You'll read a bunch of glowing reviews about Nike's culture. Most employees are drinking gallons of Kool Aid and buy into the brand hype more than Nike consumers do. You'll often hear employees say "working for Nike has been a life long dream" of theirs. This is a huge blindspot-- nobody wants to say anything negative, about anything or anyone, ever. It's all cheerleading and roses, and everyone feels lucky just to be there. The power of the brand is also their achilles heel.
I love the brand too, but Nike has worst corporate culture I've ever encountered, at any company. No accountability anywhere. Seniority always trumps talent. Everyone talks a big game about teamwork, but it's every man for himself, all the way up the ladder as far as I could tell. Zero investment in developing their people-- no HR presence anywhere. Got a rotten manager? Abusive colleague? Too bad, there's nobody to help you. I never even had an HR person in my division. Giant high school popularity contest, zero meritocracy. Multiple groups with the same assignments and charter will work in silos for months, even years, without knowing about each other. When they find out about each other, it devolves into Game of Thrones/Hunger Games. Back stabbing, idea stealing, and double-crossing are all common practice in these scenarios; I saw it at very high levels of the company, too. It's a flat out organizational disaster with a flaky day-to-day culture: show up late (or not at all) to meetings, everything gets a green light/thumbs up face to face but nobody backs up their word when it comes to budgeting or anything else that requires an actual commitment. Senior leadership stays loyal to terrible under-performers who are allowed to waste millions of dollars and ruin multiple careers beneath them because they've "been at Nike since the early days." I personally worked inside a gigantic "bozo explosion" that worked exactly the way Jobs described it: B players hiring C players hiring D and F players, all the way down the line. These same clowns then 'fail up' into positions of higher and higher salary with less and less accountability because nobody wants to have tough conversations or real talk. Basically it's a giant playground run by the children who keep their friends in cushy, undeserved roles while great talent is squandered beneath them and eventually leaves for other companies. And no, I'm not generalizing my own path-- in my first 2 years I watch a list of all-stars quit in disgust. Nike didn't care. They didn't even bother with exit interviews. The attitude is "you're lucky to work here, so if you don't like it there's something wrong with you."
