It’s us

TLDR: It’s not one problem. It’s a broken culture, recycled leadership, slow everything, and no real accountability. Nothing changes until the people at the top do.

It’s the culture. It’s the nepotism. It’s the same insular leadership group playing musical chairs and calling it progress. Your reward for poor performance is getting moved to run another department.

It’s the fact that half the people on campus on any given day are contractors. It’s hard to build anything real when so much of the workforce is temporary and disconnected.

It’s us still working like it’s 2006 while most of corporate America is in 2026. Outdated systems, outdated processes, and no urgency to fix them. Ten year “transformations” that take one year at any competent company.

It’s the consultants who latch on and never leave. Endless decks, endless frameworks, no real accountability. Just more layers between the problem and anyone willing to actually solve it.

It’s a tech org that still acts surprised that global talent exists. It’s marketing that talks about the consumer like it only fits into narrow boxes instead of understanding how broad the audience actually is.

Too many people with “creative” in their title, not enough actual creative thinking. Safe ideas, recycled ideas, nothing that really pushes.

And all these posts about going back to some golden age miss the point. Those same problems existed back then. People just didn’t care as much because the company was winning and everyone had a job. The s-xism, the favoritism, all of it was there. It just got ignored. Then the company tried to correct course with DEI but a lot of that turned into people taking care of their own under a different label. Still no one said anything. Not really. Not until layoffs started hitting.

There is no course correcting this with the same people making the same decisions. It needs new leadership and a genuinely fresh perspective. That’s not impossible. Look at Abercrombie, Gap, Levi’s. Even Adidas managed to steady itself after the Kanye mess in a couple of years.

Culture starts at the top. Always has.

#Accountability #Culture #Leadership #Nepotism

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@hb you can ask AI to explain if you cannot understand the message

@h4 Sure, if there was actual content, this is just a single sentence prompt generating generic arguments

@ew, Keeping a neutral tone—AI-sloppy rewording—helps protect the poster from potential manager retaliation. If you choose to post more personally—using your own words —just be aware that it may carry some risk; some managers don’t take criticism well at all.

@ek tell your ai prompt to remove the hyphens. You can tell it to remove it from here on out and it will remember it, unless you’re using ChatGPT. Then, good luck.

@ek leave the a i slop to other social media. Just speak like a normal human

Call this post the Jerry Maguire mission statement: Culture starts at the top, but it rots from the ground up when people are driven by desperation. Between the Fed’s high rates, the AI-only investment craze, and a middle class squeezed dry by layoffs, Nike is in a pressure cooker. Ever since the VP of Tech signaled layoffs, our 'collaborative culture' has devolved into a predatory free-for-all amid high anxiety. It’s become a plague of backstabbing, with managers trying to force people out with 'voluntary' resignations to dodge severance, unemployment, blame, and possible legal claims. Let’s be real—everyone becomes a self-preserving shark when they’re terrified for their livelihood and next paycheck. If shoes were flying off shelves and bonuses were fat, we’d all be smiling and ignoring the toxicity and cheering on sports. But when the money stops, and layoffs loom, the 'trickle-down' effect isn't prosperity—it's the survival of the most ruthless.

@bv bro the endless migrations are so stupid. They easily expose the ignorance in leadership, both in management & technical leadership. The "distinguished" engineers have to go, all the good ones exited the building already

It is you. If your entire “job” is gossiping and influencing on surviving another lay off you are the problem. Probably hard to find another gig that will pay you to “work” two days a week, go to offsites, and dress like a teenager. Oh wait, they don’t dress like that anymore .. the product is irrelevant.

Amen!

This is so spot on.

Look at the leadership team. At least three are straight up narcissists and those are the ones I know.

When tech feels disposable you get engineers focused on building their resume rather than systems that will last for decades (which IS possible; our banks still run on cobol written by my grandmother). By design Nike has a revolving door of d-mb ideas building into a dung heap.

Lets throw blockchain at it! (Which ironically could have helped prevent our resale & hype market crash, by fixing our product legitimacy crisis). Lets throw AI at it! Lets throw 'the cloud' at it!

Lets throw [whatever will land me a job when I'm laid off in 6 months] at it! It's the best solution 😉😉. Lets rebuild XYZ, I will need something {new} to talk about in interviews 😉😉.

Can't fix Nike without fixing how leadership, finance, & HR anti-invest in personnel & career paths.

Leadership was much better in 2006. It isn’t even comparable.

I mean it feels like we’re working in 2026 with layoffs every quarter. Looks like Nike adapted to that very well. Other stuff, not so much.

Thread regarding Nike Inc. layoffs

It’s us

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