Thread regarding Nike Inc. layoffs

@fw Alex, I'll take sh-t you just made up on the spot for $1000

@b2 But that’s not what happened. They replaced a bunch of business people who built the company to record levels with people who have no idea what they are doing in the name of “diversity”. THAT is what happened.

Way to reframe obvious ageism as “good strategy”….

Leaders who make poor promotion decisions should also be held accountable.

@dc I’m glad someone said it!

@ay I would tend to agree. Whether they were good or bad back then, they part of the problem now.

@b1 this is the type of view of someone who's never seen anything outside of Nike. In aggregate things could change. Right now the dummies are holding to the old ways and not making things better.

@b2 false. Long tenure is a bad sign. Look at the long tenured leaders at Nike. They all have a certain commonality. That commonality isn't even the point, Microsoft has the same issue, but they're much, much better than Nike even if their meetings in the US are sometimes conducted in a foreign language. No our problem is that we got the dummies.of that community.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

@OP also layoff any diverse leader that was fast tracked two or more levels between 2015 and 2025. That period was peak chaos in how promotions were handled.

@b2 Yeah because diversity has made Nike so much smarter and stronger…

Perfect post!!

@OP
Modern problems need modern thinking. It’s not about tenure; it’s about whether leaders have actually kept up with how the world has changed.

A 2010 mindset won’t solve 2026 problems. Consumer behavior, technology, and expectations are completely different now. Are we seeing real breakthroughs, or just the same playbooks being reused?

Today’s consumers, especially Gen Z and Gen Alpha, expect products from people who understand them. That includes diversity in perspective, including having women design for women.

The same goes for tech. If leadership hasn’t kept up with modern stacks and ways of working, it’s hard to drive real innovation.

This isn’t about age or when someone joined. It’s about relevance. If you’re not evolving, you’re slowing things down.

And if long-tenured leadership was the answer, we would already be seeing it clearly in the last couple of years with the CEO change.

@az What pray tell is a director in tech going to have any affect on providing any input or even effect that would help Nike out of a downturn? He-l, even outside of tech? A director at Nike has the power of a manager at other companies, and corresponding lack of ability to provide strategic insight much less any changes.

@ay

The idea is that before 2010 Nike experienced some downturns so people may have picked up managing through adversity during that era. I think particularly in tech, which is a relatively newer organization compared to the business units, there are a lot of people hired after 2010 that rose rapidly through the ranks and are without the proper skills to manage us out of a downturn.

What value do directors that were hired before 2010 provide that ones after do not? That makes no sense other than someone trying to save their career that is stuck. Anyone that's a director that was hired 17 years ago that is still just a director is not the kind of person you want to maintain. That likely means they have been stagnate in their role for over a decade.

@at

OP here. Fair enough.

In the interest of making this more inclusive, let’s get rid of the ‘2010 or later’ requirement and reframe “only worked at Nike” to “the vast majority of their career has been as a Nike employee”.

Who said we didn’t learn from those fair play trainings? :)

1 OR 2 would probably eliminate 2/3 of the people. 1 AND 2 would cover too few people as most people have external experiences.