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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)

#221

Post by colechristensen »

baron816 wrote: post #196
jasonhansel wrote: post #116

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…

The US has a lot more immigrants from Latin America living here than it did back then. Plus, unemployment is lower (even with the pandemic). I would rather have 1 million people making $12/hr and 0 unemployed and in poverty than 650k people making $18/hr with 350k just shit out of luck. I can’t say the former is what we have, but with unions or tight labor market regulation, the later tends to be closer to what you g…

$12/hr is living in poverty too.

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

#222

Post by acover »

aplummer wrote: post #216
baron816 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has a lot more immigrants from Latin America living here than it did back then. Plus, unemployment is lower (even with the pandemic). I would rather have 1 million people making $12/hr and 0 unemployed and in poverty than 650k people making $18/hr with 350k just shit out of luck. I can’t say the former is what we have, but with unions or tight labor market regulation, the later tends to be closer to what you g…

> I can’t say the former is what we have, but with unions or tight labor market regulation, the later tends to be closer to what you get. This is a big claim without any evidence. Given the minimum wages in other western countries are proportionally much higher with no negative consequences AFAIK, do you have any evidence that the richest average income country could not have a higher minimum wage?

> With data from 25 OECD countries over 15 years from 2000 to 2014, we find that a higher minimum wage decreases labor demand but does not affect labor supply. Our empirical results also suggest that relatively modest increases in minimum wages have limited impacts on employment. On average, 10 percent increase in the minimum wage decreases employment by 0.7 percent, thereby increasing unemployment rate by 0.64 percent.

https://ns1.6thsigmahosting.com/pms/index.php/jrge/article/v...

This is just one paper, I don't know if it's a fact.

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

#223

Post by baron816 »

acover wrote: post #220
baron816 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. You can get full employment and a respectable standard of living floor through stuff like a negative income tax and universal health coverage. But making it illegal to work for what YOU consider a low wage and permitting labor cartels is counter productive.

When bargaining with a monopoly or oligopoly, don't unions just put workers on an even footing? Market forces leave out every human factor. Unions add it back in.

Two wrongs don’t make a right. Let’s break up monopolies and encourage competition.

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

#224

Post by acover »

baron816 wrote: post #223
acover wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When bargaining with a monopoly or oligopoly, don't unions just put workers on an even footing? Market forces leave out every human factor. Unions add it back in.

Two wrongs don’t make a right. Let’s break up monopolies and encourage competition.

Is there an ETA for the break up? The trend is the other direction. We could always wait for the end of scarcity.

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

#225

Post by angry_octet »

jsolson wrote: post #198
angry_octet wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do I get the feeling that if a janitor (outsourced or not) emailed Bezos with an idea, he'd be fired, threatened with lawyers for stealing Amazon business process IP until he signed away any IP rights, and then maybe Amazon would roll it out without crediting him?

Despite my reservations about Amazon after having worked there, I think you're wrong here, _particularly_ with respect to Bezos. With some random director or VP? Sure. With Jeff you don't get the impression that he's a snob about the sources of good ideas. Note that I don't think you'd get so much as a bonus or pay bump for your trouble, but don't worry, you can feed your family with the pride you have in your idea m…

You're right, I was more thinking about the Amazon machine. With Bezos who knows, he might make the VP a janitor and give him your job.

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

#226

Post by joshAg »

baron816 wrote: post #196
jasonhansel wrote: post #116

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…

The US has a lot more immigrants from Latin America living here than it did back then. Plus, unemployment is lower (even with the pandemic). I would rather have 1 million people making $12/hr and 0 unemployed and in poverty than 650k people making $18/hr with 350k just shit out of luck. I can’t say the former is what we have, but with unions or tight labor market regulation, the later tends to be closer to what you g…

The problem is that $12/hr is still "in poverty". You've set up a false dichotomy between everyone out of poverty vs most farther out of poverty, but some still in poverty.

There's literally nowhere in the US where a single minimum wage job can rent and "affordable" (defined as And it gets even worse in expensive metro areas. The poverty line in san francisco is $117,000 for a family of 4 and $82,000 for an individual. Meanwhile minimum wage in SF is $33,425.6 per year (16.07 * 40 * 52).

[1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/26/minimum-wage-workers-cannot-...

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

#227

Post by pbourke »

OJFord wrote: post #180
bsagdiyev wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s weird but not wrong, the area he lived in is still there. Guasti, CA: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guasti,_California

I'm confused now - the Ontario international airport is in California? (As opposed to Ontario, Canada; both of course confusingly abbreviated 'CA'.) https://www.flyontario.com/ Yep, yes it is. Not confusing at all..! (To be fair I've tried to check in to a hotel on Newmarket Rd, Cambridge for a booking in Newmarket, North of Cambridge; which was at least wrong with reference to the same Cambridge UK and not Cambridge…

> Newmarket, North of Cambridge; which was at least wrong with reference to the same Cambridge UK and not Cambridge Mass. USA

You’re lucky you didn’t get Newmarket or Cambridge ... Ontario!

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

#228

Post by WalterBright »

pmiller2 wrote: post #107
GoodJokes wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> if only they work hard enough!

It's about working smart, not working hard.

> as if it were literally even possible to work enough hours at any reasonable wage to become a billionaire

With discipline, however, it is very possible to become a multimillionaire. (Live below your means and invest the rest.)

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

#229

Post by [deleted] »

pmiller2 wrote: post #138
I-M-S wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not every employee is going to have an idea. Having established an "idea box" in a 5,000 person company, I'm inclined to say 1 out of a 100 might.

Bingo. And, not everyone with an idea will speak up, for whatever reason. It's exactly like the lurker vs poster phenomenon, where, in any online community of any size, there tends to be vastly more lurkers than posters.

[deleted]

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

#230

Post by kevindeasis »

asutekku wrote: post #76
kevindeasis wrote: post #75

Can anyone tell me about non-founder CEOs who has done a great job of creating innovative products for a company without using MAs? I'm trying to think about if there's any correlation between the two. There are some posts in HN that was about founder ceos but I cant remember the context. I'll have to go look for those

Non-founder ceo usually is much more restricted on time on what they can do. Founder CEO has much less strings to hold.

Can you tell me more about the time restriction that they have? Is that about hitting quarterly targets?
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