All in-house solutions, especially those in FPE, are no longer viable. Adoption solutions from the market is faster and allows the use of professional solutions, so adoption doesn't require as many engineers as building. Hence the reorg and layoffs.
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@jh This means that all VPs and Distinguished PEs should be fired and replaced with true professionals. In the next stages of the 'house cleaning' process, this should also include review all Senior Directors, Directors, and Principal Engineers.
It wont matter. They will and have already failed at both. The leadership is bad, and fails at strategy.
@et game
@et you know when you go to a movie and there's this never ending series of commercials and coming attractions....so many that you say to yourself, I'm never going to a movie theater again....but...eventually the movie starts..
that is what this feels like....just wait for the never ending series of distractions...get your popcorn and wait for the show
grand finale has been postponed!
I wonder which VPs are being fired in GT
who are the leaders again, and what do they do?
"what would you say, you DO here?"
There's certainly no silver bullet. How many times have we implemented a new vendor solution to turn around and have to build it ourselves or switch integrations when business decides the contract costs too much?
It's hard for Tech to succeed because you need all these things.
- The engineering leader making the buy vs. build decision needs to have the right technical expertise to accurately gauge the cost of buy vs. build
- The engineering leader needs to be unselfish enough to not prioritize empire building and actually use 3rd party solution when it's beneficial for Nike.
- The leader's boss needs to understand not having large teams and building a ton of flashy(i.e. AI) stuff doesn't equate to a leader being ineffective.
Sadly, most engineering leaders(not just at Nike) want large teams to build new tech which is how they advance in their career. The ones that care about Nike's business and don't prioritizing expanding teams and building stuff don't get ahead in their careers.
I was shocked to see how much we build in-house, even compared to other tech companies. It's such a waste of resources for a company that's main focus is selling shoes, not re-inventing industry standard technical products that work well for our use cases
@bp whichever vendor gives the best kickbacks
@ae What do you mean by Adobe in this context? And why did we bring in Databricks instead of Snowflake? Who is making these decisions, and based on what rationale?
@ac that's the problem. It requires a plan and an actual commitment to execution. Two things that GT leadership consistently fails to have for longer than a quarter. Or if you are AC: half a week.
@aq Datalogue didn't have anything to do with data strategy, it was just a glorified ETL tool that we bought and then never used and eventually tossed away the team we acquired (feel awful for those guys that didn't get a payout)
At least databricks is functioning, even if half the data science experts we have don't know a unity catalog from their Windows Explorer
NACO
Actual technology companies like Microsoft and AWS have no political issue implementing industry standard data platforms like Adobe and Databricks. Nike lacks the talent to even implement leading platforms, let alone reinvent the wheel to build their own wannabe knockoffs. Not only do they not have the talent, they no longer have the finances or brand prestige to attract competent talent, especially in what’s left of PDX. Besides, wasn’t the Datalogue acquisition supposed to solve all Nike’s data problems? Which highlights the outright arrogance and negligence of data engineering leadership over at least the last decade. Good luck!
GT and strategy, good joke :)
These VPs and (sr) directors are reactively, one quarter perspective.
This has always been DAI's strategy. Adobe, Snowflake, Airflow, Databricks, and now Adobe again. The old data is too expensive to let go of so we just end up migrating over and over
Exclusively relying on third party solutions is never the answer unless you have unlimited blank checks and like to deal with cr-p customer support after signing the contract. Bringing in off the shelf solutions and building in house are both valid if evaluated correctly.
We were all vendorized in 2020 and there was like 50% MORE engineers than we have now. Buying tech doesn't magically reduce workload.
Takes 5 years of iteration to get a barely usable platform from FPE. White elephants galore.
probably a good idea
makes me wonder what phk really needs for GT staff
vendors could be hungry right now and offering good deals
Nike isn't a technology company. Building solutions doesn't guarantee they're good, Industry standards, and sometimes they're ad hoc solutions that have been used for years. Some engineers at Nike aren't keeping up with technology and are pushing outdated solutions.
Build vs Buy, a argument up there with Tabs vs Spaces or Jiff vs Giff
They flip back and forth between in house and adopted solutions. Which makes more sense is a case by case thing that probably shouldn't be imposed from above.
Someone should tell that to FPE