I won’t be working for Nike for much longer and honestly, I’m not very sad to leave the company. However, changing jobs always brings a lot of uncertainty. Those who went to work in another company - what are your experiences? Can you compare that to working at Nike - is the culture less toxic, is it easier to work, are the standards higher?
9 replies (most recent on top)
It really depends on your individual situation and organization at Nike.
I can tell you from an IT perspective that Nike is not really great to work for on the whole. If you are a solid IT professional many other companies will treat you better because they struggle to fill those roles with good people. Nike had the luxury of not caring if you quit or not and boy did it show.
I'd say the grass is about the same anywhere you go, but I've always worked for large employers. You always have confusion of what's going organizational wide. Usually some BS on the leadership levels where they tell you "Oh its a down year" yet they're getting large raises and stock grants. Lack of career development etc.
I don't know, maybe I have low expectations everywhere I go. I really don't know what a "great company" experience is, to me its just corporate America. You're hired to do a job and that's it, if they get something more out of it... they may compensate you for it, that's if the person likes you. Otherwise, you're chopped liver.
Grim outlook, but hey... if you don't like it, start your own business. I lack the fortitude to make that jump because of fears of going broke.
As another poster said the grass can be greener or browner. I have worked at several fortune 100 companies prior to Nike. One big consumer goods company was a similar promote from within type org with lots of politics but overall an ok place to learn. They regularly culled people to put pressure on the rest just like Nike. It seemed random as there were no low performers really. Another consumer company in NY was an awful place to work. The culture was toxic, the hours were long, the higher ups could care less about you or your career. Being in a big city they knew they could replace you easily. People yelled there at each other at times in a heated manner. So it really depends where you end up. I would say Nike is middle of the road with lower pay than average but more flexibility.
Nice try comms
LOL...Shoes rank last on my favorite things out there
OP, nobody here can tell you what you’ll face when/if you leave Nike. Because the boring, plain truth is this: there are plenty of companies out there that are probably better employers than Nike and there are plenty of companies out there that are probably worse employers than Nike. I know...shocking, right?
For understandable reasons this website tends to cater more to a “the grass is greener on the other side of the fence” crowd. And I don’t doubt for one second that many people who have moved on HAVE moved to greener pastures.
But I would encourage you to resist the temptation to think that Nike is somehow an unusually or uniquely bad place to work because in my experience it isn’t. Sure there are politics at Nike. There are people in management roles who really shouldn’t be. It can be difficult to move upwards in the organization. Sometimes people above you will unfairly take credit for your work. It’s a big organization that can sometimes be difficult to navigate. And at the end of the day all of us are line items on a balance sheet for whom employment security is never guaranteed.
But guess what? These things can and do exist at other companies too! To hear people on this site you’d think these annoyances are unique to Nike but I can assure you they aren’t. Some companies do these things better and some do them even worse. THAT is the boring reality.
Over the years I’ve known people who left Nike and ended up in better places and I’ve known people who have left Nike and later regretted it. Again that’s the boring reality and truth. Nobody can tell you “If you leave Nike you’ll be in a better place” because nobody here actually knows that. It totally depends on WHERE you end up after you leave.
Out of college I had worked in the public sector in a city government office. While the work environment there was pretty chill the standards were low. Like, really low. It was almost impossible to fire anyone and peoples’ work habits reflected that fact. I had tried to be a “go getter” there and it only angered everyone else. By doing more than the bare minimum I actually had a fellow employee tell me to knock it off because I was making everyone else look bad. And he was dead serious. I lasted not quite two years before I knew I had to leave.
After that I worked at a well-known Fortune 500 company (a consumer products company) in the Mid-west. At that company if you arrived at work more than 15 minutes beyond your assigned arrival time you got written up. If your lunch break was longer than an hour you got written up. There was back-stabbing galore; far worse than anything I’ve ever seen at Nike. The executives at that company were like mythical figures that you never actually saw, and rarely heard from. Nobody ever wanted to hear any ideas you had for improving processes and procedures. Vacation days had to be approved a minimum of 60 days in advance and any deviation from that was heavily discouraged and heavily scrutinized. If you called in sick for 3 or more days in a row a doctor’s note was required. Wearing jeans or sneakers was prohibited and the employee manual actually said you needed to look “tidy” at all times (whatever that meant). Any hint that you might be interested in working another job at the company was something you usually had to hide lest you be seen as disloyal to your current manager. You mostly needed to be ‘recruited’ into another role. Overtly racist language was met with a “Now now, you shouldn’t be saying that”, followed by a chuckle from the manager doing the ‘scolding’. I could go on and on. But basically working there REALLY blew. And that place was considered one of the more desirable and prestigious employers in the region! I stuck it out for four years before coming to Nike.
When I came to Nike and learned there wasn’t someone watching over my shoulder all day long I thought it was weird. My first month, when my team went to a local bar at 3:00PM for happy hour they laughed when I asked “Are we going to get in trouble for this?” And when my manager expensed that happy hour I was blown away. “You can do that?!?” I asked in stunned amazement. It took me over a year to start to relax, and to realize that what I thought was “normal” at my previous employer was nothing short of sheer oppression. Working at Nike has been WAY more enjoyable than my two previous employers.
So yeah, despite what you may read here there really ARE worse places to work. I’m sure there are also better places to work. I guess that all depends on what your frame of reference is, how talented and marketable you are, and what type of work environment you personally prefer. I’ve now been at Nike for six years and honestly I feel like overall it’s a pretty good place to work. Maybe I haven’t been around long enough to become jaded yet, or had enough poor experiences to sour me on the place? I guess both of those things are certainly possible.
Whatever you decide, do your research and don’t burn any bridges when and if you leave. I’m certain it is possible to find a different employer that’s more to your liking. Just resist the temptation to think the grass is always greener because I know from personal experience that that isn’t always the case.
Just don't go to a insurance company and you will be fine :-)
It's been almost a year for me. I look back at my interviews and seriously cringe at all of the Nike jargon coming out of my mouth that meant nothing to my interviewers. I think the most difficult part of the interviews was trying to tie what I did at Nike to the role I was interviewing for (and what I was originally hired to do at Nike). I'd been asked to do more and more things outside of my area of expertise that I ended up with some weird hybrid title that didn't translate well outside of the berm. I eventually ended up totally rewriting the Nike part of my resume so it would actually make sense to people. I also completely changed how I talked about my Nike experience during interviews. Nobody wants to hear "Nike this" and "Nike that", but you get so s—ed in after working there for a few years that it's hard to break that habit.
I ended up at a smaller company where I am allowed to focus 100% on what I'm good at, and there isn't that looming dread of reorgs, performance evaluations, politics, etc. It definitely took a few months to get out of that mindset and I'm a much happier person now.
Don’t be afraid of change. As you’ll find that a new company is like a breath of non toxic air. You’ll find new value and appreciation. You’ll apply your vast experience and have a real appreciation for what you’ve learnt and how you can apply it without it being diluted beyond any original recognition.
You’ll enjoy connecting with new people and be motivated again in working towards new goals and ambitions. You’ll even find new interest in another industry as ‘shock’ shoes are not the only cool things in the word.
You’ll also have freedom and trust again in your new role. And likely not have a terrible manager who has zero people skills nor who got the role from another poor leader (who happen to be friends).
Leaving is great. And you’ll realize you should have done it years ago instead of rotting away for a great brand that you love but doesn’t love you back.
There are loads of great companies out there. Go out and flourish....you deserve it! Or just wait another 2 years for the next repackaged CDO, CDA, B,C,D,E .....re-org.