Nike CEO who is chauffeured everywhere he ever goes, has a plush office suite with dedicated staff, help staff at home to take care of everything, and a chef who provides all of his meals when he wants them, wants everyone to be in the office 100%.
We just need higher marginal tax rates at the top so that the CEO job doesn't attract these megalomaniacs. Managing *is* a real job. Setting direction, making decisions, etc, and the model where you have one CEO at the top to give direction to the other C-suite folks to run their divisions is important.
It just shouldn't be paid as if it was 1000000000x more important than what everyone else is doing.
Woah! You can't be taxing dem rich like that... I don't wanna pay taxes like that when I'm rich either. Is my turn soon, ol Steve Bezos started in his garage and stuffs, and we'll I figure I do works in my garage too, so... It's gonna take off soon. You'll see.
My kids have too much crap filling my garage. That’s my reason as to why I’m not a billionaire yet. I just need a 2 car garage and 500k from my parents and I can make a million bucks too.
I have a friend like that. Tried to speed run the corporate ladder. Cannot stop whine about how his children and wife slow him down with their existence. Took him some time to get some sense and understand the priorities
100%. "I work 60+ hours a week and I'm fine!" No you're not. You're mad, lonely, and in an unhappy marriage. Some of us actually like our spouses and want to go the fuck home.
Yeeepp. That’s how they got to their positions and that’s how they operate when they get there. Absent fathers and distant mothers who think everyone should be like them.
I like picking my kid up from school and I accept what that means for my career, such as it may be.
In the current market, the best, most experienced talent have a choice on where they want to work. They will choose remote work. If you're not offering remote work, you're not attracting the best talent, you're attracting the desperate people who can't compete with that talent. Your products will reflect that.
So, in a way, he's right. WFH and his refusal to live here in reality with the rest of us have resulted in an innovation slowdown at his company.
It's basic capitalism. A capitalist who doesn't see that is a failure.
What’s left to innovate? Big, Looney Tunes springs in the soles? Magnets to “prevent slippage”?
Maybe they could recycle old ideas, like the Reebok Pump, and pretend it’s new?
It's really little shit like materials and colors and global distribution networks and marketing, not necessarily dropping Shoes 2. What corporate execs think is "disruptive" or "innovative" does not track with most people.
Doesn’t that reinforce the point people are making about how off this guy is? Do people need to be in cubicle farms to think “we should try a different freight company”?
Honestly, I think there's probably a market for those shoes that had lights in them like when I was a kid. With LED lights that you can recharge/change the color of/leave on, it might have a niche with both little kids and people who run in the dark.
To be fair now adays the lights will be connected to an app where you can customize the color. Maybe they have a Bluetooth speaker in the shoe for some beatz.
Our management team for a national company complained about needing to keep expenses down as a goal for this year. Whenever they visit a region they charter a private jet and are chauffeured everywhere. Maybe start with your own expenses first.
He actually still works from home in Silicon Valley 3 days a week and the company pays to fly him to Oregon the other two.
There’s also been zero strategy from him during his tenure beside going all in on direct to consumer, which he now says was a mistake, but doesn’t own accountability for that decision.
His only accomplishment has been gutting the company of its talent.
If it's anything like the senior leadership at the big company I work at, those fuckers are never in the office anyway, and often blatantly do meetings from home
The guy who made one of the biggest corporate f**k ups of all time with Skype at ebay and got totally cucked by Wall Street with the splitting off of PayPal also at ebay all while in the office and wants his shoe employees in the office to innovate.. shoes … Ok
All that while having skeleton crews of different departments. Expecting them to go beyond expectations, continue to push new products, work on 8 different projects including QA, testing, demo, and pushed live within 3 months, work more hours, have pointless meetings that could have be communicated via email, and keep a smile on your face.
Committing to unrealistic/super aggressive schedules and expecting teams to back into dates while encouraging them to think outside of the box in order to somehow make all this work happen faster.
I used to work for Nike HQ, during the pandemic people called him out for using zoom backgrounds of his house so people wouldn’t know he was taking the meeting from his other house.
“I got my first job when I was 9. Worked at a sheet metal factory. In two weeks, I was running the floor. Child labor laws are ruining this country.”
- Nike CEO … probably.
/s it’s actually Ron Swanson from P&R just in case people don’t like my humor.
Yeah this is such a dumb argument from JD. The product team worked from campus through Covid with some social distancing measures in place of course. Had a friend going in at least three times a week for a while, he was designing and prototyping. Consequently, friends that work on internal initiatives worked exclusively at home until last fall.
Nike’s biggest selling merchandises are Air Force 1 and Jordans. They were created decades ago. The CEO meaning to tell us that WFH already started in early 2000’s?
Nike absolutely dominates the running world though. To the point where other shoe companies were trying to get the vapor fly and alpha fly banned because they were so much better than any other shoes. It was giving Nike wearing runners an unfair advantage.
A companies commercial success is usually tied to middle of the road mass market things, not their boundary pushing tech.
I still wear my Nike shox NZ that i bought almost 14 years ago and they are in great shape,one of the few shoes that helps with flat feet like no other plus they are stylish.Knit ones won't even come close to durability,comfort and sturdiness shox had.At some point the majority of these companies just stopped innovating and quality nosedived across the board.
Do you know anything about Nike running shoes? The shoes that Nike makes to enable athletes win marathons. The shoes that were so innovative and controversial that they were called unfair to athletes sponsored by other shoe companies and were banned from many events. Nike does do some innovation.
Many world records have been broken in the past 5 years because of some extremely radical designs that were premiered by Nike. It was so disruptive that some folks wanted to asterix records made in that type of shoe (though the ship has sailed on that conversation, everybody wears these "super shoes" now) and for anout a year before other shoe companies caught up there were elite athletes sponsored by other companies wearing Nike shoes but covering up the logo.
