The article isn't about KitchenAid Mixers. It's about KitchenAid/Whirlpool investing in its workers through programs such as paying for further education and training.
Please stop talking about your personal opinions regarding the quality, utility, or value of their mixers and other kitchen appliances, and please stop upvoting these posts. That has nothing whatsoever to do with the point of the article and is noise. The article is about the value of a company financially investing in their employees.
I sympathize but this happens on every thread. Articles about Google setting up a permanent Mars colony would have posts whining about Reader. Articles about an Apple credit default swap denominated in Renminbi will have comments complaining about how the latest refresh of the Macbook Pro wasn't really a "Pro". And so on.
The point of HackerNews is to spark interesting conversation as much as anything. Often that involves going off on a tangent. At least that's why I come here, and I'd guess I'm not alone.
Well yes, I think that's how the tangents get started. If the article itself is sufficiently interesting or the tangent is particularly off-topic, those conversations get quashed pretty quickly. There were only a couple top-level comments about the mixers, it just happened that there weren't many comments about the article itself to counter-balance them.
Please stop talking about your personal opinions regarding the quality, utility, or value of their mixers and other kitchen appliances, and please stop upvoting these posts. That has nothing whatsoever to do with the point of the article and is noise. The article is about the value of a company financially investing in their employees.