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I'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.

How about "none of the above"?

How about it? Any reason your entirely relative value are superior to mine?

Just 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?

I 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.

Ok, 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.

I 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?

I 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.

You'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.

correct

> 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

> 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!

Clothes 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.

> Clothes are part of self-expression and play a role in a lot of social dynamics.

... 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.

> Color, pattern, design is more of a minimum threshold filter (e.g not going to wear something offensive)

Filtering is still self-expression and related to social dynamics. What you don't say can be as informative as what you do.

Its a signal that i don't give a shit and enjoy clothes i don't have to pay for.

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.

> 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.

My 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.

There 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.

I really don't mean to be tricky about it. I mean really small things; like getting a t-shirt in the same normal fabric and adding a breast pocket [0]. Or if the person only uses neutral colors, would they wear something like [1] if they found it on their wardrobe?

[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...

Vast majority of people could not possibly care less about these differences between their clothes. You're hugely over-estimating how many people in tech care about what they wear.

If that was true, wouldn't you expect a much larger variance in how people got dressed?

How can it be that so many people say they "don't care" about what they wear, yet their overall style is so uniform?

> How can it be that so many people say they "don't care" about what they wear, yet their overall style is so uniform?

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.

They aren't "not caring" in a sense they don't spend a minute of their time choosing clothes. It's not a binary choice.

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.

Because they don’t care to vary from what’s easy to find and wear for most people.

Is there something wrong with saying you don't care about the logo on a shirt, but might care about other things?

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.

I wear swag based entirely on the comfort factor. I have around 6-8 T-shirts all emblazoned from some tech company or other (plus one car company) that I wear because they’re vastly more comfortable than the 50 others I could have chosen.

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.)

I 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.

I 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.

Why don't you just donate the clothing?

A 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...

Reminds me of the time I saw a homeless guy riding the PATCO in Camden wearing a KDE shirt around 2003.

I 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.

I 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.

Protip: Keep the nice Patagonia jacket, buy a sew on badge that you like and stick it over the ugly company logo.

>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

You think that you're attracting people because of your shirt? You don't think you have any personal qualities that might be a factor? (Wow)

Poe's Law strikes again.

I am truly scratching my head. I'm stumped.

Tea mugs are my favourite swag :)