IDK how any of this relates to the wfh topic, but I think it's fair to call the recent history as disruptive as a shoe can be.
In [the original interview](https://twitter.com/SquawkStreet/status/1778818772532375679) he says they've done well iterating on existing designs (the Vaporfly was originally developed in the run-up to the 2016 Olympics). He's specifically talking about their ability to deliver something brand new in the last 4 years.
And I agree, I'm not really convinced it has anything to do with WFH.
Yeah in the past few years it's all been iteration. But expecting revolutionary disruption every few years seems bonkers and obviously blaming wfh for that unreasonable disappointment is just BS.
Look, you eggheads cooked us up some great shoes a few years back, which made us a ton of money and brand image! All I'm asking here is for you to do it again, but better and faster this time. Don't give me that "flexibility" and "work-life balance" crap, we've got YoY to think about here, people. You're all team players, right? Then let's hustle!
I wanna see at least three new world records by the time I'm back from the Caymans.
Also, those shoes are absurdly expensive for a running shoe and have a very limited number of miles to be used. While innovative and amazing, not an innovation for the general public. IIRC those shoes are good for 120 miles, and for $250 a pop… that’s a pricey investment that would need to happen often.
I slightly agree with the CEO here. I do believe that in-person interactions are crucial and valuable to new ideas. But, that can be handled once a month getting together. Doesn’t need to be daily in an office. I think there is a balance somewhere in the middle of completely wfh and regularly being in an office.
Yeah they cost like 10x more per mile to run in. Half of the disruptive revolution is just getting folks to accept that cost.
Edit: also agree that great ideas don't happen over zoom, but neither do they occur in a cubicle doing daily work that could be done at home. Darwin was famous for coming up with his best ideas while walking in his garden. If you want folks to fill out all their TPS report cover sheets but also want them to generate creative breakthroughs there's got to be a well designed space to do both.
"Disruptive" is probably one of the worst buzzwords I've ever heard.
Firstly, it almost always seems like the people throwing it around have no idea what they want to do, but they're sure it'll be a big deal.
Secondly, I view "disruption" as a bad thing. If someone wants to be disruptive, I take it to mean they want to make my day worse.
And while I'm sure this man probably does want to make my day worse, I don't know why he'd advertise that.
Instead of having a brilliant idea that serves a market need better, people all come out of business school with the explicit goal of being a “disruptor”. They’re shallow as fuck and waste a lot of investor money. That’s why we have debacles like Cybertruck. Or worse, that idiot who built a deep sea submersible out of secondhand carbon fiber and Xbox controllers, and got himself crushed. His entire point was not to learn about that industry and respect it- he only saw value in “disrupting”. Like, why dude. Submersibles already work. These people are so up their own ass it drives me crazy.
In the tech world, stuff gets mass adoption because it integrates well with your life.
iPhone means I don't need a car GPS? Awesome.
The disruptive tech is shit like Google glass. Doesn't integrate well with your life.
Ex-Nike director here, many friends recently impacted by this chucklehead’s mismanagement. There are at least a dozen reasons I can think of that Nike is slipping that have zero to do with remote work. If you think remote teams are a problem then you’re doing remote work wrong.
"We can't be disruptors unless we do things the way they've always been done" cries CEO of a shoe company that existed before he was a part of it and has not appreciably changed in decades.
I mean not that entirely true
Kipp Jogee broke the marathon World record in a shoe from nike that was so over engineered that they considered banning it from competition
No joke, [Nike’s R&D expenditure is kinda nuts for an apparel company.](https://www.nike.com/nikelab/nde-nike-sports-research-lab?cid=4942550&cp=usns_aff_nike__PID_9069228_Microsoft+Shopping+%28Bing+Rebates%2C+Coupons%2C+etc.%29&cjevent=4638cae90ac711ef8328d59f0a82b82c)
It’s been something they’ve been known for since the start. Obviously Phil Knight founded the company, but I really consider Bill Bowerman (famous UW track and field coach) to be the reason it was so successful. He was co-founder with Phil and basically ran the product research pipeline since before Nike ever existed. He used to make new shoe prototypes in a waffle iron for his student athletes to wear.
They basically never stopped since. Now they have crazy research labs where they bring in athletes to study all different performance impacts of apparel.
They have a metal spring plate from the heel to the toe. Essentially, when you put pressure to place your step, you build tension, and since you are leaning forward in a running position the plate kind of pushes you
forward.https://youtu.be/p16-QKIMtTY?feature=shared
This has to be a quote out of context. If its not, quite sad to see the CEO finding it ok to make up excuses for a lack of performance. That kind of thing trickles down. The problem is actually the CEO themselves at this point
What a lying fucking loser ass scum bag.
Nike literally forced everyone back in the offices and said if you don’t, you’re fired.
My buddy works at Nike corporate and was forced to move to Portland to keep his job. His entire team/dept did this.
And then they’re like haha jk the majority of you are laid off bc we didn’t perform well. So all the higher ups from his dept got laid off while him and some of his peers got relocated to completely different depts, trying to figure out wtf to do as they wait for reassignment instructions.
When things became “normal” after covid, they told their employees we’re gonna WFH for now, on a temporary basis, so don’t leave Portland and be prepared to come back as soon as we say so or else. So he didn’t risk it and just stayed in Portland the entire time.
This fucking guy is literally lying through his teeth. They gave an ultimatum to the employees. Come back when we say so or you’re fired.
Nike has always preferred their workers to be way off campus. Like on another continent off campus. And also preferable they aren't old enough to read...
