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Comment by _wldu | Hacker News Reader

The point is that the CEO was open minded (he took a phone call from a janitor... and actually listened to him and then gave him a chance). He saw past this mans lack of education and experience and focused on his dedication and enthusiasm. There's value in everyone, everywhere (even the lowest employees). We need leaders who can put ego aside and see that. IMO, that was the point of the story. The subsequent success of this man is another story entirely (and a good one I bet). I'm just glad that someone recognized his talent.

Edit: Credit also goes to the secretary for putting the call through to the CEO and not acting as a gate-keeper. She could have ended the call. Thankfully, she was open minded too.

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My takeaway was that not only was a janitor directly employed by the company (as cleaning services are basically 100% outsourced in my experience now) but was paid well and felt part of the company such that he was motivated to stay interested and contribute.

Yes that is quite the anachronism these days.

Too bad. Perhaps there is an opportunity cost argument for a better alternative.

I imagine it's super hard to quantify the profit of "ideas from janitor", but super easy to quantify the savings of "no longer paying for a janitor".

Plus, if every company has a gentleman's agreement to ignore the help then there's no lost opportunity that the competition can jump on.

Sure there is, they all just agree to ignore it.

Right. The current philosophy is to outsource anything that isn't your core competency.

There used to be a path from lowly janitor/stocker/etc. to the executive suite but that route has largely closed.

Your comment reminded me of this article I read a while back: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/21/gail-evans-went-from-janitor...

According to the article by "ask a mexican" (can't find it atm) but at the time frito lay had an active "solicit business ideas from all levels of the company" program, and they really meant it (some companies do not when they do these sorts of things)

> There's value in everyone, everywhere

I’d say value can be found anywhere. It isn’t everywhere. And not everyone has this man’s ability. (Regardless of background.)

It's like in ratatouille movie, everyone can cook doesn't mean everybody can be a great cook, but that a great cook can come from anywhere.

>He saw past this mans lack of education and experience

Did he lack education and experience or formal education and business experience? Being able to manage people requires skills that no formal education I've seen can teach you. It can help, but it doesn't impart the required basics. Things like being able to read a person, know who is being honest, know what is the appropriate level of joking around for a superior/subordinate relationship.

Did he have the skills from non-recognized sources or did he pick these up on the go? Or was some other characteristic enough to make up for a deficit in these?

That was my take on this story as well...that the CEO was humble enough to listen to his employees. That's hard to do at a large company and we don't see enough of it.

I have a feeling he wouldn't have given up if the secretary stonewalled him. But kudos to her, still.

>even the lowest employees

Why is the janitor considered "the lowest employee" by you?

In most companies the level is demonstrated by the investment in the employee's career. I would imagine janitors :-

* Get the lowest salary

* Are often outsourced with lowest priced bidder winning

* Don't get on programs like bonuses, training, career advancement

* Aren't used in company marketing (Imagine "We have the best cleaned offices")

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 next time ("close to the metal", for instance).

This is solved (or exacerbated, depending on your point of view) in non-English speaking environments that nonetheless use English terms of art.

In my case, we use "low-level" (in English) to convey the "close to the metal", systems programming idea, and the direct translation of "low-level" to refer to shoddy code.

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.

Exactly, and any low-level (assembly/machine) engineer would be unlikely unaware of the high/low-level terminology.

> > low level does not mean less skill to write

> low level is very hard and arcane

> the opposite

Umm...

When I first started grad school as a biomedical engineer, I did a rotation in a neurophysiologist lab who was looking at how turtle neurons are able to survive longer without oxygen, hoping along the way to apply it to stroke survival, etc. But, his overall goal was to learn about how the brain stem controls respiration.

I described this guy and his lab to my parents as a "basic science" which they took to mean it was simple "easy" science. In reality he has studied the same square millimeter of turtle brain and a few proteins for decades, and knows it better probably than anyone who has ever lived.

In these contexts, "basic" and "low-level" means "insane level of detail that no one else wants to bother with."

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.

Everyone gets a chance when they are young. I know lots of people who beared with me when they should not have.

You got a chance, people should get a chance, but it's not true that everyone does get a chance. Some people are just dealt a bad hand and get no lucky breaks, and have no path to leave mediocrity despite their effort.

I think people are downvoting because they disagree with you and not explaining why.

> people who bore* with me

Past tense of verb "bear" is "bore" (not "boar", FWIW.)

;-)

Thanks.

FYI, English is slowly evolving away from having irregular forms of many verbs. This means that simply adding -ed to the verb is acceptable. Some common examples: bend and bent/bended, lend and lent/lended, weep and wept/weeped...

Acceptable to whom?

Degradation of language is degradation of mind.

Most people don't like to sound ignorant and unlettered. You saw that nashashmi graciously said, "Thanks", eh?

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