Yesterday’s GT all-hands meeting was something else. Seeing MD next to EH and AM was night and day. MD looked like she was reading straight from a script, handing out high-fives with all the enthusiasm of a wax figure. Meanwhile, EH and AM were completely themselves—genuine, off-the-cuff, connecting with everyone in the room. When MD was asked about her takeaways, she called Nike employees “cult” members and said she was surprised by how “uneducated” they were. I was actually excited about her joining at first, but… wow, what a letdown.
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MD and the new CIO CJ are the worst and continue to ki-l the morale of Nike and Tech. They have once again built a culture of fear. Nike Tech continues to invest energy in the wrong place. Time to put the few strong leaders left in key roles to make a difference and focus on resetting the culture not saving money and investing in initiatives that will go nowhere. There are only a couple current VP’s that can do this and a handful more Sr. Directors that are capable. It’s time to make some changes and shake things up starting at the top.
Look at all the people that “flex” with a wall of shoes behind them when they get on a zoom meeting from home with their camera turned on. She’s not wrong.
Based on the one comment that is a +80 safe to say the OP here was clearly inaccurate and misleading in this post. I’ll never understand why people do this stuff. Must work for a competitor. If not, go work for one. We will capture market share back faster if you are not here.
@1jwf+1vgxeHXr agree with most things. Except that, after 1 years interacting with MD, I cannot say she is not comparable to the former CDIOs/CTOs.
Different issues, different challenges, but MD lacked a lot of leadership skills when I interacted with her - seeking to understand, delegating, trusting. Being present when the team needed (remember the team travel on the week of the lay offs?).
Personally, does not feel like an upgrade yet in terms of CTO.
Just have your doctorate bought and paid for by mum and daddy like her and you won't be uneducated anymore
she is right you know
There are legitimate gripes that people have about MD. For instance, she's been aloof and didn't communicate well with the organization in the first several months she was here. She lacks experience outside of Amazon and does not have technical knowledge of key systems that Nike uses, like SAP. It seems that she has easily fallen for some bad ideas or vendor proposals, many of which were driven from Tech Mod. Although she stated in the All-Hands that training, career growth, and promotion paths are a top priority for her, in the past 11 months, she has done nothing about this (and failed to protect good leaders and IC employees in tech during the layoffs), and there are currently less that 25 current job openings in tech right now (meaning that there is almost no opportunity in the org). And, it seems that she is not 100% committed to Nike if she still lives in Seattle, which is hypocritical if she is enforcing RTO in tech at the same time.
All those things said, I'm going to play devil's advocate here and say that MD is way better than her last three predecessors. Going back to 2015, AW, JS, and RL were all pretty awful, lacked serious moral character, and drove the tech organization into the ground with terrible decisions, poor hiring, and unscrupulous deals with vendors. Therefore, one could argue that MD walked into a huge mess that is going to be hard to turn around. I don't know if she has what it takes to fix everything, but I guess I'm still willing to give it a chance, especially with EH at the top.
Bottom line, as other posters pointed out, the "cult" and "uneducated leaders" comments are being taken out of context and were not in the same sentences. So let's be real with our criticisms and talk about the actual problems, and what can be done to fix this place.
Is her name pronounced mooj or moog or moogay? Serious question.
@icb+1vgxeHXr GT is not that bad. I would still recommend SWE here. These guys are just blowing it out of proportion. Worse case, just grab your paycheck and leave.
This is scary. I don't think I want to be a incoming SWE here anymore. I hope EH turns the GT ship around by next year.
One thing I’ve learned here at Nike is Global Tech leader needs to be constantly in flux. The organization is born and bred with anger, backstabbing, and constant negative undertones. If someone is brought up through the ranks, the beast of Global Tech will tear them down until they get laid off. Hire an external leader? Ensure the org constantly complains that they never promote within.
Vicious cycle that constantly repeats. Kind of like HR and the DEI leader. I believe DEI is on their 6th leader in 7 years? Literally, how does anyone build a strategy with so much turn over.
They must be taking a page out the Global Tech ‘hate’book.
Yeah - I’m calling all you global tech folks out on this board. You all are most toxic organization I’ve ever worked under. From manager to VP, it’s all about protecting your way of life and ensure there is no possible chance you get eliminated. Then when they finally lay you off, you come on here and dump all your hatred for every leader in that org.
Honestly, the meeting went completely to sh-t the second EH walked offstage. MD looked so out of place the entire time.
I mean the most part of Nike is a cult. Employees are "highly encouraged" to wear the Brand, stick as many swooshes everywhere as possible, lots of "come workout/run/ride with me because it's the best thing ever".
For a lot of employees, sport is their entire personality and all they bring to the job, not corporate relevant skill or technical expertise, and these people get elevated especially if they're going on runs and lunches or whatever with leadership. So yeah totally a cult.
@vrk+1vgxeHXr that is because all of our software is written by third world cow worshippers.
What's with all the handshakes? Is this some kind of business cult? Slap my a-s like a professional.
lol, judging by some of the threads I see on this site I don’t think she is far off. This one in point. The tech folks at Nike wouldn’t even qualify for an entry-level jobs at a real tech company.
Let’s start off with the fact that they fall for any vendor with a cool presentation, which means we get stuck with a bunch of systems that don’t talk to each other. And then when we do attempt to build something for ourselves it just flat out does not work. I mean, just take a look at the Nike app, which is or was supposed to be the storefront of the DTC strategy. It is absolute trash with one of the worst search functions in e-commerce.
@skb+1vgxeHXr she must be taking you on all of her "learning" tour trips she takes on Nikes dime.
But AI will save Nike...here comes the user complaining about AI having been blocked....and holy sh-t yes the sound su-ked we did not need 6.3 million users giving their take on the audio issues in the chat...no one cares what you think!
You can’t make this stuff up. Like how was that her answer to her learnings this far. Pro tip to our CTO with a doctorate, it’s usually not a good idea to call your employees “uneducated” and “cult” like.
I’m not the biggest MD fan either, but this is not at all what she said. Don’t spin false narratives.
She said basically the dedication people have for the brand is like a cult. That definition is “excessive admiration for a particular person or thing” which makes sense. She also didn’t call anyone uneducated. She said she was surprised how uneducated leaders were about how important of a role Tech played.
Be better. Don’t make stuff up or change words around. That’s makes YOU the real problem not part of the solution.
A leader she is not, she may have a high level of education, but she clearly has no idea how to effectively lead GT. Hopefully she will be out once EH settles in more and sees the total disaster that is and has been GT(ie the worlds largest money pit).
lol I loved how EH called her out on reading from a script and then when MD was talking to AM, she said she wanted AM to always be her buddy, to which AM said “jeez I can’t shake her”. I don’t think AM was joking deep down.
I think she was hoping high-fives would make her seem more human and less of a sociopath….fail.
What was with all the high fives...are we collectively 12? Give me a handshake that a fu--ing professional.