Thread regarding Nike Inc. layoffs

LOL. The writer of the article doesn’t realize that there can be more than one issue at a time.

And Nike has PLENTY…

Are YOU sure that qualified people were put in place by the bro / nepo culture? I think that’s why it’s toxic. Said bros (male and female) are the ones who implemented DEI. In other words there’s Nike’s blindspot on display for everyone! Yet many continue to double down and blame the folks they hired. DIABOLICAL.

@qy Regardless if that’s true or not doesn’t change the fact that without a conscientious effort to expand the hiring pool, you’re going to have unintended bias in your hiring.

@p6

removing systemic barriers, supporting the communities we serve and giving everyone equal opportunity is hard. expensive. not measurable in the next quarter. requires long term commitment beyond your 2 year promotion chase cycles.

slapping a hiring quota, promoting unqualified people because of their gender and color of their skin is easy, gets you numbers quick and it is the american way of solving problems.

@p6 VP compensation was directly tied to achieving DEI targets, effectively turning them into quotas. Are you sure unqualified people weren’t selected through these financially incentivized programs?

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/03/11/nike-sets-diversity-goals-for-2025-ties-executive-comp-back-to-them.html

@jq I think that comparison mixes up a few different things. Professional sports are built around a very narrow pipeline—elite physical performance in a specific domain—while workplaces are much broader systems where opportunity, access, and bias play a much bigger role in who gets hired, promoted, and heard.

DEI isn’t about forcing unqualified people into roles or setting rigid quotas like “X number of people per team.” At its core, it’s about making sure qualified people aren’t overlooked because of barriers that have historically limited access—whether that’s in recruiting networks, hiring practices, or workplace culture.

I think most people agree the goal is still merit—but DEI is about making sure we’re actually recognizing merit wherever it exists, not just where we’re used to seeing it

@j8 Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Bo Jackson were by far the best at what they did and happened to be black. That’s different from forcing every team to have a certain threshold of each race or gender. Corporate DEI is similar to saying black people are over represented in the NBA and each team needs to be held responsible for drafting a certain number of Asians or Women to increase representation and give them a certain amount of minutes per game.

Every bit of Nike's success was because they were "woke" when the rest of the industry wasn't. They were in Asia before anyone else was. They made Black athletes billionaires before anyone would even consider making a Black person the face of a brand.

@OP did you even read the article you linked?

What’s frustrating and curious is how white women benefited most from this whole “woke” movement. How exactly does that happen? Were white women the most disenfranchised?

I thought we weren’t doing well as a company because of the years we spent working from home??

@a7 Collectively, ex-employee who boycotts Nike will most assuredly not make a bit of difference. If there are 76k employees in total and 8 billion people on the planet (if you have a body you are an athlete) o.ooo95% would be the loss in sales opportunity at any given moment, assuming the entire world population has 2 feet. I myself being an ex-employee who isn’t proud of “the nike” I wear them alongside other brands cause I still get the employee discount. Stop that discount, I stop buying. NO one will notice or care.

@ae+1kqnzpdq5 “Woke marketing disenfranchises 50% of the population” Acknowledging more people isn’t disenfranchising others—it just feels that way if you’re used to being centered. Marketing didn’t disenfranchise you—you just weren’t cast as the main character this time. Poor little man he thinks he’s the real woke one. LOLOL

Is “woke” really the issue, or is it bias, favoritism, layoffs, outsourcing, and talent loss that lead to a lack of innovation? Keep ignoring the elephant in the room all the way to bankruptcy, that's all I'm sayin'.

@OP More than one thing can be true. The fact is many consumers started boycotting Nike the second the woke marketing began and never came back. That has had a huge impact on sales. Have you been living under a rock? Boycotts are very real.

@a7 That’s some very twisted logic. By that logic, businesses would never slash jobs due to fear of losing customers despite falling revenues. That make absolutely no sense. Businesses cannot just hire in perpetuity regardless of their revenue.

Revenue supported by resellers will collapse in a bad economy. Like nintendo.

Woke marketing disenfranchises 50% of the population if you consider elections to be roughly even left/right.

Woke is the problem for DEI and hiring internally. Anyone hired for gender or race has brought lesser quality leadership that continues to like like-me.

Woke is the problem. Don’t fool yourself.

For each employee nike lays off they actually lose a customer if the relationship burns. Each time they lose customers they lose sales. So in theory more layoffs means less sales. In addition each time nike lays off a family member their family members no longer respects Nike as a brand that helps their family survive so they stop supporting the brand. In addition competition gives those families another brand to go to especially if those brands are local to the portland metro. Also when companies as a whole lag in wages this does include nike itself the customers are less likely to spend on clothing if they can rewear the same clothes as a cost saving measure.