Curious how many people that are talking on this site are in design? All this talk about being over staffed, when design still has unfilled roles from CDA. My team was cut in half and we all had to distribute the workload amongst ourselves. Aside from upper level, I don’t see how we can cut many more designers without product being affected. Not complaining just curious.
6 replies (most recent on top)
Is putting a Jordan logo on an AF1 considered design?
@ceh+1qn7EkBD If all the jobs are replaced by AI who will buy the shoes?
Have you noticed how drab and uninspired the offerings on .com and in stores are? We’re already seeing the effects of so many designers let go in CDA and the inability of then impact to attract or retain good designers. The post-CDA designs are now in shelves and it’s a big part of why the company is doing so poorly. Frankly, they su-k. Quality is down across every metric and for some reason the ELT and our army of VPs in their panic seem to think the answer is in firing more people, forcing in-office (which is of course a layoff in itself), and beating the culture into the ground with an iron fist.
I honestly think we’re watching the end of Nike as a relevant company, unless leadership is seriously shaken up and replaced.
The not so secret dirty secret is that our leaders anticipate being able to lay off thousands of Nike employees over time and replace us with AI tools and services. Those tools are not quite ready today, but the executives can't wait to make the shareholders happy NOW so they're willing to inflcit lots of extra stress and pain on the employees left burdened with all the extra workload after savage resource cutbacks until those AI tools are ready. The prior and pending layoffs and the subsequent under resourcing are part of the plan and not a mistake.
If you listened to the investor call our executives explicitly said they were not going to use any of the $2 billion in projected savings to invest in people moving forward after the layoffs. This is an intentional shrinking of Nike to make the company headcount MUCH smaller over time. This is and will impact all roles, including many high paying design, technology and business roles across the board.
I'm not trying to scare people or say all is doom amd gloom but if you pay attention to business analysis over the last three years this is a true tectonic shift in the US labor force that so many of us will be unprepared to deal with. I originally thought these kinds of corporate moves were at least a decade away but I underestimated how much disdain CEOs have for their workforce and the level of eagerness they have towards placating shareholder and investor greed. AI tools have really amplified the executive corporate class' mindset that employees are no longer an asset and instead they are a costly burden to be cut as soon as AI can make it happen. Profits for the few, jobs for none. Good luck to all of us who need to survive on a paycheck.
Half are in GT and half were laid off from GT in 2020.
We are so from Design Charice.