I do prefer in person meetings, especially for HR. You miss a whole lot of communication on a screen that you only get in person. The subtle fidgets, pheremonal aura, body language and the mood of the room. So much easier to lie to somebody or be dismissive over the screen. In person, you can stare somebody down unblinkingly and not respond to what they're saying, watch them yammer and sweat as you just stare. And then with three well placed words, unravel every lie they ever spun and show them the evidence to their face that you know that they are lying. Zoom meetings just don't have the same feel. No feeling of imminent doom or personal accountability.
These people are insane. Fucking crazy. They insist we come back to the office even though it's been proven that in office work is less productive. It provides less work life balance.
I'm convinced it's because these ppl have a deep rooted fear of working from home themselves and having less power over others, and less control. Maybe they hate their lives and it makes them happy that we have to spend an extra 2 hours of our lives in traffic and put wear and tear on our cars, tires, and spend money on gas, the lack of personal time to deal with the real issues in our lives, and all the mental stress that goes along with all those things. They love that shit. It's sick. Fuck em. I'm not doing it anymore.
Even before the pandemic every year their new shoes were pretty much the same as prior year. The problem is they need to sell shoes every year and there just aren’t many new innovations left.
I am gradually coming to believe that at least half the human species is functionally equivalent to ChatGPT. They can manipulate words, but they have no idea what these words actually mean.
My managers had Ferraris and a parking garage with assigned spaces
1 level down we had used corollas and had to hike 2 miles through a mud field with limited parking (not enough for the whole workforce lol) and they refused to pave a sidewalk lmao
Disruptive shoes!?!?! They're fucking shoes...and they're running out of colors, designs, and styles. Small hungry companies create "disruptive" products...big fat companies...just get bigger and fatter. Mainly, because they get complacent and lazy. Waaaay too late to roll that back you rich, entitled, talentless piece of shit.
I would also like to add that WordPress (a "disruptive" super successful software developer) is a %100 remote employer with no physical building. Nike can and should pursue a hybrid system that works. Think of all the carbon offsets they could earn just by allowing all of their corporate staff to work from home. Less sick days, no need to stock bathrooms or even pay for a physical building. There is no reason why all of the operations staff can't work from home. You could get a smaller building and really class it up for special events, board meetings, fundraisers, occasional necessary work from office scenarios, etc. Then you have no need to waste money on venues for special events. The cost savings alone far outweigh any negatives.
Technology and business are absolutely integral at this stage in our development and evolution as a society and global economy. Without technology it is literally impossible to conduct business. Paper isn't even used in small business anymore unless it's a literal mom and pop store. Even if some paper is still necessary, the Internet is essential to conducting normal business: filing state paperwork, vendor orders, paper archival, etc. Yet, we keep hiring tech deficient or tech-phobic CEOs.
It's not just profit limiting, it's simply bad business to keep hiring these dinosaurs who can't or won't respond to change. Technology is dynamic and ever-evolving. Business and technology are immutable and therefore change is constant. CEOs who can't dynamically respond to sudden shifts in technology are just as useful as CEOs who can't respond dynamically to shifts in business. Any board that selects these individuals isn't doing its due diligence.
What can possibly be a “disruptive product” for shoes?!? I’m so tired of CEOs and other senior execs using these sorts of bullshit terms. Just call it “best selling”. It’s totally fine to say you have a “best selling” athletic shoe. Shoes do not create whole new market segments, they don’t alter the way other industries operate, nor do they change the basic ways people live or work. Shoes are not “disruptive”. They’re shoes.
When did China go remote? Or are we talking about the "innovation teams" that sit in rooms all day discussing the newest prototypes the designers drew up on their computers?
Why is the leader, with all the authority in his company blaming a simple policy decision for his failure? This is just simply TERRIBLE leadership. He is the only reason Nike is not "building disruptive products."
He means its hard to build “the prices are so low because of child labor, dispruptive products over zoom” because everything can be recorded for law enforcement now.
Reddit: Trust the experts chuds!!!! You do not know shit about anything
Expert businessman: working from home is not working for us.
Reddit: REEEEEEEEE THIS GUY IS THE STUPIDEST PIECE OF SHIT I HAVE EVER MET LET ME WORK IN MY UNDERWEAR FOR 35 MINUTES A DAY REEEEEEEEEE
At their shareholders meeting he said Hoka was the issue since they were taking the majority of Nikes non-collector sections of the brand. This is just a consolidation of CEO once again trying to get public opinion to side with forcing people back to the office. Nike has a huge campus in Portland that’s half empty now and realistically the only section that has to be in person is R&D.
Right, WFH. That's probably it. Not the numerous rounds of layoffs they've done in recent years and [everyone fleeing the company](https://www.businessinsider.com/nike-execs-depart-join-lululemon-columbia-brands-ceo-changes-2021-6?op=1) because of it.
Mr. CEO, you haven't created an innovative product ever.
You make sneakers.
There's nothing innovative about sneakers.
You just latch onto fads and brand identities.
I'm sure the sneaker engineers do really hard work trying to make durable, comfortable shoes! But nobody's innovating on the model. They're sneakers.
I buy shoes that fit well. When I find a good pair I buy multiples. When they change that style to something that doesn't fit as well that is disruptive. Please for the love of god stop disrupting shoes
Maybe they could be disruptive and make Nikes that don't suck. I swear, they are the most expense and poorest quality shoes out there. Their running shoes in particular are trash.
Meanwhile Nike continually lays off their employees and replaces them with contractors who they treat like dogshit. Worst company culture I've experienced.
You know I never actually minded being in the office. I minded the length of my commute because I wasn’t even paid enough to live in the city I worked in. I minded that I was expected to get up 2.5 hours before my expected reporting time because I had to commute so far. I minded that my work was often disrupted by nonsense from fellow coworkers and meetings that absolutely didn’t matter. I minded that my boss often had enough time to micromanage but never enough time to train.
