Why does Nike promote incompetent people? There are more than enough excellent employees who know what they're doing and who possess the people skills needed for management positions. My new boss of six months is not supportive, provides no guidance, never gives us any feedback, yells at us when things are not going his way (things that are outside of our control), and is always happy to accept more work for the team despite us already being swamped if it'll make him look good. I'm not the only one who's considering quitting over this. And to think, this and this was easily avoidable.
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I am curious if your mgr is Indian? Seems like every Indian mgr I have had acts this way. Makes me think it is cultural when in a authority postion.
It's a tactic. i have seen it in my own team. get rid of all the competent people that are not afraid to ask questions. Those people actually require you to think about things and it detracts from your time and ability to suck up for your next role.
Your boss sounds like the one I had three weeks ago, when I quit.
“Waiting it out” for a re-org seems like terrible advice? Your quality of life at work is just as important given the amount of time you’re expected to contribute. These are all relationships, this might not be the right fit and that’s ok. Follow your guts
why does nike promote incompetent people? because the incompetent like to promote each other
The last poster mentioned “failing upwards”.
It’s funny because, yes, that really does happen at Nike. Often. I’ve seen it 4 or 5 times myself. A person will be a lousy to mediocre performer at best, and you turn around one day and find that person just got promoted! I wish I was exaggerating but I’m not. This actually happens. And it’s always straight up bizarre.
There are a lot of imposters in Nike management. Some of them know they’re imposters and some don’t.
My experience is that behind closed doors, Nike did two things that produced a toxic management environment. Its been this way for at least 15-20 years or more. This is definitely the case for IT at minimum. Which is why everyone local to Portland knew to avoid Nike Technology unless they were desperate or just wanted the resume boost.
- The executive level prefers managers who create tension and chaos in the name of things moving quickly. No matter what the cost to the actual employees reporting to them. They loved a "highly competitive environment" where managers were encouraged to stab each other in the back to get ahead rather than work together. Why do think there are so many redundant platforms in IT? I knew of senior managers who had years of horrific feedback, multiple HR escalations about their behavior, tried to ruin peoples lives by driving them 365x24x7...and they got high level awards for their performance. I was on one team where that happened and it ki---d morale for years and people started leaving. This particular manager was a confrontational psychopath who was always ready to explode and even once got violent with someone. They gave him AN AWARD!!!!!
- Far too much favoritism over actual merit once someone is "identified" or uhhh...licks enough of the right boots to be a "future leader". I saw some of these folks make grievous errors on projects, contribute nothing to their employees development, and still fail upwards to very high paid positions. Saw it over and over again and very few of them were actually good managers. Almost every one of them had a sponsor that made sure that the blame always landed on some poor U band employee instead.
As someone who was in my share of management conversations it would behoove most of you to stop thinking about Nike as some kind of family. They will absolutely use you up and throw you away if you let them. Its not an accident, its part of the plan.
People managers should be graded on how well they find and develop talent who can contribute at high levels. I rarely saw that at Nike as you will advance quicker by making your manager look better.
I know it sounds unfair, but diversity hires are meant to rectify decades of women and people of color not being given the opportunities to gain the experience to move higher up in companies. By some people's logic, you would never see a woman or poc advance if you were only looking at experience.
Nike could definitely do a much better job coaching and providing resources to help these hires, but it's disingenuous to assume there's some essential flaw in being a woman, or poc, that makes them incapable of learning.
“You may not believe it, but senior leadership is literally making these decisions based on gender and race.”
I believe it. Nobody ever says it out loud for the obvious reason that in most circumstances it’s illegal to hire or promote based on a physical characteristic. However I think all of us know certain employees who likely wouldn’t have been hired or promoted if they hadn’t checked a particular DE&I box. I’m one of many who also knows this from personal experience.
The pendulum will eventually swing in the other direction. Some companies have been sued over this issue and I contend it’s just a matter of time before Nike suffers the same fate. Google “reverse discrimination lawsuit” and you’ll see no shortage of companies who pushed their DE&I agendas too far.
Aside from the legal consequences a growing number of people are simply getting tired of it and I think most of us see and feel this. Personally I’m getting tired of being told we can’t hire a person because we didn’t jump through enough DE&I hoops first. What gets me is that it’s all so blatant too.
Simple answer: Nike doesn’t promote based on merit. It’s a popularity contest, and now you need to have the right identity to get promoted (thanks, DEI). You may not believe it, but senior leadership is literally making these decisions based on gender and race. I’ve been in the meetings.
I am no longer at Nike. But concur. A lot of the senior directors in particular are weak. I worked for one that didn’t have 1:1’s, team meetings, reviews, couldn’t form a strategy, control a budget, understand where to spend budget. In addition, no one knew where she was at any given time. And to top all of that she didn’t like sports. But she was a neighbor of a Nike VP and they were friends. Worst professional experience I have ever had. I knew others with similar stories all over the company.
I’ve worked at several companies other than Nike and have seen this same issue in every other business. Nike has a LOT of good managers. I truly believe that and have had much worse elsewhere.
Some of the best advice I was given at Nike is if you don’t like your manager, just wait it out, they’ll be re-org’d soon enough. So far it’s been sound advice.
Sorry to hear about your experience. I know it can really be rough.
Welcome to the party that is Nike management. In all seriousness my sympathies as I went through something similar recently at Nike. It was a terrible experience dealing with a manager who had zero people management skills despite constantly touting how good they were with team building. Nike gives zero credit towards how people are managed despite the neverending propaganda about "team" values. At this point I've seen so much bad management I'd say Nike HR is purposefully gas lighting us just for giggles with all their meaningless rhetoric about retention being important. I've had 5 managers in 12 months. Just a rotating cast of characters that I've come to expect less and less from every time they decide to swap them out for some arbitrary reason (mumble mumble "strategy" mumble mumble "alignment").