Veterans are always raving about the good old days. I’ve been with Nike for 5 years now, and can’t spot any evidence that it ever was a decent workplace.
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It was once an awesome place to work but we are talking 15 years ago. People keep wanting to change the culture and it doesn't work. Nike is unique and should operate within its uniqueness. All these Target people need to go away along with the Target business philosophies - you left there for a reason, quit trying to implement it at Nike.
Bring back Lead, Coach, Drive and Inspire. The GROW model su-ks and lacks inspiration.
When I first joined the company, I loved the culture. The focus was on sport, the athletes and creating excellent product. It was a fun place to work with Thurst Thursdays in the summer, sport watch parties (March Madness kickoff in the TWC, Olympics/World Cups), offsite/team building events and athlete events, family days and you were surrounded by great people who loved sport and the brand. You worked hard but were consistently reminded where you worked and why you worked at The Swoosh.
I believe that the culture changed when they started cutting budgets for these employee activities/events and laid off a lot of the long time Nike veterans (really accelerated with the 2020 layoffs and budget cuts), and started focusing more on fashion and social issues. Nike took their eyes off the ball and the company is paying the price.
I'm gonna say this again. Nike IS a great place to work and always has been. Don't let these trolls fool you....
That’s because you’ve only been here 5 years dipsh-t.
Yes, when I joined Nike in 1982, and for many years following, Nike attracted athletes to the workplace, who by extension - valued teamwork and the competitive drive to beat the competition. That culture began from top management who modeled those traits daily.
Direct correlation between lack of ownership and the move to outsourcing. Management becomes bad when the pool of resources they manage are unable to perform. They stop becoming managers and become process enforcement police to try and catch all the mistakes being made by an inexperienced work force. Like in all sports there is a sweet spot between youth and experience … and depending on the function or role or position that slides one way or the other. Want tech aligned with business? Need experienced tech folks that know the business. Ain’t rocket science, better resources do better work … and the highest performing cross functional people, won’t tolerate being held back by process rules designed to catch others incompetence and lack of ownership. To be better, expect better, do better, & reward the better, … while discouraging or penalizing the folks/teams not delivering business value. Simple.
What’s this? A reasonable take in this layoff forum? You should be shadow-banned!
I’ve been here since 2010 and I can’t really mark a “great” time in my head. It all depends on these 3 categories:
- Teammates
- Manager
- Direct organization
If you like all 3, it’s a “golden” era for you. If you like 1 of 3 it’s a “been better time”, and if it’s zero, well you get it.
I’ve personally just hit all 3 within the past 9 months. I wouldn’t call it a golden era but I respect my leaders, manager and peers. I’m happy, but doesn’t mean I’m here forever. Things change rapidly around here and I never know if someone way up high wants to just change things to change things.
I work in GT and I find it a great place for technology. With MM's departure, its only going to get better.
It IS a great place work at. Stop trolling and making Nike look bad.
“ Our old ELT made the entire company focus on delivering political points instead of profit.”
This.
JD ki-led it
"Nike" is massive. Who you report to has always been what determined the quality of your day to day.
DTC is the largest turning point though. At least for engineering. The old operating model was thrown out and new departments were spun up all within a few quarters.
Even if you had great leadership they had headcount reductions, off-shore contractors shoved into their teams, no matter how politically connected your boss was. Quickly followed by international fights for budget & blood as ELT created corporate campuses all around the world, then tried finding work for them to do.
10 years later we STILL can't trust some country's managers to manage IC's in other geo's, because a cause for termination will be fabricated, followed by a request to replace the FTE with a local hire personally known by the manager. This is not one-off behavior. It is systematic across the entire remote campus. It is bad enough that it was noteworthy when a nepo fire-hire didn't occur.
What do you get when directors are no longer focused on pushing Nike forward and managing the quality of their managers? You get a stale business where everyone is miserable. You can't run an effective department when leadership has to fight for their teams' continued existence every single day. Our old ELT made the entire company focus on delivering political points instead of profit.
/rant
Things used to be pretty awesome. You could try pointing at a single lawsuit or two to say otherwise. But it's not like those issues have gone away.
The old Nike had enough integrity to face things head on. Even when things were bad, we handled them better.
Today's equivalent lawsuits never get to see the light of day. There are certain allegations & settlements that would see my comment moderated & deleted if I dared mention any of them explicitly.
I’d say the shift began around 2017 - 2018, which is when I started noticing a decline in the quality of leadership. Not just at the most senior levels. Right after the Consumer Direct Offense.
It used to be amazing. Hard work, fun colleagues, great product with meaningful innovation and strong design and a culture of teamwork. Also the “good guys and gals outnumbered the jerks.
It was but started changing about 15yrs ago. Slow at first, but then it started accelerating. The culture degradation went warp speed with JD's appointment who wasn't on any succession plans.