Thread regarding Nike Inc. layoffs

Really thought this insight was such a banger that you'd post it twice, huh?

@vt Nike can't be compared to Elon's company. Nike is at the bottom when it comes to innovation and technological advancement. They are a leader in footwear and that's not because of the quality. ON shoes and there are so many other companies which make better shoes than nike. Nike can't even build a competent, full-stack tech infrastructure. Their HR department is full of posse yoga pants culture, company's promotions are blatantly skewed, with many women advancing for reasons that have little to do with merit, while their MBA and H1B hires contribute little to actual progress. Name one innovation or something of value built by MBAs/HR/H1Bs

@s1, you touched the correct chords here. These persons should have never been hired. Let's investigate HR and the Director level on the nexus of kickbacks and incentives to how exactly these persons secured employment in the first place. But unless you think Elon is d-mb and you H-1b naysayers are smarter, lol. You can almost assume he is working with a different lot than your average Joe in Beaverton.

@s1 The sad part is outsourcing companies, contractors, business consultants, and the MBAs heavy are using GPT and Claude to generate slides and code. There is no reason to have a team of 20 people with director to support one tiny application used by 10s of people.

@qp AI code is junk. If the tech is a net positive for any engineering team they should have been fired years ago. These are the teams causing Nike’s AWS spend to increase 50% YoY. The main benefit to AI is if you don’t know the language yet. These people should never have been hired in the first place.

You’re absolutely right about Eastern Europe being a great resource for tech engineers though. There is a reason I’ve personally watched those squads get sabotaged into a force reduction by Nike’s Indian mafia.

I’m not sure I’m sold on the “effectiveness” of a global corporate workforce though. Internal international politics have never been worse. Solutions have never been slower to deliver. Direction has never been more fractured. We are barely functioning as a company anymore. The only thing we gained was saving 15% on 1,000 headcount. We are so deep in it though I doubt we have the political or monetary capital necessary to begin fixing the situation.

@fk The COVID has shown that knowledge workers can contribute effectively from anywhere in the world so no more h1b. In fact, many Eastern European engineers outperform the H-1B workers. The H-1B program need to be gutted or a total overhaul, the minimum base salary should be set at $400K in Portland and $500K in the Bay Area. If a company truly cannot find talent locally, then they should be required to compensate at a premium, above what they would pay domestic workers. The reality is that 99.9% of H-1B engineers are just avg joe and some d-mb as rock, and now ChatGPT outperform much of the SE's coding work, the visa needs to die.

@gd.. you are correct that's about everyone who works here. No real contributors

@fk... your ignorance is better ignored but even if 0.01%, google is free, search for how many patents have been filed by visa applicants at some points before they naturalized, how many enterprises pioneered work in their fields (minus the horrendous consulting companies of course). Even if a small section of the society are criminals, you don't push everyone to prove their innocence, do you? While agreed that the H-1b has been exploited by many companies including Indian, only to end up converting to FTE role at Nike. This is only part of an unsustainable structure that orgs like Nike are notorious for. It all stems from poor leadership at Tech hiring levels.

@ge Everyone I know complaining about H1b is also asking why we never tried hiring tech in Detroit or Memphis. There are black engineers in America desperate to be hired, willing to work for the cheapest salaries in the US, but our Indian leadership at the time didn’t want that. StockX is headquartered in Detroit, why did we ignore industry trends? Like you said. Racism. But not from a direction people are comfortable talking about.

Global Technology needs to go 91.5%

H1b used to mean something. Simple fact is the vast majority of H1b today are Indian college graduates from Indian degree mills. Everyone involved in vetting our engineering contractors ends up wanting to burn the entire system down within two filled roles.

I wouldn’t trust 97/100 candidates to know how to tie their own shoes. I’ve watched simple answers get googled on the reflections of their glasses. I’ve had different people show up to the interview & job, assuming yt pepo don’t know how to tell other races apart. Multiple times! It is now standard practice to take pictures of the interviewee. And the kicker, all this $@&!:$ happens after their firm reviewed the candidates and presented them to Nike, this is after our internal contracting team reviewed and interviewed the candidates.

