How a janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos (2017) • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by sandydan » Thu, Dec 24, 2020, 1:18 PM UTC

anchpop wrote: post #233

joshAg wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 individua…

I could survive just fine off a full-time minimum wage job in my state of Michigan. That's 9.45/hour or about $1500/month. I rent a pretty nice place in a college town for $550/month (across the street from campus, middle of downtown, utilities included). I eat mostly pasta and canned soup, but that's just because it's easy and cheap, and I do go out to eat with my girlfriend once or twice a week. let's say another $…

Even on your parents insurance if you only had yourself it will eventually get very complicated.

co-pays, out of network doctors taking care of you while you are under after a bout of appendicitis goes wrong, cars breaking down, parents randomly needing help to make ends meet because of all of the same.

Speaking from 20+ years of adulthood nearly half of which was below the poverty line there are more poverty traps than you can possibly imagine that minimum wage or even much more doesn’t even come close to avoiding. The available recourses to you when those events occur are grim.

Calculate the interest on payday loans, if you happen to need one it is exceedingly hard to stop needing them as they drive you down further and further.

Life got considerably more stable after making programmer salaries.

Minimum wage in the US is just waiting for the next big thing to push you further and further down. I was super lucky to find out I was good at this computer thing in my 20s (and that I had family to lend me 500 bucks for my very first and very bargain basement computer in that era).

It felt close to indentured servitude other than I could change jobs, but I didn’t get ahead or even tread water. No vacations, no time off when sick, and 60-100 hours of work a week for years.

I definitely would have preferred just getting a check from the government and going back to school while I got some real skills, or even that same minimum wage with a good transit network and medical care that didn’t find ways to take all my very limited savings.

In the end, unless people have gone through the sort of nightmares life can throw you it is hard to see how much money you need in the states to be stable and it takes a lot of education and knowledge to navigate all of it, which if you are on minimum wage you probably don’t have.

Something has gotta give the situation is not viable.

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

#272

Post by thatguy0900 » Thu, Dec 24, 2020, 2:54 PM UTC

hmwhy wrote: post #152

This story really stuck with me when I came across it here[0] last year because of the way it's written. As a few have pointed out, the Twitter messages are just "paraphrasing" the article if you put it nicely. Putting a few references after doing the original sources injustice by telling just half of the story doesn't make it okay either. Is this some kind of new tactic to grow your audience? I was raised to be hone…

I think you just have to be honest for the sake of your pride. The world hardly punishes dishonest people itself.

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

#273

Post by tjr225 » Thu, Dec 24, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

anchpop wrote: post #258

tjr225 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, I’m from Michigan. It’s getting expensive there fast. If you think you’re immune to what is happening everywhere else you are in for a rude awakening. Before my wife and I left in 2014 or so we looked at a decent bungalow in Kalamazoo for roughly 40,000. Now you can’t find a house in that neighborhood for under 150k- and it will be a dump. I bought a house there around a year ago before deciding it wasn’t a goo…

I expect that the solution to that problem is to directly address it via zoning or price controls, not indirectly by raising the minimum wage

They tried that in San Francisco and it only got worse.

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

#274

Post by betwixthewires » Thu, Dec 24, 2020, 9:52 PM UTC

EL_Loco wrote: post #251

betwixthewires wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man I have a hard time dealing with comments like this, because people say this sort of thing and it is simply not true. When you get to brass tacks that's when all the other "necessary" expenses usually come up. Gotta have Netflix, gotta eat out once or twice a week, what is the point in life if you cannot consume products? What other ways are there to have fun? My bills are 800 dollars a month, total. My rent is 40…

Yours and the other comments below are all saying "yeah, it's fine, you can do it if you don't have kids nor health insurance". Which basically means "it's not fine". A good standard of living is not measured by how a person can live as long as she remains single and decides to forego health insurance.

I addressed that in my comment; I pointed out that raising children has always been financially more difficult than being single, and humans have always had to prepare themselves for starting a family if they wanted any chance at raising the standard of living of their children. Saying "you cannot start a family on minimum wage" is a ridiculous bar to set as justification for forcing market restrictions on entire populations.

