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Gail Evans worked as a janitor at Kodak in the 1980s. "She received more than four weeks of paid vacation per year, reimbursement of some tuition costs to go to

Gail Evans worked as a janitor at Kodak in the 1980s. "She received more than four weeks of paid vacation per year, reimbursement of some tuition costs to go to college part time, and a bonus payment every March... A manager learned that Ms. Evans was taking computer classes while she was working as a janitor and asked her to teach some other employees how to use spreadsheet software to track inventory... Less than a decade later, Ms. Evans was chief technology officer of the whole company."

SOLAR_FIELDS 9y ago
This story is evocative of Trent Reznor's success story.
- chank 9y ago
  Not even close.
  - nickthemagicman 9y ago
    Agreed, he was in a bunch of bands and had classical piano training his entire life. He was recording on the side and happened to be working as a janitor at a music studio. Trent is more similar to Good Will Hunting than this story.
GuiA 9y ago
This is why it's so upsetting that companies in Silicon Valley (Google, Facebook, Apple, all of them) hire cooks/janitors/bus drivers/etc from 3rd party companies and offer them none of the benefits their full employees get. Just doing that would be a huge pipeline, and would play no small part in addressing the diversity problem they all claim to be preoccupied with (but don't do much about).
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  Google is famous for having made its early cooks and massage therapists into multi-millionaires by giving them stock options. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/technology/12google.html?mcubz=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/technology/12google.html?m... Remember that this NY Times article is designed to push emotional buttons. Their entire story revolves around comparing Apple against Kodak. There aren't really any deeper studies or figures provided. You could as well compare a contractor who worked at Kodak with a masseuse at Google and reach the opposite conclusion.
  - GuiA 9y ago
    Except I work at such one big company, and talk to its security guards, shuttle drivers, cafeteria cooks, every single day. And what do they tell me? That once this ends, they're headed to Whole Foods for another shift. Or that they'll sleep in their car for a few hours tonight before heading to the next job, not seeing their kids. Or that they're struggling to pay for their mom's medical bills and have no clue how they'll ever get out of it. This NY Times article pushes buttons so well because it resonates deeply with what I, and many others, have been hearing every day since they've set foot in Silicon Valley.
    - peoplewindow 9y ago
      Yes. Note I referred to early employees. Cooks and massueses got rich off Google in the days when there were only a few of them and the company was run by idealistic founders who weren't responsible to the stock market. Now there are hundreds or thousands of such people globally, and things went back to normal. My point is that "janitor who became CTO" is not really a common story at any company, even at Kodak.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  I am not a lawyer, but it's my understanding that companies need to treat contractors substantially different from full time employees or get in trouble for basically having full time employees that they don't pay employment taxes on. So the choice is more like: * keep cafeteria workers on the payroll * hire a specialized company to run the cafeteria ...the middle ground would be to require all vendors provide minimum benefits of some sort (vacation, sick days, etc.). But that wouldn't make it feasible to offer a temp event worker a data maintenance role. That would basically be poaching another company's worker.
dexterdog 9y ago
So, IOW they cherry-picked what was likely the most driven of the janitors in the past and compared it to a random one today. That seems honest.
- arkitaip 9y ago
  It's not even the point of the example and they address that in the article. They point is that the janitor at Kodak had opportunities to advance her career, whereas the janitor working at Apple has none because she doesn't even for the Apple.
  - jblow 9y ago
    But she's also not taking computer classes in her spare time, and work is approximately he same number of hours leaving approximately the same amount of spare time ... even if she were taking computer classes it would not be a reasonable comparison, because taking computer classes in the 1980s was a much more rare and advanced thing than taking them today. It'd have to be something more like quantum mechanics classes, or nanobiology classes, or, I don't even know.
    - collyw 9y ago
      It says that she has no paid vacation, so thats a chunk less spare time. My guess is that commuting to Apple's offices will be a large chunk as well. I doubt she can afford to stay in the same area as the high paid tech workers.
      - dexterdog 9y ago
        Nobody has paid vacation. It's just factored into your salary.
        collyw 9y ago
        Then effectively the salary is higher than quoted for the 80's worker. And I know plenty of people in academia who don't take all of their vacation, and often work far longer hours than they are contracted for.
rglovejoy 9y ago
> Less than a decade later, Ms. Evans was chief technology officer of the whole company. So was she partly responsible for Kodak missing the boat on digital cameras?