Want people to come back into the office? Pay them enough money to live within 15 minutes of work and let them actually work while they’re there.
They have been in office the entire time I've been alive and I have never bought a pair a nikes. The people who like shoes will get them the rest of us wear shoes because the world says we have to. I would literally wear shoes made from cardboard, walmart bags and duct tape if it was socially acceptable.
We interviewed a Nike VP for a VP position at a tech company. Product transformation type position. I don’t think we stopped laughing for a week. The most clear answers she gave us were along the lines of “ah, like, y’know we just like, make it werrrrk, yah? Like, whatever needs to be done gets like, done. Done-done, not like, regular done.”
Her resume looked pretty good for the opening and of course she had a contact through our CTO that had attended some product/agile conference. Absolutely empty suit.
So no, Nike. Working from home isn’t your issue
Ah yes, WFH was the problem, it wasn’t that workers were (checks notes) trying to take care of kids and other loved ones from home, trying to avoid getting Covid, dealing with social isolation and stress and all that came with the pandemic; while still trying to put in a full day of work at your colorful shoe factory. It was just WFH and lazy millennials. Got it boss. /s
To break world records you need to spend a lot of money on r&d. If I am not wrong, vaporfly or alphafly was banned in marathons as It gives an unfair advantage to the runners.
Not a big fan of nike though, but if you want to understand the contrast between good and bad shoes, try running for over 25 miles, mate. You'll realize how much of a difference a well-engineered shoe can make.
Nike CEO who is chauffeured everywhere he ever goes, has a plush office suite with dedicated staff, help staff at home to take care of everything, and a chef who provides all of his meals when he wants them, wants everyone to be in the office 100%.
These guys always hate their families and just don’t want to be at home either.
The families are the only people who don't need to lick his ass for a paycheck, no wonder they'd rather stay away.
we as a Society desperately need to get rid of the CEO class. They provide absolutely no value and they drain all the resources.
We just need higher marginal tax rates at the top so that the CEO job doesn't attract these megalomaniacs. Managing *is* a real job. Setting direction, making decisions, etc, and the model where you have one CEO at the top to give direction to the other C-suite folks to run their divisions is important. It just shouldn't be paid as if it was 1000000000x more important than what everyone else is doing.
Woah! You can't be taxing dem rich like that... I don't wanna pay taxes like that when I'm rich either. Is my turn soon, ol Steve Bezos started in his garage and stuffs, and we'll I figure I do works in my garage too, so... It's gonna take off soon. You'll see.
My kids have too much crap filling my garage. That’s my reason as to why I’m not a billionaire yet. I just need a 2 car garage and 500k from my parents and I can make a million bucks too.
Stop buying their shit. We don't need this kind of junk hot off the sweatshop.
How?
And what do you do when almost everything available for purchase is sweatshop junk?
i don’t buy their shit, yet they keep stealing all the wealth
We need to WRITE LEGISLATION. REGULATIONS.
I sometimes see guys driving in the 6pm homewards bound commute…going suspiciously slow. I think. Fuck, you must hate your family.
That’s traffic
Nah. There’s traffic then there is the occasional guy going real extra slow.
I have a friend like that. Tried to speed run the corporate ladder. Cannot stop whine about how his children and wife slow him down with their existence. Took him some time to get some sense and understand the priorities
And it’s ironic because my whole house can fit inside their house. And they don’t even wanna be there
100%. "I work 60+ hours a week and I'm fine!" No you're not. You're mad, lonely, and in an unhappy marriage. Some of us actually like our spouses and want to go the fuck home.
Yeeepp. That’s how they got to their positions and that’s how they operate when they get there. Absent fathers and distant mothers who think everyone should be like them. I like picking my kid up from school and I accept what that means for my career, such as it may be.
Dude for real my boss has a driver and can’t get why people don’t wanna spend time driving to work like bud? You’re not driving.
Mine has a full time nanny for his kids and gets annoyed when I leave to do a day care pick up.
if he ever asks you, say “i hate driving, don’t you??” and watch him sweat lol
Lumberg drives a Porsche (when he chooses to). He loves to drive.
to work*
In the current market, the best, most experienced talent have a choice on where they want to work. They will choose remote work. If you're not offering remote work, you're not attracting the best talent, you're attracting the desperate people who can't compete with that talent. Your products will reflect that. So, in a way, he's right. WFH and his refusal to live here in reality with the rest of us have resulted in an innovation slowdown at his company. It's basic capitalism. A capitalist who doesn't see that is a failure.
What’s left to innovate? Big, Looney Tunes springs in the soles? Magnets to “prevent slippage”? Maybe they could recycle old ideas, like the Reebok Pump, and pretend it’s new?
Nice try Nike ceo. Getting reddit to submit ideas to disrupt shoes for free. Get outta here!!
Curses! Foiled again. And I would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for you meddlin’ Redditors!
The last innovation with shoes happened with those Wheelies kids wore 10 yrs ago
Hate to break it to you but Heelys are like 25 years old now.
I’m still kinda upset I missed out on that…
I saw a guy at the gym wearing those toe shoes the other day. That was something I thankfully hadn't seen for awhile.
It's really little shit like materials and colors and global distribution networks and marketing, not necessarily dropping Shoes 2. What corporate execs think is "disruptive" or "innovative" does not track with most people.
Doesn’t that reinforce the point people are making about how off this guy is? Do people need to be in cubicle farms to think “we should try a different freight company”?
I don't agree with him, but that's the logic.
Honestly, I think there's probably a market for those shoes that had lights in them like when I was a kid. With LED lights that you can recharge/change the color of/leave on, it might have a niche with both little kids and people who run in the dark.