I don’t care about the 0.01% of H1b. They’re lipstick on a pig. Designed to be trotted out to the public as if the institution wasn’t being used to drive American companies into the ground.

There is a direct relationship with Nike’s H1b rate and our production outages/cloud spend/features missing deadlines/etc. $@&/($& is falling apart all over the place because the people forcing H1b down business’ throats have no kpi’s tying them personally to the subsequent dumpster fires.

@ct... the H-1b visas support not just the run of the mill human that Nike loves to hire, it also covers established pioneers in different fields, including those who pursue education whether MS or BS here in the US. Think PhDs, Doctors, Engineers who pass out from American schools. To blanket H-1bs as the Achilles Heel is a sign of low IQ, which Bernie and his kind are. Well may be not, but maliciously playing to the optics for sure.

Here's an easy experiment that could make you judge your own findings. Ask your boss or every Director/Sr Director at Nike where did they graduate from and which program. Then simply google search those universities and those programs to understand how competent they may be. You will get your answer. Not just tech, across the board.

@dg so true!
If you’re a duck or beav, you get a Job! Never worked anywhere else, never been outside of OR, but now you are a director acting like you’ve built sneaker culture

@dq+1k3wp6d34 does everyone see this elephant in the room? Shortsighted and faulty judgment was made in the name of equality. The incompetence is intolerable.

@ag you must live on another universe

@dg That's so true. The sheer number of incompetent women is astonishing. In the name of equality, the number of promotions handed out is unbelievable. Departments like HR, Marketing, and Sales are mind numbing. This isn't to suggest that most women are d-mb, but many are clearly lacking in competence. Nike doesn’t need MBAs or an excess of tech platforms under the guise of innovation, essentially a money faucet draining profits into the software and tech industry.

@ct ChatGPT generated content lol OP invoking Elon. For once, have your own thoughts

@da Facts. Majority of the MBAs, HR professionals, and so-called leaders, who can't even get two people to follow them in real life, perpetuate a culture of inefficiency. They create unnecessary processes and busywork to justify their roles and perceived importance. In reality, a significant portion of the executive tier ("e-band") contributes little of tangible value. Consultants and their managers, in particular, frequently prioritize appearances over actual impact, offering minimal contribution while seeking maximum recognition.

The issue is that no one ever leaves. Graduate from U of O, internship leads to a job. Get married, move to the Beaverton burbs, raise some kids. There's nowhere else to bounce to, so Nike gets bloated with 25-year veterans with no outside experience, and the only departure from the company is layoff once they eek their way into the high salary flag zone.

This forum is bloated by tech employees who bias every argument. You all get paid way more than the MBAs in marketing.

Work any project - 90% overhead, 10% work —- and the people that can do the work have 80% of their time impeded by those that can’t, whilst fighting off all the cr-ppy processes and lack of data quality everywhere. Is like trying to kick a ball into the goal with 10 people hanging all over you. You know what to do, you have the skill, you have the determination - but are held back at every turn.

You’re not wrong. For all the time’s I’ve heard “Nike is not a tech company” we sure burn money pretending we are.

Blockchain, AI, contractors hiring contractors to fix problems caused by cheap contractors, 4 or 5 engineering centers scattered around the globe (always at least 8 hours offset from the business they theoretically support) with all the subsequent friction and resource contention.

Decision after decision made without care for reality or even a thought towards a return on investment. These soft handed MBAs are running the company into the ground through a mixture of incompetence and kickback corruption.

If Nike is bloated, the.n It should take some gas pills to relieve the discomfort. Hahahaha

Agree, too many directors and senior directors who take home big money for little contribution. It’s like that “I have people skills!” scene in office space. Cut these roles in half and business performance may even improve!

@af seriously!! HR needs to die its slow death in every company.

@af less than 1000 if only counting the Employees

@af cont...

I didn't finish my train of thought. Nike Hr is pure gold, the finest Corporate success brains you can find on this planet. The kinds even the likes of Google and Amazon keep digging to no avail. May this tribe only grow at Nike

How many in Nike HR? 2000? or 5000? lol

Elon a 100%, everyone else is just meh, likely a Dem pawn

You must be that HR lady collecting paycheck for nothing.

Were you the bloated caveman at the insurrection?