Nike

Notes on working onsite at Nike.

Spring Cloud Netflix

Nike uses Java Spring as their preferred backend language and framework. There a few disparate Node JS services, but overall their e-commerce stack is based on Java, and particularly the Java Spring Cloud Netflix architecture.

Spring Cloud Netflix is a thing popularized by (of course) Netflix. It’s mainly a set of patterns, libraries, and tooling for deploying Java microservices. It’s not presmed to be on AWS, but it’s strongly encouraged.

The focal point of this microservice architecture is Eureka, a service registry. It’s a BEEEEFY service discovery pattern, which scales well with Spring.

Overall, lots of Nike Java stuff is inspired by Netflix.

Engineering Practices

Nike is a heavy Jira and Confluence shop. Engineering teams are often lead by engineers, instead of being lead by non-technical project managers.

Culture

Nike has a culture of “Run With Us”. Literally and figuratively.

Literally, people do indeed run a lot in the office. People are always coming up to you asking if you want to work out, go for a run, did you bring your shoes today, etc.

They also apply this ideology into work. Nike seems to like to hire third party vendors while controlling their internal (full-time) headcount quite tightly. Despite this, vendors are not treated as third class citizens. In my time at Nike, people treated me with respect, asked for my opinion and expertise.

Separately, people are pretty relaxed about work. People leave the office around 5:30 or 6.

Gear

Employees have 40-45% off deals at the Nike Employee store. You can get an employee to hook you up with the deals, but make sure they actually pay at the end. Then you give them money separately.

Nike also has occasional employee-exclusive sales, you can get up to 70% off there and you don’t have to be a full-time employee.