The days when someone can start as a janitor or in the mailroom and climb to the top is done.
Companies used to hire everyone in the company. Janitors were part of the company. So was mailroom staff. So were secretaries. Everybody was part of the whole.
Now, companies contract out everything but their core thing. Janitors come from a low-paid 3rd party service. Mailrooms are no longer a thing (there's no such thing as emailrooms, unless you count exchange admins). All those things that allowed somebody to start at the bottom rung in a company and climb up have been systematically destroyed and/or removed.
That’s a fatalist outlook. The ceo in the article was humble enough to recognize a good idea when he saw it and not judge the presenter by where he came from. Most bosses would’ve laughed him out of the room when he held out his arms and said he thought they could win this much market share.
Credentials can only get you so far, at some point intuition is important. Leaders and recruiters need to pay more attention to drive, work ethic, and character than to where someone went to college or what their job title is. This is the way things used to be and they can be that way again.
I mean, my assumption is the CEO at the time he asked this, was already thinking about the potential of the product itself as a good idea at that point in the presentation. He already knew he was talking to the janitor, I doubt he really expected a realistic estimate of market share.
But yeah, I think a huge part here is actually that Montañez went with the best he could do, he didn't snap back about not knowing or get awkwardly uncomfortable about being out of his element or his knowledge base. He presented his idea enthusiastically and he stood by it. And I think you can pick up that sort of attitude in people, and that's what may have moved him past "contributed an idea" to "worth including in continuing to develop it".
At my company (Mixpanel), the modern equivalent is our support team, which is filled with smart, hungry people who want to get their foot in the door in tech.
Now, we have former support folks all over the company (sales, sales engineering, services, software engineering, product - just to name the departments I can think of offhand), who are often our top performers as ICs or who have grown into leadership roles. Some have left to start their own companies.
It's actually been one of our most effective hiring channels!
This is something I've been wanting to ask at interviews, "how many people who work here were hired with a different title?" I'm pretty sure that promoting from within is an extremely strong indicator of resilience.
It might be that it's harder on average for the lower/lower-middle-income worker to work their way to the top in, but it may be also the case that the Internet and social networks (even amid the saturation of professional influencers and their ilk) provide opportunities for the lower-rung to get sudden and prominent recognition, albeit not from their own workplaces.
Games industry is probably one of the few jobs where you can work your way up to the top role from the bottom.
It's still not uncommon at all for executive producers that manage entire projects to have started as game testers that would have been paid a low hourly wage.
I'm not sure that's inherently a bad thing. Yes, loyalty should be rewarded, and employees should not be treated like resources but as people with inherent dignity. And I can see that its unethical to hire external workers to avoid treating them well. But if laws are made to protect and enforce their rights and dignity, then how is this kind of outsourcing system worse than hiring everyone as a full time employee?
They haven't completely died, my company has a mailroom with someone that delivers mail to each floor, receives packages (including larger shipments at the loading dock) and stamps outgoing mail.
FWIW, this is what pushes energy and opportunity into the entrepreneurial marketplace. You work in these companies as a contractor, learn about problems and start something new.
Crowdfunding and free marketing distribution platforms exist to aid your small venture.
Just as this old story may be less likely today, new stories of entrepreneurship continue to be written without the inclusion of PepsiCo. If anything these giants exist as acquirers.
I don't think any janitor working for an outsourced company is learning about problems. For the most part, people try to ignore that the cleaning staff are there at all. They don't talk to them and they certainly don't engage with them as equals -- for the most part, of course.
How would a janitor working for Aramark, emptying trash cans after everyone's left for the day, "learn about problems and start something new"? Even the "start something new" bit doesn't really make sense. You're going to get an appointment with a funder on the pitch of "I'm a janitor with Aramark, and lately I've been working at the Johnson corp...."?
Even back then most janitors did not rise through the ranks. Montañez specifically went above and beyond his job responsibilities to network, learn about the business, and be the best janitor on staff. His success still required luck and maybe that kind of luck is hard to find these days, but he was also prepared to take advantage of that luck when it arrived. Most workers, no matter their level, just do the bare minimum to get by.
Yes, the key is this person looked at their entire job differently. They never were looking to only be an average janitor.
Jan Koum went from welfare to WhatsApp with his key job as a contractor to yahoo via Ernst & Young.
This is about the person and how they use resources at hand. The loss of corporate identity in low levels positions may have fallen away but other opportunities now exist.
> FWIW, this is what pushes energy and opportunity into the entrepreneurial marketplace. You work in these companies as a contractor, learn about problems and start something new.
There's an awfully lot of implied and stated "IFs" in that sentence.
One can only tap the 'entrepreneurial marketplace' if you have or have access to Capital. That marketplace has no room for low paid people, with low to no influence.
And another thing about starting on the ground floor of a company is being part of the culture and changing it from within. Whereas a "contractor" is just some 3rd party interloper that already has the skills and technique to be hired for a specific set of highly qualified skills.
And if you think a CEO would listen to a gig-economy'd janitor or through Manpower, try asking them.
> Crowdfunding and free marketing distribution platforms exist to aid your small venture.
To recommend crowdfunding as some solution is a joke. Again, you need Capital to make the 2 minute catchy video and slick marketing to get people. And those vids usually cost around USD 20k to 50k.
I guess you could go the beggars route and use a gofundme. But usually people are in the similar socioeconomic status as their family, friends and peers.
Companies used to hire everyone in the company. Janitors were part of the company. So was mailroom staff. So were secretaries. Everybody was part of the whole.
Now, companies contract out everything but their core thing. Janitors come from a low-paid 3rd party service. Mailrooms are no longer a thing (there's no such thing as emailrooms, unless you count exchange admins). All those things that allowed somebody to start at the bottom rung in a company and climb up have been systematically destroyed and/or removed.