Feels like a lot of waste. Where is the value? Can we not do the same with less? Other companies seem to do fine. I don’t know where the value add or money savings comes from anymore outside RIF’s.
Maybe just reset every leader. Don’t know if any are actually well liked by their own teams even.
Only good tech domain is Indian led tech domains!
Agree, tech is fine. Business leadership needs to go…
It’s long past time to swap out every VP in the business functions. Not one of them has the foggiest idea what the he-l is actually happening.
@aw - slack is a tool not a domain. I bet teams or zoom replace it eventually.
I think they meant domains like tech ops, , game, tmo, etc
ironically slack and MD tried to gut it
At this point, what domains are worth what we invest in them and not just money pits? I’ll wait….
He’s not wrong. Tech IS wildly over budget.
But if he’s d-mb and listens to the cost ‘savers’ that bloated us into this mess we’re going to be even worse off.
I have heard EH thinks tech is too expensive and wants to back to when he used to be here before most of us. Just support and enable stop trying to be the spotlight. Go give people laptops, setup monitors, make sure email works, and get out of the way.
We are doomed.
“What is tech’s value proposition?”
Well. If we still had the ability… nearly all meaningful profit increases have to involve tech.
Sure you can launch skims through the existing setup. Build the perfect jeans 3.0 and that will move the needle.
But everything else involves tech. If you want to fix our incredibly wasteful and inaccurate supply chain you need tech to implement those fixes. If you want to fix our massive and disorganized media library, that’s tech. If you want to integrate our online store with instagram so users can buy ‘a look’ from random social media images, tech again. You want to integrate footlocker’s inventory into our ecosystem so users can better search for limited inventory, tech tech techy. Want to setup an amazon style delivery system, teeecccchhhh.
I could go on and on.
The number one reason Nike is failing is because we intentionally destroyed our engineering capability. And we did it all in a short sighted attempt to save 10% on a few teams’ salaries.
The only way Nike turns itself around is by ditching ITC and their state-side cousins.
Tech departments are largely ineffective because they’ve been hollowed out under the guise of offshoring. Our previous CTO was nearly arrested for the contracting scams he pulled on Nike but HR brushed tens of millions of dollars under the rug to avoid embarrassment. Search for ‘The RAT’ on this site to learn more. The dumpster fire has been coasting, costing, and bleeding us out ever since without any real changes to our trajectory.
Nike used to have Silicone Valley levels of experience. We once ran popular open source projects, had active and passionate communities, were a popular choice for Valley engineers that wanted to settle into a project for a few years without pips or drama. But those days are long gone. There is no passion. No sense of personal ownership or responsibility. Our leaders have none, and have been running layoffs constantly for at least two years now.
Tech is a swamp. It was intentionally bloated to bleed Nike of money. We let the fraudster walk. We kept his systems in place after he left. Our teams used to be 3-4 engineers with 3 teams per manager. Now they’re 6-8 engineers with 1-2 per manager and a “director” on top. Tech hasn’t been fixed because our leaders don’t want to fix it. They (and their families) make their money staffing teams 6x larger than we used to. They don’t have any particular love for Nike or plans to be here for the long run, so their incompetence running up our AWS bill 10x isn’t a concern for them.
Nike let a RAT in the h-nhouse and spent too much money digging that hole. Now there’s nothing left to dig us out with.
https://www.cohenmilstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/First-Amend-Complaint-In-re-Nike-Securities-Litigation-2025-02-10.pdf