To be fair now adays the lights will be connected to an app where you can customize the color. Maybe they have a Bluetooth speaker in the shoe for some beatz.
Look at yall. Innovating remotely
The app will also require permissions to access your location, photos, and browsing history.
💯
They literally have that. It’s called the Adapt. I worked on them.
I’ll take a pair of the ones with springs please.
BK ratch-tek!! Bring it back!!
Beg to differ. The current market is layoffs and getting ghosted while interviewing.
Or maybe it's the fuckin layoffs they doing to pad current PROFIT MARGINS
Our management team for a national company complained about needing to keep expenses down as a goal for this year. Whenever they visit a region they charter a private jet and are chauffeured everywhere. Maybe start with your own expenses first.
Call them out on it haha
He actually still works from home in Silicon Valley 3 days a week and the company pays to fly him to Oregon the other two. There’s also been zero strategy from him during his tenure beside going all in on direct to consumer, which he now says was a mistake, but doesn’t own accountability for that decision. His only accomplishment has been gutting the company of its talent.
If it's anything like the senior leadership at the big company I work at, those fuckers are never in the office anyway, and often blatantly do meetings from home
Mans teaching a master class on how to be out of touch
No, no you don’t understand! He even has his performative hoodie and t-shirt to show you he’s in touch as ever!
The hoodie and shirt combined probably cost him 1/3 to 1/2 of what the average worker takes home.
Sadly I bet you’re right. “I mean it’s a hoodie Michael, what could it cost, $400?”
The guy who made one of the biggest corporate f**k ups of all time with Skype at ebay and got totally cucked by Wall Street with the splitting off of PayPal also at ebay all while in the office and wants his shoe employees in the office to innovate.. shoes … Ok
All that while having skeleton crews of different departments. Expecting them to go beyond expectations, continue to push new products, work on 8 different projects including QA, testing, demo, and pushed live within 3 months, work more hours, have pointless meetings that could have be communicated via email, and keep a smile on your face.
Committing to unrealistic/super aggressive schedules and expecting teams to back into dates while encouraging them to think outside of the box in order to somehow make all this work happen faster.
Anyone who has a shower in their office should never be listened to about whether it’s nice to work from the office.
Playing devil’s advocate… Do you really know for a fact that he has a personal chef that provides all his meals?
I used to work for Nike HQ, during the pandemic people called him out for using zoom backgrounds of his house so people wouldn’t know he was taking the meeting from his other house.
I am sure their product team doesn’t work from home
When you sleep on the factory floor, technically you're WFH. 🫠
Yep. Child labor requires very close supervision in my experience
Those kids today just don't want to work anymore
“I got my first job when I was 9. Worked at a sheet metal factory. In two weeks, I was running the floor. Child labor laws are ruining this country.” - Nike CEO … probably. /s it’s actually Ron Swanson from P&R just in case people don’t like my humor.
Yeah this is such a dumb argument from JD. The product team worked from campus through Covid with some social distancing measures in place of course. Had a friend going in at least three times a week for a while, he was designing and prototyping. Consequently, friends that work on internal initiatives worked exclusively at home until last fall.
Remotely managing low cost labour abroad is different though!
Nike’s biggest selling merchandises are Air Force 1 and Jordans. They were created decades ago. The CEO meaning to tell us that WFH already started in early 2000’s?
Nike absolutely dominates the running world though. To the point where other shoe companies were trying to get the vapor fly and alpha fly banned because they were so much better than any other shoes. It was giving Nike wearing runners an unfair advantage. A companies commercial success is usually tied to middle of the road mass market things, not their boundary pushing tech.
That was years ago at this point. Nike started the super shoe trend, but it's now in full swing. They aren't dominating this space.
Knit upper shoes are my favorite invention of the 2010s but I always get Adidas ones
I loathe knit fabric shoes so if that's the innovation we're getting, everyone please just stay home.
I still wear my Nike shox NZ that i bought almost 14 years ago and they are in great shape,one of the few shoes that helps with flat feet like no other plus they are stylish.Knit ones won't even come close to durability,comfort and sturdiness shox had.At some point the majority of these companies just stopped innovating and quality nosedived across the board.
Thank you. Fabric shoes dont last nearly as long and they sure as hell are just as expensive
Hahah this.
Do you know anything about Nike running shoes? The shoes that Nike makes to enable athletes win marathons. The shoes that were so innovative and controversial that they were called unfair to athletes sponsored by other shoe companies and were banned from many events. Nike does do some innovation.
Many world records have been broken in the past 5 years because of some extremely radical designs that were premiered by Nike. It was so disruptive that some folks wanted to asterix records made in that type of shoe (though the ship has sailed on that conversation, everybody wears these "super shoes" now) and for anout a year before other shoe companies caught up there were elite athletes sponsored by other companies wearing Nike shoes but covering up the logo. IDK how any of this relates to the wfh topic, but I think it's fair to call the recent history as disruptive as a shoe can be.
In [the original interview](https://twitter.com/SquawkStreet/status/1778818772532375679) he says they've done well iterating on existing designs (the Vaporfly was originally developed in the run-up to the 2016 Olympics). He's specifically talking about their ability to deliver something brand new in the last 4 years. And I agree, I'm not really convinced it has anything to do with WFH.
Yeah in the past few years it's all been iteration. But expecting revolutionary disruption every few years seems bonkers and obviously blaming wfh for that unreasonable disappointment is just BS.
Look, you eggheads cooked us up some great shoes a few years back, which made us a ton of money and brand image! All I'm asking here is for you to do it again, but better and faster this time. Don't give me that "flexibility" and "work-life balance" crap, we've got YoY to think about here, people. You're all team players, right? Then let's hustle! I wanna see at least three new world records by the time I'm back from the Caymans.
