Swag in the Tech Industry
triosdevelopers.com
triosdevelopers.com
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.
But according to you I have an unhealthy identity problem or longing for validation if I wear a t-shirt?
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.
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
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?
They're just clothes! Most people aren't that much into fashion that they'd care like you think they would!
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.
If you can see that the person is pondering about the answer, it tells you right away that they do care.
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.
[0] https://www.harmontblaine.com/US/all-the-good-things/t-shirt...
[1] https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/Elf-Green-and-Black-on-W...
How can it be that so many people say they "don't care" about what they wear, yet their overall style is so uniform?
Not caring in that context means minimizing effort, time spend and external impact on their lives, while maximizing comfort. Buying what everyone else buys maximizes that value.
I would say I don't care about clothes, but had to make some choices when I got cats. I used to wear primarily black clothes, but cat fur is extremely visible and hard to get off them, so now I just buy diverse colors, while still not caring whether the green is too bright and goes with beige or whatever.
That kind of goes in with "not caring". I agree with your overall thrust here - clothing is a social signal whether or not you want it to be. Even the lack of someone signaling is in itself a signal. It legitimately took me a very long while to figure this out.
For me - comfort is all that matters, even in public, until I get into a social situation. Then it's simply dressing to "the average" as to not stick out. I used to describe this as not caring, but it definitely is caring in my own way. Plenty of other folks dress specifically to stand out, so the opposite is certainly a positive action as well.
In the end, me simply wearing pretty much the same dumpy thing everyday sort of became a personal brand in of itself.
That said, I'd be perfectly happy with everyday uniforms assuming they are comfortable. It would save me mental effort of having to imagine what other folks will be wearing in a given situation.
Like i might not care generally, but part of not caring is that i don't really want to draw undue attention to the item in question. E.g. I probably wouldn't wear a shirt that was neon green sequins or something similarly ostentatious. That said, im not going to care about a pocket one way or another.
I suppose you could say not caring is a spectrum not a binary.
None happen to be emblazoned with my company logo (and we make swag), because the better swag we give out are hoodies and exercise pants.
(Small shoutout to Cloudability here, who gave away some of the most comfortable swag I have. I’ve likely worn their shirts (2) almost 100 days in total.)
If that marks me as "uncool" to certain people, that seems like an added benefit, as i can't imagine i would get along well with anyone who judges people on such a shallow metric.
... for you.
Many are more utilitarian with clothes. Clean, comfortable, and suitable for the activity/environment are most important. Color, pattern, design is more of a minimum threshold filter (e.g not going to wear something offensive)
It's similar to food. Some people "eat" because calories are required and they don't care much being that, while others "dine" because they want something more out of it than generic calories.
Filtering is still self-expression and related to social dynamics. What you don't say can be as informative as what you do.
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.
[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/donated-clothing-where...
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.
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
>>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.
I say, aim for a tiny amount of high-quality swag. Or hell, just give people branded gift cards!
Generally I think that if there is going to be swag given away, people should get to opt in to swag or such swag should be wholly biodegradable.
My kid had a birthday party at a local trampoline park and they gave him a t-shirt. I wasn't expecting much, but it was really cool. It had a piece of original art on the front, followed by the name of the park underneath. Even with the name of the business, it didn't look like an advertisement because the name of the business doesn't sound like a business. Everyone around here knows exactly what it is, but if we went somewhere else it just looks like a fun t-shirt from the kids section at a department store. They perfectly nailed the balance between serving the business and the customer at the same time.
For the same price as a sweater with a logo on it, I got bespoke wool pea coats made for everyone on my team (made to fit to their measurements), with custom printed lining and an embroidered subtle logo on it. Final cost with shipping was about $70pp. Tailor made clothes look so much better and it makes people want to wear them more. The cost was time - it's about a 2mo turnaround and you'll be looking at about 8 hrs of spend on your end coordinating things.
The only time I was jealous of other conference attendees was when they ran out of a multi-USB adapter set that was given out as branded swag.
Weeks of looking online later I finally found the manufacturer: van maehlen and its allroundo sets. [1]
I instantly bought it and it's since been always in my backpack. The only other swag I still have and actively use is a rubberducky and a teensy ;)
Stickers are purely decorative, low environmental footprint, and unobtrusive mentally.
Although the permanence of sticking makes them a bit less collectible, and I'd like it something like Velcro patches got popular.
Headphones? No. Absolutely not. I have Anker bluetooth earbuds. I do not want your crap without active noise cancellation risking my hearing if I actually try to use it.
Keychain flashlight? No. I do not want crap to carry around. It's dim and non-rechargable.
Water bottles? Better be self cleaning with UV light and vacuum insulated.
Pens? I rarely use them. When I do it's for less than 30 seconds. Cheap ballpoints can dry up even if not used, so it's not like I want to have a bunch randomly lying around "just in case" that won't work in a month when I actually want one.
I have a pile of at like 6 jackets worn once or never that I got as gifts. Lots of random multitools and crap like that. I. Do. Not. Want. It.
I don't even make much money. If I was making 40k+ a year I would want them even less.
I will not bog down my life with little bits of 20 years outdated low tech junk. Especially not from a tech company.
I can maybe see mugs. But... only because sometimes I'm lazy about washing the dishes, and having more makes it easier to go longer in between....
On the other hand, it's also common (and somewhat strange) to see homeless in SF wearing company branded clothing that was donated.
Not good enough for you, but good enough for them?
I’m haunted by the endless piles of free XL-sized shirts I’ve gotten in my lifetime, because if you just order them big enough they’ll “fit” everybody, right?
Or maybe I’ll replace the nice things that I’ve purchased, specifically to avoid buying the made-for-landfill nick nacks that I’d have to discard and replace every year. Great design choice on that cheap aluminum alloy bottle opener. Surely it will hold up to repeated cranks against steel bottle caps without marring… Perhaps I should retire the weighty iron one that my buddy the blacksmith made for me that will probably outlive the liquid distribution method that necessitated its existence. I think not.
You are right about the less-identifiable pieces though. A small logo on the shoulder or plain-colored, small name printed goes a long way
I have no use for one. Haven't opened a bottle in a few years now. And maybe have done so at most 30 times throughout my life. (Don't drink soda and rarely drink alcohol.)
As you've proven, having alcohol based events doesn't require anyone (and def not everyone) to get drunk.
> It's hard to work with someone who threw up in your Uber the night before
You clearly have some issues with people who drink to excess. That's your prerogative, so maybe you should work with different people.
Wtf? That's definitely not on the poster. I don't have a problem with an (optional) work happy hour, but its still work and a base level of professionalism is expected. People drinking to excess at work events is a major red flag for the company.
One of the nice things about remote-friendly companies these days is less pressure to be around alcohol-infused events.
I have gotten some good swag over the years, but the best was a set of sturdy metal pen/stylus/flashlight combo pens from a company who sells corporate document storage services I have not yet had a need for.
While working for a large investment bank, I attended a presentation by a video game company. I well remember the huge crowd of people afterwards surrounding a table with goodies; very, very well-compensated Wall Street people pushing and shoving to get a free video game.
It has very nice and slick look, and is actually very useful.
Going to Microsoft events in the late 90s, early 2000s I remember getting all kinds of good swag, webcams, toolkits, t-shrts, usb drives, headsets.