless it leads to a marketable product. And for one smart janitor with business sense there are thousands of people who will just cost the company money. The CEO here managed to notice that among thousands, this is the janitor to listen to. As for CEO being well paid, it is simply because their decisions can make the company lose or earn a lot of mon…
> It is not "an insight a child would have". Are you sure? Children listen to janitors just as much as they listen to anyone else. One's job doesn't matter to a child; they know they can learn from anyone. Very few CEOs know this. Hell, very few ADULTS know this. I didn't intend "an insight a child would have" to mean that such an idea is a basic thing everyone knows, I literally meant "an inside a child would have."
Children will also chase a ball into a busy street, or eat candy for every meal if given the chance. Maybe there's a virtue to knowing which childlike behaviors are worth keeping.
Re: How a janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos (2017)
#103I applaud both the janitor for his initiative and the executive for listening and giving credit where credit is due. I feel like in big companies today, including tech companies that are overly praised for their culture, there is little room for such a story to unfold. More likely than not, someone with initiative has donated their idea and strategy to the company for free, while someone else gets put in charge of executing it, and capturing the career benefits. It’s cynical I know and I’m sure there are counterexamples, but the vast majority of attempts at such initiative don’t go anywhere.
Re: How a janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos (2017)
#104This is a really nice story, but you know who the other hero is? The CEO who gave him the time and the opportunity. He could've easily told him to fuck off, as many would do. Who was he, what's his name? More often than not, we get nowhere without people in better positions helping us, it would be great if more people would keep an open mind like that. That CEO deserves recognition. And if you manage to climb higher…
Well, TIL I'm a fucking hero for being a decent human being who's open to new ideas.
See, if the CEO had told him to fuck off, that would have been typical, subhuman behavior by someone who sees another human as beneath him.
No, that CEO doesn't get a pat on the back for doing what anyone with an ounce of empathy would do in the same situation, especially because he presumably introduced the "act like an owner" initiative exactly because he wanted someone to call him up, just like the janitor did.
Why fetishize the CEO here, when it was the janitor with the idea, he who spent years learning company operations, he who picked up the phone, and he who went to the public library to study marketing in preparation for the big meeting?
Re: How a janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos (2017)
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
LA County minimum wage is $15 per hour for businesses with more than 25 employees.
Rancho Cucamonga is only subject to the state minimum wage ($13 IIRC, although it probably goes further than $15 would in many of the unincorporated parts of LA county)
It's also 5 miles from LA county, so wages should be halfway competitive.
Re: How a janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos (2017)
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can probably just keep the casual racism to yourself.
Hold up just a sec here. I’m not sure I that “Indian” is a “race” for any common definition of the word. It’s a nationality, but my my relatively uninformed perspective it appears that there are many ethnic and cultural groups that comprise it. More importantly, you seem to be attributing malice to the GP. They are noticing a cultural difference and asking for context. While their choice of phrasing may seem to some…
> I’m not sure I that “Indian” is a “race” for any common definition of the word
Does it matter? Is negative stereotyping somehow better when applied to a nationality rather than a "race"?
Re: How a janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos (2017)
#107This is a really nice story, but you know who the other hero is? The CEO who gave him the time and the opportunity. He could've easily told him to fuck off, as many would do. Who was he, what's his name? More often than not, we get nowhere without people in better positions helping us, it would be great if more people would keep an open mind like that. That CEO deserves recognition. And if you manage to climb higher…
I just can’t even. What if there weren’t insane ladders to climb. This kneejerk reaction to lick the boots of a CEO is...disturbing.
It's not so much the ladders that suck. It's the fact that you have to step on people to get past a certain level that's the toxic dynamic.
And, as far as boot licking goes, that's easy to explain. People are under the delusion that if they suck up to the boss enough, eventually they can be the boss. That's wrong on so many levels, but the easiest one to see is that for every N employees at any level of the corporate hierarchy, it only makes sense for there to be at most, say, N/4, or N/10, or, generally, N/k (k > 1) people at the next level. So, your chances of rising further up the ladder decrease the further you go up, provided you stay at the same organization.
That's actually the way it works in general, except that there are a lot of organizations out there; the hierarchy cuts off at a level before it becomes literally impossible to advance; and, even if that fails, one can start one's own organization, place themselves at the top, and then take on the challenge of building that organization to meaningful levels.
But, really, it all amounts to the delusion the bottom 90% of the ladder has that they can eventually join the top 1%, if only they work hard enough! You know, as if it were literally even possible to work enough hours at any reasonable wage to become a billionaire or something. That's the real reason.
Re: How a janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos (2017)
#108$20 million in Rancho Cucamonga. So that's like $1 million in real money, right?
Re: How a janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos (2017)
#109This is a really nice story, but you know who the other hero is? The CEO who gave him the time and the opportunity. He could've easily told him to fuck off, as many would do. Who was he, what's his name? More often than not, we get nowhere without people in better positions helping us, it would be great if more people would keep an open mind like that. That CEO deserves recognition. And if you manage to climb higher…
Yeah CEOs never get enough respect. Also they're paid FAR too little for having an insight a child would have... Good leadership is rare, you're right, and I don't think CEOs deserve credit for demonstrating good leadership. Good leadership should be table stakes for that position; the bare minimum. What needs to change are the astonishingly weak disincentives (and sometimes, actual incentives) aimed at bad CEOs. If…
It is not a single voice in a room of quietness. It is noise from a 1000 directions and you need to pick out that one signal that leads you to success.
Re: How a janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos (2017)
#110$4.25, but close enough.