Thread regarding Nike Inc. layoffs

Bottom line is leadership is ok making you homeless to save a few bucks. Don’t be mad at the Indian for taking the opportunity, just drag a-s as hard as you can while finding another job.

This thread…yikes. Eating itself from the inside.

@e3
you mean simplified english?

Good thing we got rid of those culturally distant locations in Europe and embraced our Indian brothers instead

We are an AMERICAN company. We need to hire those who speak AMERICAN. No exceptions

@bs I’m not going to use simplified vocabulary because an Indian colleague doesn’t know English. That’s a requirement for the job

Stop asking us to take extra effort when we do simple things like speak.

This is the problem with hiring in ITC, and even H1Bs. There are colleagues even at PHK who are from India or China, and I can’t understand half of what they’re saying. It’s an insane hiring practice and massive productivity bottleneck

@av I worked directly with ITC for years. I have plenty of skin in the game. When I stepped into a global role, I understood that a 24-hour business means traditional 9-to-5 boundaries do not exist. If you want a standard schedule with no personal sacrifice, you are in the wrong role.

The reason you find ITC difficult or "unaccommodating" is a direct reflection of your own approach. Historically these teams were treated like ticket-takers and computers, not human beings. If you treat people like computers, you get robotic compliance. They will refuse your off-hours calls because you have built zero trust.

Building a functional global team takes time, patience, and actual cultural awareness. My local teams chose to treat ITC as human beings and true peers. It took time to shift that dynamic, but we did it by changing how we worked and conforming to the realities of a global matrix. We eventually had a high-performing partnership built on mutual trust.

If you are struggling to execute a "simple task" with them, stop blaming their time zone. Look at your own leadership. Trust is earned, not demanded from a seat at WHQ.

@bn Words from this Indian: using long, complex English sentences takes extra effort and energy to speak, so from my experience, keep it short and stick to a few basic questions like: How does it work? Where do I request access? Can you give me the intake form? I’m having an issue with the application. Just one or two questions like these will be enough to get you ghosted.

Last time I talked to an ITC d-mbo, they used AI to respond. Didn’t even bother to remove the remove the quotes when he pasted it into chat. The end of the message had a “would you like me to refine this message further?” You can’t make this sh-t up.

@bh This is the best you can do. Save yourself and let the ship sink. Your resume, quiet quitting, and dragging your feet on helping ITC is your life vest to get off the ship.

I wouldn't even bother asking them simple questions. Just cut back on your communication with them to a bare minimum, and if you do have to communicate with them, bury them in complex English that only a native speaker could understand. That works fairly well.

I've seen this play out at multiple organizations. This is the road to nowhere.

Such a shame that an American company is slowly being taken over by foreigners. This is what our president has been warning against and is why we need stronger borders to keep America First.

Let them do whatever the fu-k they want. We all know the quality of work being delivered and where this is headed. At this point, I’ve stopped caring nearly as much. I’m putting that energy into fixing my resume, preparing for interviews, and aggressively applying outside.

Ask them a simple question and you’ll get an acknowledgment 12 hours later, an actual response another 24 hours after that, and if something is broken, apparently it takes another 2–3 months to get it fixed. That alone tells you everything you need to know about how well this model is working.

I’d recommend everyone else start doing the same. If leadership genuinely believes ITC can replace experienced people who understand the systems, business context, dependencies, and years of accumulated knowledge, let them find out the hard way. Eventually, the consequences of these decisions will speak for themselves.

Get the he-l out while you can and let the leadership team enjoy the organization they’re creating with ITC. Maybe then these fu--ing mo--ns will finally understand the difference between cutting costs and destroying capability.

You understand next Spring Nike will lay off another thousand engineers followed by aggresive hiring at ITC, right?

Being flexible to accommodate ITC is a little rich given that a) we’re being told that in order to work effectively, we need to be in office, and b) our jobs are being moved there.

Remote collaboration isn’t effective… unless It’s with people 12 time zones away.

Everyone works for ITC now, and ITC works for themselves. Is a reason why nothing is getting done and Nike continues to look bad to Customers across multiple channels. Can no longer fix anything or make anything better because of all the needless overhead and resistance to doing anything at all to fix anything, and isn’t anybody strong enough in the business teams to take ownership of the dysfunction and call out the procrastinators who know just throw up enough delays and CYA, and the same dysfunction will live on, requiring more bodies in seats, and getting more cash from Nike. When the cash runs out, the leeches move on to the next victim.

I don't think global teams should only work in PHK hours, but the lack of clear expectations from leadership is why this friction exists. When most of us took jobs at PHK, we expected certain work hours(i.e. 8am-5pm Pacific Time). When GT leaders decided to hire in ITC, they took away some work life balance that people at PHK expected when they first joined Nike. This sacrifice has never been fully acknowledged by leadership, but simply expected for the sake of "one team." I'm certain there are people that took less pay at Nike than big tech in exchange for work life balance. Now without such work life balance, people might as well go to wherever offer the best compensation. In the short term, people won't all find jobs right away, but within a year, we'll lose a number of top talent.

It’s awful how Indians in the comments are saying things like “PHK will work ITC hours once we get an Indian CEO”

Proves your point, OP. This is an American company and we work US hours primarily. Leaders should be considering the friction of work hours when they hire in ITC. It’s one of the many negative aspects of hiring in a different time zone

@af you sound like exactly the kind of manager or executive that likes to preach but has no personal sacrifice or skin in the game. You will not give up dinner with family or little league practice while exhorting everyone else and their families to make sacrifices. All talk and no walk.
Nice one, mo--n. We know who you are!

@af, it’s not about being in a “WHQ-centric bubble.”

I’ve personally dealt with this when working with ITC teams. In my experience, they’re often not accommodating and can be extremely difficult to work with. I’ve had people outright refuse to connect if it’s outside their IST working hours, even when that means expecting us to connect late at night or early in the morning.

It sounds like you may not have had the same experience. Work with some of these teams on even a simple task and see if your opinion stays the same.

Most of us here are pretty accommodating when working across time zones.

@am we need more development teams in India actually. This will come true once VA becomes our first INDIAN CEO

We are not the only company that has development teams in India. We manage to be a whiny bunch who can’t figure out how to work across time zones. Same issue with APLA and EMEA. Can’t be in a global company and not have teammates in other locations. This thread is a perfect example of why we can’t win now!

Once VA becomes our first INDIAN CEO, PHK will start working ITC hours

HR slop has entered the room.

The audacity that one would think either works for the other. You’re all Nike employees and you are teammates. Teammates support each other and make concessions for each other.

Expecting an entire global region to permanently disrupt their schedule to accommodate your local convenience is not just entitlement, it showcases your lack of operational maturity. And frankly your ability to be human. If you lack the capacity to build viable, equitable solutions across divergent time zones, you simply do not belong at a global enterprise.

The Maxims are operational standards, not optional slogans. Demanding that the rest of the world rotate around a WHQ-centric bubble is a fundamental failure to Win as a Team and Do the Right Thing.

If you want to argue on talent and abilities to get the job done, that’s another conversation, but this type of insular, monocultural mindset belongs in a local small business, not on a global playing field. Get over yourself, step outside your bubble, and expand your perspective.

@a7 outsourcing is when they support us in PHK hours. Not when they ask us to work for them in ITC hours

Fu-k ITC

Seems like the direction we’re moving towards is outsourcing to ITC. We all may as well learn Hindi at this point.