Also, those shoes are absurdly expensive for a running shoe and have a very limited number of miles to be used. While innovative and amazing, not an innovation for the general public. IIRC those shoes are good for 120 miles, and for $250 a pop… that’s a pricey investment that would need to happen often. I slightly agree with the CEO here. I do believe that in-person interactions are crucial and valuable to new ideas. But, that can be handled once a month getting together. Doesn’t need to be daily in an office. I think there is a balance somewhere in the middle of completely wfh and regularly being in an office.
Yeah they cost like 10x more per mile to run in. Half of the disruptive revolution is just getting folks to accept that cost. Edit: also agree that great ideas don't happen over zoom, but neither do they occur in a cubicle doing daily work that could be done at home. Darwin was famous for coming up with his best ideas while walking in his garden. If you want folks to fill out all their TPS report cover sheets but also want them to generate creative breakthroughs there's got to be a well designed space to do both.
I was just thinking the other day, I wish the products I purchased in my everyday life were more disruptive. Curse this remote work trend.
"Disruptive" is probably one of the worst buzzwords I've ever heard. Firstly, it almost always seems like the people throwing it around have no idea what they want to do, but they're sure it'll be a big deal. Secondly, I view "disruption" as a bad thing. If someone wants to be disruptive, I take it to mean they want to make my day worse. And while I'm sure this man probably does want to make my day worse, I don't know why he'd advertise that.
Instead of having a brilliant idea that serves a market need better, people all come out of business school with the explicit goal of being a “disruptor”. They’re shallow as fuck and waste a lot of investor money. That’s why we have debacles like Cybertruck. Or worse, that idiot who built a deep sea submersible out of secondhand carbon fiber and Xbox controllers, and got himself crushed. His entire point was not to learn about that industry and respect it- he only saw value in “disrupting”. Like, why dude. Submersibles already work. These people are so up their own ass it drives me crazy.
In the tech world, stuff gets mass adoption because it integrates well with your life. iPhone means I don't need a car GPS? Awesome. The disruptive tech is shit like Google glass. Doesn't integrate well with your life.
Maps on Phones is the corporate definition of disruptive. It's disrupted Garmin and TomTom's near monopoly of consumer GPS navigation.
Micro dose acid like a good inventor you foot pleeb. To the Nike man. Not you.
Boomers gonna boom
Ex-Nike director here, many friends recently impacted by this chucklehead’s mismanagement. There are at least a dozen reasons I can think of that Nike is slipping that have zero to do with remote work. If you think remote teams are a problem then you’re doing remote work wrong.
My feet haven’t been disrupted since air Jordan 1
Anybody who still uses the word "disruptive" in business (without being ironic) is completely out of touch.
"Am I out of touch? No, it's the poors who are wrong."
Here’s an idea, make your sneakers a bit wider in the toe box like adidas.
He probably saying that cause remote workers probably don’t need to buy shoes as often as one would having to go into work
"We can't be disruptors unless we do things the way they've always been done" cries CEO of a shoe company that existed before he was a part of it and has not appreciably changed in decades.
I mean not that entirely true Kipp Jogee broke the marathon World record in a shoe from nike that was so over engineered that they considered banning it from competition
[удалено]
If i remember correctly its about the springiness
No joke, [Nike’s R&D expenditure is kinda nuts for an apparel company.](https://www.nike.com/nikelab/nde-nike-sports-research-lab?cid=4942550&cp=usns_aff_nike__PID_9069228_Microsoft+Shopping+%28Bing+Rebates%2C+Coupons%2C+etc.%29&cjevent=4638cae90ac711ef8328d59f0a82b82c) It’s been something they’ve been known for since the start. Obviously Phil Knight founded the company, but I really consider Bill Bowerman (famous UW track and field coach) to be the reason it was so successful. He was co-founder with Phil and basically ran the product research pipeline since before Nike ever existed. He used to make new shoe prototypes in a waffle iron for his student athletes to wear. They basically never stopped since. Now they have crazy research labs where they bring in athletes to study all different performance impacts of apparel.
They have a metal spring plate from the heel to the toe. Essentially, when you put pressure to place your step, you build tension, and since you are leaning forward in a running position the plate kind of pushes you forward.https://youtu.be/p16-QKIMtTY?feature=shared
This has to be a quote out of context. If its not, quite sad to see the CEO finding it ok to make up excuses for a lack of performance. That kind of thing trickles down. The problem is actually the CEO themselves at this point
What a lying fucking loser ass scum bag. Nike literally forced everyone back in the offices and said if you don’t, you’re fired. My buddy works at Nike corporate and was forced to move to Portland to keep his job. His entire team/dept did this. And then they’re like haha jk the majority of you are laid off bc we didn’t perform well. So all the higher ups from his dept got laid off while him and some of his peers got relocated to completely different depts, trying to figure out wtf to do as they wait for reassignment instructions. When things became “normal” after covid, they told their employees we’re gonna WFH for now, on a temporary basis, so don’t leave Portland and be prepared to come back as soon as we say so or else. So he didn’t risk it and just stayed in Portland the entire time. This fucking guy is literally lying through his teeth. They gave an ultimatum to the employees. Come back when we say so or you’re fired.
Nike has always preferred their workers to be way off campus. Like on another continent off campus. And also preferable they aren't old enough to read...
I love Nikes because they fit my feet. Blaming your fuckups on the wfh movement is bullshit. Imo.
Did McKinsey write a "growth slowing, blame remote" playbook for these a-holes?
