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How a janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos (2017)

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Re: How a janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos (2017)

#111

Post by andreilys »

naikrovek wrote: post #77
GuB-42 wrote: post #69

Earlier 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."

The trouble is that there's a torrential flood of information coming at you as a CEO.

You have to be selective with where you sample your information. Sometimes this filter is too strict (only listening to VP's), but if your filter is too loose then you will spend your days drowning in information that might not be all that useful

Re: How a janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos (2017)

#113

Post by andreilys »

pmiller2 wrote: post #104
bserge wrote: post #16

This 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" initi…

If you're CEO of a 60k person company, are you going to listen to every single new idea that comes into the head of all your employees?

Re: How a janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos (2017)

#114

Post by BoorishBears »

phone8675309 wrote: post #100
BoorishBears wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things I haven't seen anyone mention that seem important: 1. For the villages that have now "made it" economically, there are countless others that haven't, that still live in one-room houses. What about them? 2. I think it's worthwhile pointing out that the product that he created, while popular and financially successful, is still used in the same settings charcoal is. And while carbonized briquettes produce le…

Is this the "the world is hard, best to not try and let our corporate masters think for us" post that's in every thread on HN? A story can have good parts and bad parts. It does not make you a bad person to like the good parts. It does not make you a bad person to pick out the bad parts. It does make you a bad person to take a dump on someone's comment to "own" them.

Oh please, the point is someone posted a story! You don't need to say "it's important to look at all the people who didn't make it"

It's not! It is literally the furthest thing from important in the comment section for that story! Certainly not in such an open ended way!

It's the laziest form of concern-baiting.

-

And don't project your own little weird need to "own" people like your comment is trying too hard to do onto me, I'm pointing out something that should be obvious: it's easy to go "what about the other guys" but not every story needs to be about "the other guys"

Re: How a janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos (2017)

#115

Post by nitwit005 »

GuB-42 wrote: post #69
naikrovek wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "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…

> If a $500k salary earns the company millions

If only CEOs were paid so little...

Re: How a janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos (2017)

#116

Post by jasonhansel »

That's $18.52 an hour in today's dollars. The average pay for a janitor today is closer to $12 an hour. In fact, just a few years after 1976, janitors' wages (at least in LA) started falling sharply below the cost of living: https://socialjusticehistory.org/lalabor/workingla/archives/...

The fact that our economic system worked for him does not mean that it works for the vast majority of people in similar jobs. It's quite likely that some of his colleagues are now making less money (in real terms) than they were in the 70s.

Re: How a janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos (2017)

#117

Post by pmiller2 »

andreilys wrote: post #113
pmiller2 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" initi…

If you're CEO of a 60k person company, are you going to listen to every single new idea that comes into the head of all your employees?

That depends. Did I tell 60,000 people to come up with new ideas and send them to me? Am I talking on the phone to someone who says they have a new idea? And, after I give that person their 5 minutes (or whatever), does it sound like a marketable product idea?

Re: How a janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos (2017)

#118

Post by 14u2c »

Glench wrote: post #40

Two things I haven't seen anyone mention that seem important: 1. For the one person who has "made it" economically, there are countless others that haven't, that still live in one-room houses. What about them? 2. I think it's worthwhile pointing out that the product that he created, while popular and financially successful, is a junk food that has a significant impact on the health of adults and children worldwide. W…

> Two things I haven't seen anyone mention that seem important

Perhaps because those items are either obvious or add nothing to the conversation.

Re: How a janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos (2017)

#119

Post by andreilys »

dvdhnt wrote: post #81
pmoriarty wrote: post #58

This saccharine rags-to-riches, pro-corporate fairy tale makes me so sad and mad, all the more so for the unreflective adulation it has gotten.

[opinion to follow, my own] Even in 2020, while the rich get richer (literally being subsidized by COVID "relief" bills) and the poor are looking to avoid being evicted, the flood of pro-corporate defenders is never ending. It is a true downside to having such a large, albeit fragile middle-class. The fundamental premise of this story is flawed given how most board/c-suite positions are attained and how almost all we…

The fundamental premise of this story is flawed given how most board/c-suite positions are attained and how almost all wealth is acquired e.g. inherited.

Citation needed. From a simple google search it seems 55.8% of Billionaires are "self-made" [1]. Sure some of them started off with silver spoons (i.e. Gates) but they did not inherit the billions they made from starting companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Tesla, etc.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/10/wealthx-billionaire-census-m...

Re: How a janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos (2017)

#120

Post by ardy42 »

BoorishBears wrote: post #86
Glench wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ooh! I'm happy to supply a feel-good story that is (as far as I can tell), unreservedly good: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200915-the-himalayan-in... "The Himalayan invention powered by pine needles" TLDR: man and wife move to poor rural region of Indian, see wild fire problem caused by pine needles, invent a machine that turns pine needles into electricity and cooking fuel, employ villagers to pick up pine n…

Two things I haven't seen anyone mention that seem important: 1. For the villages that have now "made it" economically, there are countless others that haven't, that still live in one-room houses. What about them? 2. I think it's worthwhile pointing out that the product that he created, while popular and financially successful, is still used in the same settings charcoal is. And while carbonized briquettes produce le…

> (Do you get why some people are pushing back on your comment above? You can come up with this kind of stuff for anything. You can't eat an apple today without possibly furthering child labor, our world is too complex to try and turn every feel good story into a dig for downsides, because they will always exist. It is in no way "important" to do suss them out. And it's fine to discuss them, but you don't need to make it a reaction to the feel good story, you're allowed to just discuss these topics independently of the story)

There's actually a problem with "rags to riches" stories, specifically: they're used, sometimes knowingly, sometimes not, to justify and reinforce unjust systems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rags_to_riches#Criticism). Looked at objectively, they're often essentially a dramatic version of someone buying a lottery ticket and winning the jackpot.

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