Don't companies usually hand out t-shirt swag with their company names on it?

Most of the time that I see someone with a company logo on their shirt I do not readily assume they work at that company.

I would never assume someone walking around with a North Face t-shirt works for North Face but tech companies are obscure, especially outside of the big tech cities. If I see someone wearing a t-shirt for a tech company in my city, they more likely than not work for that company. If I saw someone with an Uber shirt I would assume they work for them, and probably as corporate. I can't say I've ever seen a driver wearing Uber swag.

Personally, most company swag I've worn once or twice and then throw in the Goodwill bag. So it's possible there's some random folks wearing a $NoNameCo shirt, but I'd wager they're just as likely recycled into something else.

As a receiver of a lot of SWAG, all of those company shirts become pajamas until the day they go into the H&M donation bag. I can't imagine any situation outside of working for that company where I would want to walk around advertising for them on an uninspired shirt with their logo plastered on it.

I've gotten one single shirt from a hackathon I considered wearing based on their well designed logo, but the entire back is covered in sponsors rendering the entire thing garbage.

I can imagine one - I would gladly wear SpaceX swag everywhere I go. Hell, I'd wear a SpaceX-themed tie.

Beyond that, I prefer to order t-shirts with my own design; $random-company swag frequently ends up as home/nightwear for either me or my SO.

SpaceX ran a promotion for employees where everything was 50% off. A few of my friends worked there and I was broke so for 2.50 for cofee mugs, hats and shirts was pretty attractive. I was a spacex brand whore for 6 months due to poverty. Love tge company though, if you can ever tour that facility I cant recommend it enough

Almost all of my t-shirts, and a good chunk of my polos are random swag from various conferences or trainings, and all of the baseball caps I wear on a regular basis are (Red Hat used to give out really nice ones).

I couldn't really give a shit what I look like most of the time, however, so your mileage may vary. But I don't have to buy t-shirts...

I did this to a man at a San Jose dog park that was wearing a Netflix shirt. It turns out he just got it from the local Goodwill and had no connection to Netflix.

I collect company shirts, often from companies or apps I like. Occasionally I wear them, especially if they just had a good earnings report.

I've been at a couple of companies where a large number of employees wore company branded items. I was flabbergasted to learn that the clothing items were not swag but purchased items. Of the 2 companies, one had world wide name recognition, but the second definitely did not.

I once worked at a company where the dress code required collared shirts, but the dress code stated that any company-branded items were exempt from the policy. The company had branded T-shirts to give to customers as loyalty rewards/promo items, so we bunch of us pooled together on a batch order. Cost about $2 a shirt and was dress code compliant, which was great for those of us who commuted by motorcycle!

I enjoy where I work, and would happily wear company-logo shirts every day. Unfortunately, I can't just buy a _single_ company-logo shirt, as they are only sold as part of the marketing-swag portal that requires Large Batches (20+?).

I'm shocked that, as an employee, there's no "company store" where I can buy an extra $Company coffee mug, t-shirt, polo shirt, etc.

Which companies?

Cisco does that and it’s freaking expensive like $100> for a hoodie the gear they sold on the employee store was decent hoodies were Columbia soft shells were TNF but man that swag was expensive.

Internal schwag differs from external schwag.

Often times the internal schwag is made by name brand outfits. The stuff they give out can be lowest bidder stuff. Also designs can be somewhat different for the internal vs external versions.

That said, perh for many smaller cos both are one in the same.

To be fair, the drivers are employees in a few countries nowadays :P