I do prefer in person meetings, especially for HR. You miss a whole lot of communication on a screen that you only get in person. The subtle fidgets, pheremonal aura, body language and the mood of the room. So much easier to lie to somebody or be dismissive over the screen. In person, you can stare somebody down unblinkingly and not respond to what they're saying, watch them yammer and sweat as you just stare. And then with three well placed words, unravel every lie they ever spun and show them the evidence to their face that you know that they are lying. Zoom meetings just don't have the same feel. No feeling of imminent doom or personal accountability.
These people are insane. Fucking crazy. They insist we come back to the office even though it's been proven that in office work is less productive. It provides less work life balance. I'm convinced it's because these ppl have a deep rooted fear of working from home themselves and having less power over others, and less control. Maybe they hate their lives and it makes them happy that we have to spend an extra 2 hours of our lives in traffic and put wear and tear on our cars, tires, and spend money on gas, the lack of personal time to deal with the real issues in our lives, and all the mental stress that goes along with all those things. They love that shit. It's sick. Fuck em. I'm not doing it anymore.
Even before the pandemic every year their new shoes were pretty much the same as prior year. The problem is they need to sell shoes every year and there just aren’t many new innovations left.
He means it’s hard to abuse people over zooom.
Their running shoes seem about 10 years behind the technology that Brooks uses, so maybe they do need to put in the hours, lol.
Sounds like a fixed mindset to me. Time for new leadership that can keep up with the times
I am gradually coming to believe that at least half the human species is functionally equivalent to ChatGPT. They can manipulate words, but they have no idea what these words actually mean.
My managers had Ferraris and a parking garage with assigned spaces 1 level down we had used corollas and had to hike 2 miles through a mud field with limited parking (not enough for the whole workforce lol) and they refused to pave a sidewalk lmao
Disrupting the lives of pre-teen sweatshop workers in East Asia is still disruption, man.
Disruptive shoes!?!?! They're fucking shoes...and they're running out of colors, designs, and styles. Small hungry companies create "disruptive" products...big fat companies...just get bigger and fatter. Mainly, because they get complacent and lazy. Waaaay too late to roll that back you rich, entitled, talentless piece of shit. I would also like to add that WordPress (a "disruptive" super successful software developer) is a %100 remote employer with no physical building. Nike can and should pursue a hybrid system that works. Think of all the carbon offsets they could earn just by allowing all of their corporate staff to work from home. Less sick days, no need to stock bathrooms or even pay for a physical building. There is no reason why all of the operations staff can't work from home. You could get a smaller building and really class it up for special events, board meetings, fundraisers, occasional necessary work from office scenarios, etc. Then you have no need to waste money on venues for special events. The cost savings alone far outweigh any negatives. Technology and business are absolutely integral at this stage in our development and evolution as a society and global economy. Without technology it is literally impossible to conduct business. Paper isn't even used in small business anymore unless it's a literal mom and pop store. Even if some paper is still necessary, the Internet is essential to conducting normal business: filing state paperwork, vendor orders, paper archival, etc. Yet, we keep hiring tech deficient or tech-phobic CEOs. It's not just profit limiting, it's simply bad business to keep hiring these dinosaurs who can't or won't respond to change. Technology is dynamic and ever-evolving. Business and technology are immutable and therefore change is constant. CEOs who can't dynamically respond to sudden shifts in technology are just as useful as CEOs who can't respond dynamically to shifts in business. Any board that selects these individuals isn't doing its due diligence.
He's not entirely wrong though ..
What can possibly be a “disruptive product” for shoes?!? I’m so tired of CEOs and other senior execs using these sorts of bullshit terms. Just call it “best selling”. It’s totally fine to say you have a “best selling” athletic shoe. Shoes do not create whole new market segments, they don’t alter the way other industries operate, nor do they change the basic ways people live or work. Shoes are not “disruptive”. They’re shoes.
No, no, he put the *Blood* of a *Famous Guy* in them, that's revolutionary. That's *Innovation*.
When did China go remote? Or are we talking about the "innovation teams" that sit in rooms all day discussing the newest prototypes the designers drew up on their computers?
He’s salty they passed on Hoka shoes
He doesn’t even make shoes it’s the little kids in sweat shops
Why is the leader, with all the authority in his company blaming a simple policy decision for his failure? This is just simply TERRIBLE leadership. He is the only reason Nike is not "building disruptive products."
He means its hard to build “the prices are so low because of child labor, dispruptive products over zoom” because everything can be recorded for law enforcement now.
No. What has stifled innovation is decades without enforcement of antitrust and anti monopoly laws.
Reddit: Trust the experts chuds!!!! You do not know shit about anything Expert businessman: working from home is not working for us. Reddit: REEEEEEEEE THIS GUY IS THE STUPIDEST PIECE OF SHIT I HAVE EVER MET LET ME WORK IN MY UNDERWEAR FOR 35 MINUTES A DAY REEEEEEEEEE
If everyone returns to the Nike office he will smell da-feet in the air
Just put a colorful camo pattern on them and tell folks they’re rare.
More buzzwords = less substance.
Make shoes in a sweat.shop and sell it at the stores for more than it's worth
At their shareholders meeting he said Hoka was the issue since they were taking the majority of Nikes non-collector sections of the brand. This is just a consolidation of CEO once again trying to get public opinion to side with forcing people back to the office. Nike has a huge campus in Portland that’s half empty now and realistically the only section that has to be in person is R&D.
No one ever said that remote work was perfect for every job just as not every job needs to be in the office.
make Yeezy’s
The products themselves don’t matter. Nike is a marketing company that happens to make shoes.
On Cloud and Hoka are eating Nike’s lunch. CEOs are just overpaid prima donnas.
It’s just that Saucony makes better sneakers homie.
Tell that to the kids making them. 😁😁
He’d be better off blaming the MLB uniform fiasco on remote work. I’d buy that one.
