I have been hearing from people that they all are extremely happy. feeling relieved or cleansed after Nike. I can imagine the emotional part, also people keep talking about the finances improving a lot. Knowing that there is a lot of ex-nike people hanging out here, and those interviewing outside, there must be a lot to share!
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You only live once. Don’t waste it at Nike
YES! Wish I would have left Nike sooner. Two years after leaving Nike, I had a 30% increase in pay, great stock grants, wonderful bonus and benefits. Loved my boss.
There are always going to be people who you don't respect at work, but Nike Sr. Directors took the cake. Can't think of one that I actually respected in IT. When I left it was SO different and so much better.
Life outside is fabulous.
Meetings are short and to the point.
The number of A-holes in management has dropped - a lot.
No Idi0ts are promoted or tolerated
Stuff gets done fast and under budget with no hand-wringing or over-consideration of the feelings of those higher up in management.
Folks are polite and friendly.
My story is a bit different. I had landed in a group that later promoted in a new director who had no respect for work-life balance. My job had also changed to cranking out useless PowerPoint presentations day after day. After a miserable year, I finally asked myself “why am I doing this?” and left to be a stay-at-home parent. I have not regretted it for a second. Doing the dishes in a timely manner feels more productive and fulfilling than anything I was doing in that last role.
Biggest benefit for me when I left Nike was getting my life back. While I didn’t literally work 24/7 at Nike it often felt like it. I was expected to be reachable and responsive 7 days per week including while on PTO. I lost track of how many evenings, holidays, weekends and vacations were interrupted or ruined due to work needs and pressure to get that work out the door immediately.
At my current employer there’s an unwritten but completely understood rule that sending e-mail or otherwise contacting colleagues outside of normal work hours is strongly discouraged. If you want to quickly make enemies go ahead and send someone an email at 8:00PM or during a weekend. It won’t be well received. When I learned this my first week I was like “What??? You mean people here DON’T send email 24/7? That is amazing!!!” It’s hard to even fully explain what a huge difference this one simple rule has made for my quality of life. I’m expected to be available from 8:30 to 5:30 Mon-Fri and that’s it. Full stop. No evenings, no weekends, and certainly not while on PTO. It’s a much healthier attitude about work and you can see it in how happy employees are. This is what REAL work-life balance looks like and now I could never go back to a place like Nike where you’re expected to be “on” and “connected” whenever they need you regardless of time or day. At my company we don’t have the impressive mental health assistance that Nike provides but that’s because no one here actually needs it!
I left 8 years ago and my life immediately improved in all aspects. My income went up, my work life balance was night and day better. I had managers who genuinely wanted to help me develop and get ahead. I used my "nike stories" in leadership classes. Hint: all of them are about how a bad leader behaves. Nike just looks great on the resume but the actual experience was completely toxic and can ruin your life. There were a handful of selected "Future leaders' who could get away with mu---r and a couple of creative types who were treated well. However, almost everyone else I knew was kind of miserable at the company.
I saw grown people with years of high level experience crying in their cubes from constant verbal and mental abuse from senior leaders. I saw former Wall Street management have nervous breakdowns from the 24x7/always on/dont take PTO mentality expected by management. One sociopathic manager threw a table at someone and was let go. Only to be brought back a few years later for a whole new reign of te---r where he had 200% turnover on his team but was tolerated and not disciplined for years.
similar to a few others, I decidedto leave approx 9 years ago, I left for a comparable level first job post Nike. Pay was a bit higher but the company was smaller, and my work was less organized, therefore I had to adjust from nike's process focused approach to a more end to end responsibilities. To explain, as a sales person at Nike you just sell in to your accounts, you do not care about shipments and you do not care about the finances with the account, other people follow. But other companies reward you not on sell in, but how much you invoice of what you sell in, so you need to own the process for your account fully. Today I am at the 2nd company after Nike, I have been working definitely much more than I ever did at Nike, I am appreciated for my work, I am supported and managed properly. but the swoosh somehow was always a good name on my CV. but if I had a chance to come back to Nike, I would definitely not, it was nice there and then. Actually the only positive thing working for Nike is the name you have on your CV after you leave, we all know that the experience while you are still working is not the best. my recommendation would be to leave after 5th or 6th year. then you are not too old and not too expensive, and hopefully you are sick enough of Nike's internal politics, but still have enough energy to work hard to show what you can do. I hope this helps.
