Unpopular opinion: many of the people who were let go weren’t adding enough value to justify their roles. If we’re being honest, there’s probably more inefficiency still left in the system.
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@br you nailed it 100%. People always confuse being busy with adding value. I'm absolutely positive everyone let go was busy, their work just meant very little nothing to the bigger picture, and yes most of it you have leadership to blame.
The emotional responses here prove exactly why these cuts are necessary. Everyone is conflating 'effort' with 'economic value.'
You can spend 60 hours a week 'doing X' to the best of your ability, but if 'X' doesn't move the needle for Nike’s bottom line, that role is an anchor, not an asset. Calling it 'harmful' to point out inefficiency isn't a strategy……it’s sentimentality.
To the people saying 'it’s leadership’s fault': You’re right. It is leadership’s fault for letting the headcount swell with redundant roles and 'activity-driven' work in the first place. But you don't fix a bloated organization by keeping the bloat just because the bloat is 'following orders.'
A reset means removing the work that doesn't matter so the work that does matter can actually breathe.
Nike is a for-profit enterprise, not a tenure-based social club. If you’re shocked that a business is prioritizing ROI over 'good vibes' and 'effort,' you’re in the wrong industry or country.
It’s ironic that many people in this thread are saying that there were unclear job responsibilities, redundancy and/or the wrong people in the wrong roles.
Isn’t that what the last re-org should have addressed? Are you saying that we shouldn’t have outside consultants making the org. decisions in spreadsheets based primarily on cost reductions?
STOP. This is not true and is harmful. This was about saving money. Period.
So wait. You have enough in-depth knowledge of "many of the people who were let go" to confidently attest that, across the enterprise, they "weren’t adding enough value to justify their roles"?
Either
(a) you are fulla sh-t
(b) you spent too much time monitoring others and not enough on adding value and justifying your own role
Which is it?
Partial true here. Were roles eliminated that were likely redundant and/or low value? Absolutely. Assuming that many/most as a subjective statement fall into that category is however is ignorance. The issue that is going to come out is new leadership in GT won't realize the problems they created by cutting or changing roles in the wrong areas. They did not spend the time really understanding what people did. At least last summer you could see where they were going with changes and it felt more thought out. Now, we are left picking up the pieces and looking for our own way out before the ship really sinks. Teams that helped manage the data and operations to not make d-mb decisions and the only ones who had knowledge around it are gone. People who had the critical knowledge on valuable capabilities they didn't think about doing KT on are gone. Others who saved them tens of millions now look to be gone.
Leaders will look back and blame those they eliminated when things go sideways. Then they will leave themselves and let someone else come into the problem they created. Just like RL and LJ with the other Kohl's people did before them. As much as MD wasn't a technology person, at least she was an authoritative leader who demanded to know the impacts of decisions operationally based on what I saw of her. That's rough when she was better than what we have now.
I agree that "overlap, duplicated work, and unclear business outcomes" should be reduced. My personal issue is why did we allow those to happen in the first place? The biggest issue I see is VPs bring in Sr. Dir they know externally who hire more people externally. If we had focused on developing internal talent and shifting people around to high priority work, Tech headcount never would've grown so big that so much overlap happen and we needed to cut so many people.
@a8 nailed the causes…. guess what employees do? they follow the path and goals set by their “leaders”. if that path and goal set is wrong… that’s the employees fault? ummm… should they not follow? lol.. that should really help their job security.
and no you tool @op it’s not that but good job on the trolling… eyeroll. are you the CS in APLA troll?
Crazy how pointing out inefficiency suddenly makes you the villain. Not every role adds value some just add layers.
If your only argument is “well I/they worked hard,” congrats, so do a lot of people in redundant positions.
Effort ≠ impact.
Businesses don’t run on feelings. And yes, Nike is a for-profit company.
And the ones acting shocked that layoffs target only your preferred perception of leadership roles… what did you think restructuring meant? A raffle at the top?
If multiple teams had overlap, duplicated work, and unclear business outcomes, cuts were inevitable. Pretending otherwise doesn’t make it false.
You don’t have to like it, but calling it out isn’t wrong, it’s just uncomfortable.
Some people let go weren't adding value, but not most. The majority were let go simply because ITC employees are cheaper. Let's be real, if ITC employees applied to positions in the US and there were no visa restrictions so the playing field is even, would they beat out the people that were let go? Think about it.
Do you even know anyone who was let go? You have no idea what you’re talking about.
Yes there was a lot of inefficiencies and people were working on things that didn't add value, but you know what you are missing? It wasn't because those people were bad at their job, at least not most of them. It was because leadership lacked the insight, direction, and ability to use them effectively. The people doing the work were asked to do X and they did X to the best of their ability. You can't blame them if X wasn't the right thing to do, you blame the people that told them to do X.
This is almost completely the fault of favoritism at work in the hiring and promotion process, coupled with some very poor choices at key leadership levels like the CTO (now COO) and CEO. EH had one trick in his bag and it didn't work, now he's stuck floundering. VA has no clue how a technology organization works and has already butchered operations (Just look at how many people outside tech are under him). I have no idea what RA is adding if anything. As far as I can tell he's just a puppet to VA. The whole thing reeks.
Just another personal assessment of 1400 people from someone who also does not understand what makes the world turn and the nearsighted behaviors of execs. Nothing to see here.
Somehow @a3 is even worse because the two chicken nuggets in this guys skull haven't put "Senior leaders add judgment, context, and the ability to steer when things get messy" together with NKE falling 75% under near continuous leaders.
The most effective cut is always at the top when the strategy and alignment are both proven over and over to be garbage. No explanation should be required.
The reorganization exposed misalignment between hiring decisions and actual role requirements. In several cases, positions were filled based on preference rather than capability, and the output did not meet expected standards. Much of the work appeared activity-driven rather than delivering meaningful results. This reset is an opportunity to correct those gaps by focusing on role-appropriate hiring, stronger engineering fundamentals, and accountable delivery.
Even if I agreed with you, which I don't, a non-trivial portion of those let go were forced into new roles with new scope and new skills assumed during the last reorg. Further, there's absolutely more "inefficiency" left in the system, but your comment assumes that "efficiency" has some 1:1 relationship to business outcome. I'd argue the history of our company shows otherwise. Some of our best ideas—or at least some of mine—have come while doing things that would probably appear "inefficient" to you: walking through a forest preserve, going for a run, going for a walk after considering a difficult problem.
Unpopular opinion: your analysis is incomplete and sells your colleagues short—inefficient.
I’m with OP. Calling it a win when your SLT/VP/SD leave is backwards.
Junior talent adds energy. Senior leaders add judgment, context, and the ability to steer when things get messy. You need both. Look around, there aren’t a lot of cut at the top.
If leadership is walking out, that’s not strength it’s a signal.
Hard disagree. If that's the case then a bunch of directors, SDs and VPs should be let go. P