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

#275

Post by betwixthewires » Thu, Dec 24, 2020, 9:57 PM UTC

beowulfey wrote: post #247

betwixthewires wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man I have a hard time dealing with comments like this, because people say this sort of thing and it is simply not true. When you get to brass tacks that's when all the other "necessary" expenses usually come up. Gotta have Netflix, gotta eat out once or twice a week, what is the point in life if you cannot consume products? What other ways are there to have fun? My bills are 800 dollars a month, total. My rent is 40…

It may seem counterintuitive, but being able to cut your bills down like that is often a privilege. Poverty is a trap and it is hard to move somewhere cheaper when you don’t have enough money to buy a car. You can say “don’t spend your money” all you want but when money is tight you make concessions on things, and it usually leads to higher costs down the road. Cheaper products have to be bought more frequently. Bad…

It does seem counterintuitive. Would you be able to elaborate on that? What mechanism exists that makes it hard for me to live cheaply but someone else to not? I've lived very poor in my life and this argument that for some people there's no way out doesn't compute, at least not if you live in the west. I've never met a person that cannot pull themselves out of those traps that wasn't caused by discretionary spending and bad impulse control, not in the west. Ive met legitimately poor people in third world countries that are actually stuck due to societal systemic problems. But every person I've met in the US that can't seem to make their lives better, there is always some mismatched priority that keeps them that way.

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

#276

Post by betwixthewires » Fri, Dec 25, 2020, 8:47 AM UTC

aplummer wrote: post #263

betwixthewires wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>no negative consequences Meanwhile politicians tell us that double digit unemployment is the new normal. There are people that are not skilled enough to warrant certain minimum wage. There are jobs that are not feasible at certain wage levels. When you put a floor on what people can agree between themselves that their work is worth, you price people and jobs out of the market. It is self evident when you look at it.…

> Did you know Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland and Switzerland have no minimum wage at all? That's not true at all for example Switzerlands minimum wage is not dictated at the federal level but its equivalent to 25 bucks an hour in Geneva. [1]. > There are jobs that are not feasible at certain wage levels. > It is self evident when you look at it. That's not self evident at all. People still work at unskilled jobs c…

Where I used to live, they pay this mentally disabled girl at a grocery store to get shopping carts. She would be wholly incapable of doing anything remotely mentally challenging. But with this, she can take some of the burden off her family to care for her, she can have something of her own going on in her life, and she is a human being and I'm sure feels from time to time like she is a burden and gets down about it, so she probably gets some dignity from it. She would probably be out of a job if minimum wage got raised to 15 an hour. She would be priced out of the job market and that job would not be worth paying anyone to perform.

You'll notice that when wages are artificially increased, unemployment rises. Which jobs do you think were destroyed? Which workers do you think were let go? It is self evident. When wages are raised by decree, some jobs and some people are priced out of a labor market. Just because there are still low skill jobs and low skilled workers does not mean there was not a reduction in those jobs.

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

#277

Post by naikrovek » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 4:45 AM UTC

andreilys wrote: post #111

naikrovek wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Good leadership is orthogonal to the amount of incoming information.

I am not saying that all CEOs should listen to all janitors; I'm saying that all CEOs should have, at a bare minimum, good leadership skills.

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

#278

Post by naikrovek » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 4:49 AM UTC

throwaway9870 wrote: post #109

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 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.

That has nothing to do with good leadership ability.

A CEO, or any leader, has a vision, and inconsequential information is easily cast aside. Our ears can do this quite easily, when we have a conversation in a noisy conference room or whatever.

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

#279

Post by jjeaff » Mon, Dec 28, 2020, 11:56 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #187

jjeaff wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true. You can offer better packages for your higher paid employees. Outsourcing blue collar labor has to do with offering any benefits at all. Once your company has 50 employees or more, you must offer at least a bare minimum health insurance plan to all full time employees. Outsourcing is cheaper, because you can deal with small companies that are more focused on taking advantage of employees by doing thi…

> You can offer better packages for your higher paid employees. Wouldn’t the company lose the tax benefits if they fail non discrimination testing because the highly compensated employees (HCEs) received disproportionate benefits?

Only if the factors you are descriminating with are considered protected. The ACA is still being implemented in this regard, so pay level or executive level may or may not become "protected" but as of now, I don't think it is.