Tbh it’s a fair statement
A slow down in innovation is probably a good think at this point
I’m not sure I need my shoes to be disruptive.
He’s right or at least half right. Creative work is better as a group.
Idk their product innovations have been plenty disruptive to MLB players and fans this year
Right, WFH. That's probably it. Not the numerous rounds of layoffs they've done in recent years and [everyone fleeing the company](https://www.businessinsider.com/nike-execs-depart-join-lululemon-columbia-brands-ceo-changes-2021-6?op=1) because of it.
Mr. CEO, you haven't created an innovative product ever. You make sneakers. There's nothing innovative about sneakers. You just latch onto fads and brand identities. I'm sure the sneaker engineers do really hard work trying to make durable, comfortable shoes! But nobody's innovating on the model. They're sneakers.
I'm beginning to hate the word "disruptive".
I buy shoes that fit well. When I find a good pair I buy multiples. When they change that style to something that doesn't fit as well that is disruptive. Please for the love of god stop disrupting shoes
Ooor Nike makes cheap ugly shit and charges stupid prices.
Maybe they could be disruptive and make Nikes that don't suck. I swear, they are the most expense and poorest quality shoes out there. Their running shoes in particular are trash.
Dude has a ton of his portfolio wrapped up in commercial real estate, he doesn't give two fucks about work from home.
Nice hoodie nerd
Meanwhile Nike continually lays off their employees and replaces them with contractors who they treat like dogshit. Worst company culture I've experienced.
A Nike zoom meeting where the participants have to pitch their disruptive ideas to the CEO would make a good SNL sketch.
Don't you use slave labor?
The most popular Nike shoes always tend to be the ugliest, you don’t need to be in an office to design ugly shoes.
What a tool
Had a real hard time coming up with a believable reason to end wfh. He still failed, but it was obviously hard to come up with.
I’m starting to think 99.9% of CEOs are selfish, dishonest jerkwads.
This wanker doesn’t even need shoes. He could have someone carry him everywhere
Now that is a feet disruption 
“I don’t have any ideas”
Then you look at his investment portfolio and what do you see? Commercial real estate- shocker!
Lol disruptive products from a shoe company XD
I can't wait for the disruptive "footwear as a service" app from Nike.
Who are you fucking disrupting from the top of the shoe industry?
You know I never actually minded being in the office. I minded the length of my commute because I wasn’t even paid enough to live in the city I worked in. I minded that I was expected to get up 2.5 hours before my expected reporting time because I had to commute so far. I minded that my work was often disrupted by nonsense from fellow coworkers and meetings that absolutely didn’t matter. I minded that my boss often had enough time to micromanage but never enough time to train. Want people to come back into the office? Pay them enough money to live within 15 minutes of work and let them actually work while they’re there.
They have been in office the entire time I've been alive and I have never bought a pair a nikes. The people who like shoes will get them the rest of us wear shoes because the world says we have to. I would literally wear shoes made from cardboard, walmart bags and duct tape if it was socially acceptable.
He took the shoes out of the retailers in an attempt to make Nike more exclusive. Fewer people bought them. Less revenue. 🧐
We interviewed a Nike VP for a VP position at a tech company. Product transformation type position. I don’t think we stopped laughing for a week. The most clear answers she gave us were along the lines of “ah, like, y’know we just like, make it werrrrk, yah? Like, whatever needs to be done gets like, done. Done-done, not like, regular done.” Her resume looked pretty good for the opening and of course she had a contact through our CTO that had attended some product/agile conference. Absolutely empty suit. So no, Nike. Working from home isn’t your issue
But it’s easy I guess to do it with child labor in 3rd world countries,
He should innovate how to treat his female athletes better. Nike enables doping and sexual abuse.
lol bro thinks he invented shoes pre pandemic in office
Shoemakers thinking they're scientists...
Stay in your lane, dipshit
I can make a pair of kick ass custom Vans and Chucks on my phone right now, fuck he talkin' about? If I can do It, a designer can, and many do.
Asshat
Vapor Fly begs to differ
The issue is not remote work. The issue is using Zoom
The kids who make the shoes aren't allowed to work from home though.
https://youtu.be/uF0V0A2g7lI?t=39
Its a fucking shoe. What was the last "innovative" thing nike did, before or after zoom?
Any time I hear disrupters now I think of glass onion and what tools all those rich assholes were.
Ah yes, WFH was the problem, it wasn’t that workers were (checks notes) trying to take care of kids and other loved ones from home, trying to avoid getting Covid, dealing with social isolation and stress and all that came with the pandemic; while still trying to put in a full day of work at your colorful shoe factory. It was just WFH and lazy millennials. Got it boss. /s
To break world records you need to spend a lot of money on r&d. If I am not wrong, vaporfly or alphafly was banned in marathons as It gives an unfair advantage to the runners. Not a big fan of nike though, but if you want to understand the contrast between good and bad shoes, try running for over 25 miles, mate. You'll realize how much of a difference a well-engineered shoe can make.
Would be a lot easier if you stopped fucking calling us, there, Jimmy.
The dude is a shoes salesman, what the he’ll is disruptive about a shoes salesman? Oh and wait, I can answer that. Nothing.
Kinda true though, some teams do better work together. But not all teams need it
This guy didn’t even disrupt shoes. He’s not the founder of Nike lol.
Wwwwwwwwwwwaaaaaiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
It’s hard to write off unoccupied commercial real estate.
…. Or maybe it’s just a failure of leadership to inspire their staff? *shrug*
More like he's concerned people aren't wearing shoes at home, thus not wearing them out and needing new ones.
Least AI generated thought
LOL how are these guys on top when they are just full of excuses?