Thread regarding Nike Inc. layoffs

@fx Thank you for this. It’s one of the most honest reflections I’ve seen and it cuts to the core of what’s broken.

Centralized control, revolving doors, performative leadership, and the culture of “throw bodies at it” aren’t just frustrating, they’re destructive. They erode trust, dilute expertise, and punish the very people who care enough to speak up. And when caring becomes a liability, when calling out inefficiency is seen as “rocking the boat,” we’ve crossed a line.

Let’s be clear: the people being impacted most right now aren’t the ones who created the waste. They’re the ones who’ve quietly delivered value, held teams together, and adapted under pressure. Meanwhile, the structures that enabled complacency remain untouched. Some even seem to have secured their own ivory towers while others are shown the door.

We talk about agility, but remove the people who’ve built it. We talk about sport, but gut the team. We talk about value, but obsess over governance. And we talk about leadership, but forget that you manage processes, but you lead people.

This isn’t just about cost. It’s about culture. And if we keep shifting the work without shifting the mindset, we’ll keep losing, not just talent, but trust, ownership, and the ability to truly deliver.

There are still people who care. But their hands are tied, their voices muted, and their contributions overlooked. If we truly care about value delivery, let’s start by valuing the people who deliver it.

Care isn’t weakness. It’s the last thing holding this together.

@jj We hear you. There’s truth in what you said, some leadership behaviours in EMEA GT have indeed felt performative, disconnected, or self-preserving. And yes, change is healthy. Necessary, even.

But here’s the part that stings: the people being impacted most right now aren’t those in the ivory towers. It’s the everyday contributors, the ones who quietly build, support, adapt, and care. The ones who’ve held teams together through ambiguity and pressure. The ones who’ve delivered value without fanfare.

If we’re serious about transformation, we need to stop mistaking visibility for impact and tenure for contribution. We need to look beyond calendars and titles and ask: who’s actually enabling delivery? Who’s fostering trust, clarity, and ownership?

As I said before: If we truly care about value delivery, let’s start by valuing the people who deliver it.

Leadership isn’t about holding space, it’s about creating it. And right now, too many of the wrong people are being pushed out, while the structures that enabled complacency remain untouched.

"If we truly care about value delivery, let’s start by valuing the people who deliver it."

It's hard to take seriously some of the EMEA GT leaders..many who've been around for 10+ years seem to contribute little beyond holding space (same value as a door holder). There's a pattern of complacency: minimal effort, inflated egos, recycling others' ideas and passing them off as their own, rarely offering original input. Their calendars are packed with what appear to be performative meetings, yet there's little visible impact or innovation.

Change is healthy and necessary.

Centralized control is the result of inexperienced leadership, lack of accountability, resources that aren’t qualified, and resources unable to learn and grow because of the revolving door of people coming and going, along with being in a continuous state of re-organizing. Culture is throw bodies at it —- very, very wrong. Speed comes from quality, and quality comes from experience, experience comes from learning … and over arching it all is having people that care. Currently caring about doing things right, calling out what’s broken, what’s not working, what’s costing the company $’s - is very much discouraged because anyone perceived as rocking the boat is somehow ‘bad’. If everyone just follows the party line, things will not turn around. Wholesale changes? Above my pay grade, but leadership inspires, it does not degrade, denigrate, or make high performing individuals that are experts at their jobs feel like sh-t every day as they see the waste, inefficiency, incompetence, and their colleagues discarded like cattle. Is a lot of people that care, but their hands are tied. We can be so much better. Focus on Sport? Awesome… but let’s focus on our Customers, fixing what’s broken, and treating employees like what they are - the single most important resource. How are people going to be inspired when they see 1-2 people laid off from a team that are replaced by 30-40 outsourced resources, that do nothing, fix nothing, and dump their issues on the fewer & fewer resources remaining that can actually get stuff done, understand both Tech & Business, etc. Is like having a soccer team full of stars & journeyman pro’s, and replacing it with your cousin’s brother’s middle school rec squad. Cheaper isn’t better - nor is it ever really cheaper, because is just shifting the work somewhere else.

To those who replied, thank you for the raw honesty. I get it. These are tense times, and people are reacting from different places: frustration, fear, fatigue.

But no, it’s not my “first time.” I’ve worked at Nike for over 10 years, most recently supporting cross-geo value delivery across EMEA. I’ve seen reorgs, pivots, and pressure, but what’s happening now feels different. It’s not just structural; it’s cultural.

When I spoke about leadership and value delivery, I wasn’t offering platitudes. I was naming what’s being eroded: trust, ownership, and the people-centered agility that made our teams strong. Yes, there are skill gaps. Yes, we need modern delivery. But we also need to stop equating governance with progress and micromanagement with leadership.

As I’ve said before: you manage processes, projects, and schedules, but you lead people. If we forget that, we lose more than efficiency, we lose each other.

And if this space has become a place where we rip on each other to cope, maybe that’s the clearest signal yet that something deeper is broken. I’m not here to point fingers. I’m here to remind us what we stand to lose if we keep dehumanizing the conversation.

First time? Between the rare actual insights this whole site is just a bunch of people ripping on each other's functions in a feeble attempt at mental self preservation, trying to comfort themselves out of being coequals next up to walk the plank. You can't let it get to you, its the literal incarnation of the spiderman finger pointing meme.

WTF are you talking about. Vague platitudes. There are many poorly skilled software engineers in GT--at WHQ, ITC, and EHQ. GT needs to clean house. Get rid of the ticket takers. We need people who can build and automate. Too many layers of engineering leaders who have no idea how to deliver modern enterprise software. The "engineers" who build snowflake systems by hand also need to go.

Exact! ❤️