I feel like I work with incompetent people. Some I seriously question how they keep their jobs. Am I alone here? Am I just unlucky? I get technical gaps but this is basic common sense and elementary math.
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I don’t know who the OP is, what they do, and don’t care to defend them. I will share my experience.
I came to Nike from an amazing team at a MAANG company. IC, low/mid level. In that team, I had deep admiration for everyone. I could not tell you who the best or worst performer was. Everyone was incredible.
At Nike, where I moved for family reasons, things were VERY different. Some coworkers were indeed great. Most of them, absolutely not. Not good at negotiations, trade offs, giving or receiving criticism, no innovative ideas. Most were good people, but not great performance-wise. Eventually I left for another MAANG company.
In my current team, once again, everyone is quite admirable. I am not referring to qualifications. I am talking about skills, intellect, and collaboration. I also have seen incompetent people at MAANG, just luckily not on my team. So I am not saying that MAANG = smarter. I’m sharing my specific experience. I know there are many people much better than me and I want to work with them. I have no superiority complex that would make working with less accomplished folks satisfactory in any way. It is actually inefficient.
I am not saying any of that to drag down Nike, and I appreciated my time there. I had some great coworkers. But the level is not as good as you might think it is, and it makes sense: limited pool when you force a location that’s not as convenient, pool specific to academic institutions in OR, salaries in Tech not nearly as good as other companies. Which is why I believe it is possible for someone to be the smartest person in the room and know it. And they know it’s a bad thing to feel, because it means you cannot evolve through learning from your peers. Disclaimer, I do also believe someone might think they are the smartest one while being an ignorant fool. But if people are literally told they are the smartest in the room… It probably means everyone else is learning from them and they cannot learn much from others.
@OP In my experience, the person who believes they are the smartest in the room rarely is. They tend to be egotistical control-freaks who refuse to listen to the ideas of others because “they” already have the only and best answer. Everything has to be their way. That’s EGO, not intelligence. Those people are not team players and are extremely difficult to be around.
You're not (and if you were that smart you would not be working @ Nike)
@e9 you are putting words in my mouth… You know what they say about people who assume
Here’s the thing….. if you really are the smartest person in the room, you don’t need to spend your days trying to prove that to all around you. If you got a bad review for being “the smartest person in the room” you really were getting a bad review for being unlikable.
@cq well… I did. The rest of my review was awesome and that was the only negative thing so… you figure it out :)
@cf nobody gets a bad review for being the smartest person in the room. If you do, you're not the smartest person in the room. Let's see if you can work this out.
I once got a negative review that I am the smartest in the room, I know it, and that’s not good. I did agree tbh
You’re totally not alone. Everytime layoffs roll around we’d always thought the right thing would happen. Nope. So many around this individual have been laid off (including myself), and he remains.
I feel the same. Leadership uses me as a knowledge base and communication quality inspector. I spend most of my day guiding people that make probably twice my income. They project their insecurity of it on me, by saying how messed up it is that I’m not promoted… what am I supposed to do with that?
The job market is so terrible. I wish I could find an opportunity away from this place. It’s insanely toxic.
@b6 it’s not a brag, I’m actually very concerned I feel this way. I shouldn’t have to explain, making up a department for anonymity sake, the basics of Inventory management to someone who has been a manager in that department for 5+ years. I caught myself saying “you’re kidding right?”
Those who think they are the smartest in the room are often not.
You are not alone. Converse is a sad sight right now. It’s so much worse than I could have imagined. It’s scarier than the layoff with severance would have been.
amphetamines?
@aj Nike has a major culture problem right now: people have not been promoted in years, and some have become more competent than 3 to 4 levels above them. Some incompetent managers can no longer control them and resort to good old dirty tricks, such as insults, mental abuse, etc., whatever works to minimize and control people. Some managers just don't know any better because they themselves carry so much trauma, and they just don't know healthy dynamics and how to treat people in a healthy way.
I suddenly feel that there are too many incompetent people with Principal title and brings BS ideas to the table.
DEI
@OP, oh, you are not alone. Every day at Nike is like Groundhog Day for me: same problems, same toxicity, and same incompetent people with big titles and bad behaviors. nothing ever changes, nothing ever improves, nothing phases me anymore. same sh..it. different day.