Needless to say, I was disappointed to come to Nike.
Why did I ever think I would find a dynamic, innovative environment here where hard work and engagement is valued?
What a mistake!
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I empathize with you, OP. Nike sells a particular image and promise to potential new hires. I left promptly after one year and haven’t looked back.
Working hard at Nike just gets you more work, a 3% annual raise if you’re lucky, and passed over for promotions. The smarter people at Nike know the real secrets to success:
- Manage up. Always be managing up.
- Make political connections. Socialize with the right people. You will often be promoted not on any actual talent or work ethic but rather by schmoozing with the right people. I’ve had several managers at Nike who don’t know how to do anything that’s actually useful but they did have the politicking game perfected.
- Remember that the entirety of Nike is based on appearances and story telling. Whether it’s Nike marketing and selling products or your career itself, all success happens based on how you appear and how you tell stories. This is how people with no actual talent for anything can thrive at Nike. They have curated an image and can tell stories around that image. If you think working hard has anything to do with it then I’ve got bad news for you.
- The goal at any large, soulless Fortune 500 company should be to do as little work as possible while maximizing your personal rewards. Therefore you need to learn delegating. I’d you aren’t pushing most of your work off on someone else then you aren’t trying hard enough. If you have more than 1 or 2 hours of real work each day then you need to delegate more.
- Buy into whatever social narrative Nike is pushing at any given time and elevate yourself within it. Doesn’t matter whether you support that narrative yourself. Because remember Nike is always and forever only about appearances and story telling. The truth about any given narrative is somewhat irrelevant. In practice this means right now at Nike you should be a Woke King or Queen. Sure, the rest of the world is quickly tiring of wokeness and politically it’s absolutely damaging the Democrats, but at Nike wokeness is still the virtue of the day. Embrace it and out-woke everyone else. Society won’t be better off but your career will be!
Might all sound cynical but I challenge anyone to refute anything I just said. If you think that by working hard your work will eventually get noticed and you’ll be rewarded, well, that isn’t the way things usually work in the real Nike world. The sooner you learn and accept this the better off you’ll be.
Nike is like dating a high end super model who looks good, superficially. But has major issues and treats you like a serf and never fully respects you. Great place for simps. All Nike is just a " name" at this point.
Smaller companies have better benefits and pay.
What will do about it? You made a mistake, as you said, which is ok. Now, the best thing you can do is decide to either continue being disappointed or leave and be happier. Your call.