What were the main mistakes they made? I’m curious to hear others’ experiences. Not “everything” is an answer because it’s too obvious. At least last year, they provided reasoning for the new formations and changes. It felt more coordinated and thoughtful. This year, no one still has any idea what’s happening.
It is poor leadership from people who lack real leadership experience.
@m1 It isn’t about cutting gt down to size, it’s about cutting it down to function.
But that will never happen because GT leadership don’t want to make decisions on what to build, so every middle manager decrees needless things to empire build.
Then we hire entire teams in India to build those things nobody needs, and do hiring freezes in the US.
So instead we get random layoffs and outsourcing, which causes more disfunction.
the issue is nike never invested in anything to protect future growth and scaled like building a house of cards.
now it is all crushing down
We should just cut GT to size and put the money where business will grow. We need to spend money on marketing, sales incentives and more instead for fu*king around with tech spend which historically has failed to deliver anything on time at Nike.
New engineer on the team. The software engineering quality is amateur at best here. Makes me regret my decision to join here. Half my colleagues haven’t checked in code in the entire time I have joined the company. And my manager has no clue because he does not look at any code I write.
My team was working on some super critical projects- literally predicted to save millions per year and we were months from finishing about 6 months earlier than planned. We are now 2 years away because the everyone involved in research, architecture, planning, etc. were laid off and replaced with people with no experience in the space. We’ve also have multiple S1s and depending on who’s on PTO, there’s a chance there’s zero tribal knowledge access. Total fu--ing sh-t show.
I’m a data engineer now working on application security. No idea what I’m fu--ing doing and just blindly using cursor to do everything for me.
@jj I’m doing a bunch of UX work despite having no UX experience. I was told to “just use cursor”.
This is what passes for strategy these days.
GT re-orged, and Atlas shrugged.
@cz it's crazy. they are expecting data engineers to become fullstack app engineers with no real training and using AI to spackle in the gaps
@e2 I miss Joe too.
They are getting the attrition that they asked for. A lot of people have found better jobs and left after the last reorg leaving the sh-tshow that these “leaders” have caused. It’s all downhill from here
Tech is a total sh*tshow right now. It will soon become an Indian company. I have been in Tech for more than a decade and this is the worst I have seen it. It feels quite different this time; like something is permanently broken. I was on a conference call this morning and EVERY SINGLE PERSON WAS FROM ONE COUNTRY, except lil' ol me.
1) Make VPs accountable.
2) SDs should expose and take ownership for real metrics driving the business.
3) If more than half of GT is moving to ITV to save cost ( with Indian IMR depreciating) then get some spine and be honest about it.
@ds they combined "nope" it won't work with "duplicate" because they wanted to build the same thing more expensive with zero expertise and thought they would do it better and cheaper than a company who their core business is to run this for thousands of customers. People actually believed them. Nope and duplicate = NOOP for "nope we built a dupe again" Did it work? Nope. Are the fools still employed? Yep.
I'm also not surprised to read they wanted to try to do a shorter term to keep building and got shut down. Likely to setup blame to someone else or deflect attention. That is the GT way. Also the GT way is to depart people who push back so GT leaders getting rid of anyone pushing back on them is par for the course so that checks out too. Heaven forbid people want to do right by the company vs peoples individual interests.
@d4 it even had a sh---y name... NOOP. Can't make this sh-t up! I thought Nike was a marketing company... Can't we do better?!
@aj the observability tool building project was just one of many initiatives that KK and JC spearheaded. These pet projects allowed them to build tech for themselves and maintain their relevance. However, I learned from a friend in finance about the TCO of building versus buying it over lunch one day. It’s astonishing that a non-tech company would let engineers try to spend money exceeding the purchase price for the same thing. Heard the vendor team refused to renew the contract for less than two years, despite Techmod’s attempts, citing it as a foolish idea that would result in missing out on massive savings. Imagine the number of layoffs that would have happened if we had wasted millions more here.
It made sense after the re-org when I heard AB had dismantled the team that provided pushback. AB has continued to make poor tool, capability, and vendor decisions without any real oversight or scrutiny. If I sit in another engineering meeting where I hear we have to pivot because AB does not know what he wants, is doing, or changing his mind again, I will be incensed. If he reads this message, it should be clear that NOBODY wants him.
We are on the Titanic, and I am anticipating the inevitable iceberg collision. I wish I had been on the April list. I am reaching my breaking point. Nike used to be amazing. Now we are likely the most miserable employee base of any Fortune company.
@ca +1 on this. I'd like to know whoever that bozo is too. They were placing people in wrong teams. We got data engineers being placed in app development teams.
Getting rid of entire teams working on critical products. The teams that remains to pick up the scraps are left with no KT at all. Whoever is the bozo that makes these decisions needs to be laid off themselves.
If no direct peer in the business, that is, a team directly serving the business and business objectives - then should be nobody in that team/area higher than manager level. We’re here to serve athletes and customers.
Next - accountability. If goods are not being sold, orders taken, cartons packed, cartons shipped, or shipping/billing data getting to Customers so we get paid (& profits maximized - no Claimd), then heads need to roll. No more of this BS taking years to fix simple brokens and badly designed processes. You don’t fix it, your team gets their pay docked.
Here's one, how about not having a single fu---n iota of a plan for how ANYTHING was supposed to work afterward in spite of being MONTHS in the making?
Accountability is shoveled downhill onto ICs while credit is pulled upward.
If you need an unbiased indictment of our leaders this is all that matters.
Oh have I got a list for you!
I have voiced these suggestions on this forum before only to have them deleted.
AB being asked to lead a large org. He might be worse than any VP in recent years. Honestly, look at the VPs we have, it’s embarrassing.
RA, DR, AB, JH, AC, the list goes on. A world class group of incompetence.