With this next round of layoffs, I'm wondering if Nike is going to really slim down their IT again. I see them outsourcing work with contracts to companies like GSpann becoming the norm. Like what they are doing with SEC/SAP. Will more layoffs be likely? Will this become a norm?
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@a4 the former makes sense in practicality but seems like it's the latter that actually happened in reality
@aw Yes, the intelligence was indeed artificial.
Apprently he was in top 25
https://www.pixiebrix.com/reports/top-ai-officers-of-2025
@ab AJ was forced out because he was incompetent and lacked self awareness. But MD and JL both cowered to DC. What does he have on them? They even let him veto leadership hires.
AJ was forced out because MD didn’t want to pi-s off DC (IDSA). Some of the decisions for EDAI are also for same reason.
Hey @a9 — appreciate the trust in Hoka! But any chance we can show some love to $NKE too? Would love to see it climb so I can finally see positive cash flow69 in those RSUs/ESPP 😅📈
I remember 6 years ago, I got a tech related offer from Nike for $300k in Portland, back then my Silicone valley offer wasn't much higher than this, considering the living cost difference, it was very generous. Later they hire more and more Kohl's clueless engineers and "leaders" with California pay grade. Nike need to get rid those people and use the money on product and innovation.
I’ve been here more than 10 years now. You’ll get used to hearing the phrase “new flying formation” pretty regularly.
What that looks like changes from year to year based on the new shiny thing some C-suite type decides to chase.
So yeah… expect layoffs every 6-12 months for the foreseeable future.
@a5+1jxdzv0xq Setting aside leadership falling for digital snake oil…
Nike tries shifting to an offshored model every decade or so and then a few incredibly expensive fires later (3-6 years) they re-ramp hiring in North America.
My bet is they’ll begin planning the next round of on-shore hiring within a year of the AI bubble popping with us peasants seeing headcount changes 2 years after. Soooo hope you’re ready for 5 more years of suits feeling resentful of your existence.
@a2 actually, I'm pretty sure it will get a lot smaller.
It seems like the big start of these layoffs, while quiet, was when AJ (Chief Data & AI Officer) left after only being in the position for a year. We have these distinguished engineers who peddle technology solutions to the C-levels they support, things like AtScale, Snowflake to Databricks, Collibra, etc, and get the company to spend a bunch of money on cr-p to enhance themselves. For the record, AB, a distinguished engineer that reported to AJ, now works at Databricks.
The AI/ML organization is most likely going to be dismantled (lots of contracts were terminated a few weeks ago in this org) and now their VP is gone. I think JD, or someone else, was lured into investing bigly into this area and now we're pulling out. Airmagination, Swooshchat, etc, none of these things are adding value to us as a sportswear company, they're just a waste of money. My job has been marginally improved through access to copilot, but it's just a novelty imo. End up having to rewrite most of the code anyway, and what's the point if the prompt has to be so specific to get the right output? May as well just spend the time writing the code myself.
All that being said, I haven't been at Nike long enough to know if stuff like this has happened in the past and it's just more of the same, but it doesn't seem like EH is a huge lover of tech, and so divesting from these shiny areas without a lot of tangible value seems like an obvious move.
Think of it this way. If you wanted to switch to an outsourced model in tech but had a lot of in-house resources and expertise, how would you do it? Would you process the layoffs in chunks to ensure you could gradually replace infrastructure away from employees to ensure continuation of function, or would you cut everything all at once and hope for the best?
All retail is backed by more tech than it used to be, so no way can we go back to the 2000s model of retail and survive. But there is room to cut stupid gimmicks while still keeping our digital storefronts in top condition and getting user and market data closer to the people who actually need it and not AI slop.
This already happened. Just figuring it out ?
yes, we are not a tech company.