Please more stories!
My new non -nike job told me that they want me to be successful. That my success was the company’s success. Was mind blown - no one ever told me such words in ten years at nike.
Still doesn’t feel real. Nike was the opposite. My own boss legitimately wanted me to fail at Nike. SHE wanted her own team to fail. Terrible “leader” but great “manager up” to her own leadership.
Left Nike, Took a pay cut but that is totally compensated by the warm company I am now at and the work satisfaction. Not having to watch your back all the time and have managers that build a career on sucking up instead of skill make it totally worth.
Imagine walking into or zooming into a meeting with your colleagues and reviewing project status and then actually choosing a direction....all within 15 minutes.
Imagine further that you are not spoken over, dismissed by team members with little to no experience in the subject matter and even less with exercising basic respect and manners towards colleagues. Those who feel that they have to say anything in a meeting just to be heard- no matter how ridiculous it is.
Then imagine that the decisions made in that meeting actually stick and aren't over ridden by some senior director with no common sense or familiarity with the prolem at hand.
Life inside the berm is dangerously cozy while life outside is fabulous and most nonNike workplaces are amazingly efficient and mostly devoid of pretentious, back stabbing egomaniacs.
@qhl: that is an important callout most people don’t consider. I stayed at Nike too long for exactly the reason you mentioned. It felt safe and comfortable. The annual 3% raises weren’t much. But it was safe and comfortable.
After seeing my career go nowhere I quit Nike in late 2020. My pay immediately jumped 15% and my stress level dropped 100%. I was happy in my new job but in late 2021 a friend told me about a new opening at her company for which I was perfectly qualified. I applied and was quickly hired, this time with a whopping 40% salary increase. Been here since December and love both the job and the benefits of seeing my salary increase by $60K in just two years. If I had stayed at Nike I’d still be comfortably numb and much worse off financially. I feel d-mb for telling myself for so many years that my loyalty to Nike was somehow important. That was just an excuse I made to myself because it felt more comfortable to stay than to take a chance on improving my situation by leaving.
The employment reality these days is that to maximize both your growth and income you either need to be one of the lucky few who get chosen for significant advancement at your current company or you need to be willing to move to a different company that will pay you at or above current market rates. Sitting around collecting below-inflation 3% annual raises won’t do anything but cause you to lose ground. Now that I finally understand this I’m fully prepared to switch jobs again in a few years for another large salary increase.
People need to get over the idea that staying with the same company year after year is a smart idea. For most people it isn’t. It’s just a great way to be taken advantage of for the perceived comfort and safety of familiarity. If anyone doesn’t believe me then next time a new person is hired on your team see if you can get that person to reveal their salary. Don’t be shocked when you learn the new person is making more money than you even though you’ve been with the company for years. It happens ALL THE TIME. It’s an ugly little secret that HR and managers don’t want people to know because they understand employees would be rightfully angry if they did know. Especially right now when employers are being forced to pay top dollar for qualified talent.
Any place has to be better than a place that once made a deal with kanye
To call out @qpu. That's pretty much any company today. Really no company expects you to hang around 5+ years, including Nike. Financially... staying at a company longer may "feel safer" but reality is your leaving cash on the table from jumping company to company. If you've stayed at any employer for a decade (2011-2021), you've missed out on a potential 30% pay bump. Regardless if you've moved up internally.
Open market will always pay more.
Left swoosh end of 2012. First job after Nike I had 30% bump, changed once again after a year for a similar salary and stayed there for 4 years an got inflation corrections in single digit %'s then I changed 5 years ago for another 50% increase and get 4-5% increase each year since then. after 10 years my current gross is approx 2.5- 3 times the salary the last salary I had at Nike with higher % of bonus and annually approx 40-50k worth of shares that are vested after 4 years. Obviously my career also progressed, I was senior U band level when I left now I am GM level.