SOLAR_FIELDS 9y ago

This story is evocative of Trent Reznor's success story.

chank 9y ago
Not even close.
- nickthemagicman 9y ago
  Agreed, he was in a bunch of bands and had classical piano training his entire life. He was recording on the side and happened to be working as a janitor at a music studio. Trent is more similar to Good Will Hunting than this story.

GuiA 9y ago

This is why it's so upsetting that companies in Silicon Valley (Google, Facebook, Apple, all of them) hire cooks/janitors/bus drivers/etc from 3rd party companies and offer them none of the benefits their full employees get. Just doing that would be a huge pipeline, and would play no small part in addressing the diversity problem they all claim to be preoccupied with (but don't do much about).

peoplewindow 9y ago
Google is famous for having made its early cooks and massage therapists into multi-millionaires by giving them stock options. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/technology/12google.html?mcubz=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/technology/12google.html?m... Remember that this NY Times article is designed to push emotional buttons. Their entire story revolves around comparing Apple against Kodak. There aren't really any deeper studies or figures provided. You could as well compare a contractor who worked at Kodak with a masseuse at Google and reach the opposite conclusion.
- GuiA 9y ago
  Except I work at such one big company, and talk to its security guards, shuttle drivers, cafeteria cooks, every single day. And what do they tell me? That once this ends, they're headed to Whole Foods for another shift. Or that they'll sleep in their car for a few hours tonight before heading to the next job, not seeing their kids. Or that they're struggling to pay for their mom's medical bills and have no clue how they'll ever get out of it. This NY Times article pushes buttons so well because it resonates deeply with what I, and many others, have been hearing every day since they've set foot in Silicon Valley.
  - peoplewindow 9y ago
    Yes. Note I referred to early employees. Cooks and massueses got rich off Google in the days when there were only a few of them and the company was run by idealistic founders who weren't responsible to the stock market. Now there are hundreds or thousands of such people globally, and things went back to normal. My point is that "janitor who became CTO" is not really a common story at any company, even at Kodak.
humanrebar 9y ago
I am not a lawyer, but it's my understanding that companies need to treat contractors substantially different from full time employees or get in trouble for basically having full time employees that they don't pay employment taxes on. So the choice is more like: * keep cafeteria workers on the payroll * hire a specialized company to run the cafeteria ...the middle ground would be to require all vendors provide minimum benefits of some sort (vacation, sick days, etc.). But that wouldn't make it feasible to offer a temp event worker a data maintenance role. That would basically be poaching another company's worker.

dexterdog 9y ago

So, IOW they cherry-picked what was likely the most driven of the janitors in the past and compared it to a random one today. That seems honest.

arkitaip 9y ago
It's not even the point of the example and they address that in the article. They point is that the janitor at Kodak had opportunities to advance her career, whereas the janitor working at Apple has none because she doesn't even for the Apple.
- jblow 9y ago
  But she's also not taking computer classes in her spare time, and work is approximately he same number of hours leaving approximately the same amount of spare time ... even if she were taking computer classes it would not be a reasonable comparison, because taking computer classes in the 1980s was a much more rare and advanced thing than taking them today. It'd have to be something more like quantum mechanics classes, or nanobiology classes, or, I don't even know.
  - collyw 9y ago
    It says that she has no paid vacation, so thats a chunk less spare time. My guess is that commuting to Apple's offices will be a large chunk as well. I doubt she can afford to stay in the same area as the high paid tech workers.
    - dexterdog 9y ago
      Nobody has paid vacation. It's just factored into your salary.
      - collyw 9y ago
        Then effectively the salary is higher than quoted for the 80's worker. And I know plenty of people in academia who don't take all of their vacation, and often work far longer hours than they are contracted for.

rglovejoy 9y ago

> Less than a decade later, Ms. Evans was chief technology officer of the whole company. So was she partly responsible for Kodak missing the boat on digital cameras?