6 ms·
I actively HATE most company swag. Clothing is the most universal & oldest manner in which most people express themselves. To tie your company to your identity
by screye 4y ago
I actively HATE most company swag.
Clothing is the most universal & oldest manner in which most people express themselves. To tie your company to your identity so explicitly is unhealthy, and swag signals that to everyone within eyesight. My disdain most applies to every fashion with blocky company branding.
There is a way to do swag tastefully. I love MSFT's patent cubes and laptop stickers, it stays limited to professional life. Useful electronic gifts (tablets, headphones) are great, because the branding is an organic part of the product you buy. Even clothing can work, if the branding is undetectable. (Themed around tech, but not the company).
No, don't give me a 300$ Patagonia jacket or hiking bag with massive unremovable branding. I want to go climb my target mountain on it, and I do not want 'company name' plastered over some of my fondest memories. NO ONE has ever looked at a person wearing 'company brand' t-shirt and thought : "Gee, they must be smart, they work for big-name company'. This is further exacerbated by the fact that big name FANG+ companies are effectively in the business of advertisement and attention exploitation.
As long as tech people keep wearing terribly fitted company swag for everyday activities, I can't sympathize with their complains about tech careers perceived negatively in the dating market. We brought this upon ourselves.
- c0mptonFP 4y agoI like my company and I think the logo looks cool. Simple as that. But according to you I have an unhealthy identity problem or longing for validation if I wear a t-shirt?
- zeronine 4y agocorrect
- screye 4y agoI admittedly went a little overboard with the tone of my comment. I bet most people do not think as much about company swag. Why rain on your parade right ? I do think tech generally has an unhealthy problem of over-identifying with their company and that there is a certain insular monoculture resulting from it. At the end of the day, tech is situated within the greater social context around it. Any one who has their ears to the ground will know the most common complaints by young people in tech and how it ties into society's perception of young men in tech. I deeply respect anyone does not care about how society perceives them and can march on un-affected. At the same time, I see propagation of incorrect myths and resulting insecurities within younger tech workers. If you are an average human that's susceptible to all the common markers of status around them, then some counter to big-tech koolaid might be in order.
- Apocryphon 4y agoYou're right about the creepy over-branding that tech companies often indulge in. But it feels like now, four years after the Cambridge Analytica scandal implicated Facebook, three years after HBO's Silicon Valley ended, two years into the Great Resignation, and at the precipice of an impending recession, people are not looking at tech companies in the same starry-eyed way they did a decade ago.
- _se 4y agoI love my branded stuff. Most of my coworkers do too. It's nice and it looks good. I actually get compliments on a specific jacket that I have a couple of times per month from others saying they wished their company would do it (not developers saying this, of course). YMMV I guess? I don't think I would continue to work somewhere if I hated them as much as you seem to hate every possible employer.
- 3qz 4y ago> manner in which most people express themselves tbh I think this is not true in tech. More like laptop stickers and luxury Twitter bios. Sometimes I wonder if my coworkers know they have a physical form
- willis936 4y agoI'd much rather wear a logo of a company I choose to spend a third of my day supporting than that of a media or clothing franchise. If branding is unhealthy then surely the one chosen is healthier than the one prescribed.
- rglullis 4y agoHow about "none of the above"?
- willis936 4y agoHow about it? Any reason your entirely relative value are superior to mine?
- rglullis 4y agoJust going with what you said about "branding being unhealthy". If you do think that it is unhealthy and you can avoid it altogether, why still debate the relative merits of one vs the other?
- willis936 4y agoI don't think it's inherently unhealthy. I was giving that point to the top commenter as to make my point about the relative merit.
- rglullis 4y agoOk, then that's your answer. The argument for "none of the above" is because some people (which I'd include myself) would say that all branding is unhealthy, and that there is no "relative merit" to any of it.
- alisonatwork 4y agoI hate it too, and not just because it's making my body a free billboard that advertizes the company. It's because I don't want more clothes, period. I think it's fair to assume that anyone who works at a tech company - certainly in the dev department - is not going to be experiencing any personal shortage of clothing. Unless the point is to provide a corporate uniform, why give people more day-to-day stuff that they clearly already have enough of, seeing as they survived perfectly fine up until getting that job? It's profligate and gross. And that holds true for pretty much every form of company swag, to be honest. Is there any product the average upper middle class professional is seriously lacking in their personal life that would be cost-effective for an employer to provide in a swag bag? Realistically, no. It's all just a massive waste.
- Apocryphon 4y agoWhy don't you just donate the clothing?
- alisonatwork 4y agoA lot of donated clothing is still wasted, and for the stuff that eventually gets shipped to developing countries, some argue that it hollows out the local clothing industry[0]. Better to not produce unwanted clothes in the first place. [0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/donated-clothing-where-it-ends-up-1.4662023 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/donated-clothing-where...
- ok123456 4y agoReminds me of the time I saw a homeless guy riding the PATCO in Camden wearing a KDE shirt around 2003.
- chrisseaton 4y ago> To tie your company to your identity so explicitly is unhealthy They're just clothes! Most people aren't that much into fashion that they'd care like you think they would!
- rglullis 4y agoClothes are part of self-expression and play a role in a lot of social dynamics. Wearing swag is as much as a signal as wearing "fast-fashion" clothes or insisting on wearing a shirt and tie on places that do not require it.
- chrisseaton 4y ago> Wearing swag is as much as a signal as wearing "fast-fashion" clothes or insisting on wearing a shirt and tie on places that do not require it. Vast majority of people are genuinely just wearing some clothes and are not signalling anything.
- rglullis 4y agoMy standard test to see if this is true: "what if someone gets you this <slightly different style from what you commonly wear> piece of clothing?" It doesn't even need to be completely opposite, just different enough to be noticeable. If you can see that the person is pondering about the answer, it tells you right away that they do care.
- bawolff 4y agoThere is a lot tied up in "slightly". Like a burlap shirt is a slightly different style, but i wouldn't wear it because that sounds really uncomfortable. Similarly i might not care generally, but there is a line where i start to. I wouldn't wear a shirt with a picture of dead babies on it. Does that mean i care? Maybe technically, but in context i dont really think it shows i care in the way that was implied originally.
- 4y ago
- anothernewdude 4y agoI got a beanie with the company logo (which is pretty simple, just a stylised animal) and no words. Love that thing. But I think restraint is important. And that goes for other swag too. I'd wear say a Kube shirt or a Rust shirt, but only if they just have the logos.
- Dan_Sylveste 4y ago>NO ONE has ever looked at a person wearing 'company brand' t-shirt and thought : "Gee, they must be smart, they work for big-name company'. I wear my FAANG tshirt out to bars all the time and it gets me mad pussy. Maybe that's because they think I'm loaded but it works better than a Rolex. shrug
- chirau 4y agoI heavily disagree with this part: >>NO ONE has ever looked at a person wearing 'company brand' t-shirt and thought : "Gee, they must be smart, they work for big-name company'. Depending on the company, this goes a long way. I remember when I was working at a big 5 tech company and the swag definitely helped in bars and restaurants with the ladies. I definitely took advantage of it. Not that I relied on it, but it made things simpler. Don't underestimate the power of a clearly employees only shirt, jacket or backpack in conversations. Also ask the finance boys if those Patagonias with firm name didn't work wonders for them back in the day before branding was removed.
- malermeister 4y agoProtip: Keep the nice Patagonia jacket, buy a sew on badge that you like and stick it over the ugly company logo.
- wdb 4y agoTea mugs are my favourite swag :)