And why does everyone keep referring to Nike as “the berm” on LinkedIn
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It is to keep the b-ms inside and continue to drink cool-aid
It is a literal, physical grass berm that surrounds the Nike WHQ campus. The berm prevents people from being able to see much of the Nike campus from the outside.
“Berm” is also used as a metaphor that alludes to Nike’s insular culture where there are only two types of people and indeed two different worlds: there are people and there’s life inside the berm (employees) and there is everyone else.
When you work at Nike long enough it becomes easy to forget that there’s an entire world and life outside the berm. A world where Nike is just another large company making stuff, rather than the center of your universe and a core part of your identity as a human. Nike somewhat indoctrinates its employees to believe that the company isn’t just a company but a way of life! And it does this rather effectively. Nike spends a great deal of time, money and energy marketing itself to its own employees. Which makes sense when you remember Nike is first and foremost a marketing company. When you’re constantly exposed to this marketing…it works. I’m tempted to say it’s sort of cult-like but that would be overly dramatic. It isn’t THAT bad. Nonetheless the same mind-shaping dynamic is at play. Ultimately it causes people to forget that Nike really is just a large multi-national company and that, as with almost any job or employer, it’s healthy to keep a fair amount of distance and to not invest too much of your identity into it.
It's this giant maze where all the little rats run around in sneakers, hoping they're on the right path, until someone moves their cheese.
The physical perimeter around whq. Google earth may help.