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Comment by rescbr | Hacker News Reader

The best thing I got out from my past employment at IBM is an eye-bee-m t-shirt that I (obviously) bought at the company store.

This t-shirt, the all-IBM I-shaped brutalist building I worked at, and the customer demo mainframe idly blinking in the lobby all evoked the mighty past of a company bled dry by its senior management. Even the company store selling branded knick-knacks, it somehow made me very proud to work at such a centenary company.

The company I left IBM for? Yeah, it's just another Fortune 10 soul-less corporation in a nondescript glass building. Not that IBM wasn't, but at least you could see the computing history on the walls.

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I was a second generation IBMer and the best thing I got when I left was a big engineer control panel out of a storage controller - all lights, switches and knobs. It's been sitting for 30 years waiting to be turned into a flashing art piece on the wall.

If you have kids or grandkids or even a school nearby why not convert it into a space shuttle control board for them with an Arduino or Raspberry Pi. It would be more useful and inspiring for them.

Ooh, that reminds me that I have a small status lights panel from some IBM mainframe (with tiny bulbs, not LEDs)... maybe my winter project will be to finally convert it to a geeky desk clock.

I still have some small tan paper memo pads with THINK on the cover.

also: remember there is ANOTHER ibm:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Brotherhood_of_M...

(younger at only 101 years old)

I worked at Nest for a bit and we moved into the buildings below the hallowed Xerox PARC building. One of my absolute joys was making the winding trek up the hill just to meander outside the building and take in its architecture and history.

It’s strange to think of an organization whose essential imperative is “make money” as being something to consider in some sort of wider sociological, historical or even artistic context, but these places _were_ very important and some of them even harbor beauty.

I suddenly feel privileged for having gotten my eye-bee-m t-shirt as free swag at an event. I did buy my 'Think' coffee mug, and the grand prize to me, a 'Think' baseball cap, to wear when necessary.

I spent eight years at IBM and I too appreciated all the references to their storied history.

Don't mean to be rude but... You _bought_ company swag, as an employee?

Don't they usually give out like at least a free t-shirt and a mug for everyone?

A big Swiss re-insurance company, whose C-level somebody loves to buy and exhibit expensive art pieces in their office buildings, gave a $50 Christmas gift to their employees, which was a coffee table book of PICTURES of those art pieces.

Just to make it clear, the $50 was the discounted price for the book that the employees had to PAY.

The gift was the discount. On the book. Of photos of $M++ art.

Nah, you had to pay for crap coffee as well.

The cafeteria vendor drama was also a fun way to feel the bean counting penny-pinching machine at work.

The company store was there mostly to sell swag to give them to customers. I’ve expensed plenty of branded stuff, and well, that eye-bee-m t-shirt is classy. Every end of quarter or so they also had a sale that sold stuff below market rates, so it was a cheap way to get nice suitcases and backpacks.

They probably used to. Then the accountants got involved and removed that expense.

Along with everything else they could think of too.

Free coffee for employees? Not from about 2 decades ago... ;)

The free coffee and discounted cafeteria food stopped in 1992, at least at Myers Corners Lab near Poughkeepsie.

pretty sure ibm canada still has free coffee

Company I worked for had a bucket of quarters at the receptionists desk so if you had representatives/clients from other companies come over you could get some so that they could get themselves a coffee.

They finally made coffee free when the sales guys said it was too embarassing.

About 5 years ago the lab in Toronto had free coffee but the other offices did not.

Enjoying my Starbucks-brewed, free coffee here in IBM RTP :)

> Free coffee for employees? Not from about 2 decades ago... ;)

Is this a joke that went over my head, or are they seriously making their employees pay for coffee?

At least here in Australia, (about 2 decades ago) they seriously stopped having free coffee - or any other drink except tap water - for their employees.

Yep, it's as brain damaged an idea as it seems, and yep it's also an accurate depiction of how little they think of their employee productivity.

Mid 2010s I worked in the UK office and we had to bring our own tea/coffee/milk. I don't think we had any 'benefits' that you'd associate with modern tech companies.

The team I was in had no money to expense so for the first few months I worked using just the company provided laptop with no peripherals, and had to wait for someone leaving to be able to grab their external monitor and a laptop stand. Team/Company morale was very low in my time there.

I'm currently enjoying free coffee here at the IBM RTP, NC office. We have free soda machines, free snacks, and free Taco Tuesdays (today, yay!). Pre-pandemic we had more free snacks including fresh fruit, but for some reason they got rid of the fruit. It's not that bad honestly. Not a big fan of the RBA though :(

What is "RTP"?

Research Triangle Park in North Carolina (USA). It sits between 3 cities, Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill which each contain very well known universities, NC State, Duke, and UNC Chapel Hill. Lot of tech, bio/ag, and research hubs here.

Yes, most of IBM charged you for coffee. And this is when they were still doing okay. The real gem was around 2010 when my location stopped picking up trash from offices and cubes. You had to dump your bin into the big one at the end of the building.

Perfect example of missing the forest for the trees business practices based on seeing only numbers and missing any sort of coherent picture.

The money wasted on the employees dumping their own bins probably offsets the money saved on cleaning staff directly by an order of magnitude, not to mention the indirect losses of people being annoyed/pissed and leaving.

It's the case in most companies unfortunately.

My office in US has free sodas, snacks, and coffee. As well as free lunch weekly. Not as bad as some people’s experiences here I guess

I worked at a US IBM site for a couple weeks a few years back and they had an engineer assigned to my group who would walk with us to the kitchenette and pay for our coffee from the machine each time. I hope he was reimbursed!

For a few years, at my office in the UK, they charged 8p for the hot water to put your tea bag in.

Along with all other stupid stuff you can blame MBAs for that. Fucking bean counters.

I know that it seems surprising but at least he (she?) paid to wear a shirt advertising the company he was working for. Many people pay for the privilege to advertise companies that won't give them a penny, only taking more money from them.

Sweet summer child working at a West Coast tech startup. Why give away swag when you can have your employees buy it? This is how it usually is outside the bubble.

I don't work for a startup I work for a broke company constantly shedding employees and I got a free shirt and a mug..

Well if they didn't give away free shirts and mugs they might be a little less broke after all.

I worked the occasional temp night shift at an Amazon warehouse shoving boxes around while working on a startup and they gave out a fair amount of swag. One could call them a tech company and therefore in the bubble but this is about as low on the totem pole as you can get. To their credit, they at least had to foresight to realize that free swag is free advertising. Enlightened self-interest if you will.

Company swag is usually the kind of gear you are wearing while doing stuff that could make you dirty. Lawn mowing, doing house shores, home renovation, fixing a bike or car....

Not something you would willingly spend money on and this is definitely stuff companies give away for free. It seems to be changing a bit now with companies having an environmental committee for all stuff that is made in plastic.

For context I work at a startup that was bought by a megacorp but had a west coast swag mentality for years... the swag I got:

- T-shirt, nice water bottle, backpack pins for interviewing (we got them on the swap over) - Hoodie and very nice ~$120 backpack on start - Hoodie at 2 years - Hoodie at holidays every year - T shirt & hoodie at every con I worked - Backpack at 2 years - Team hoodie, 3 t-shirts, or nort face soft shell every year with team logo on it - Yeti coffee cups for each team I founded - Custom yeezies

I have around 20 hoodies now, 3 backpacks, 30 shirts. This doesn't include the electronics we got every year. All of this stuff is american apparel (pre-issues) or nicer.

From megacorp I got a bad t-shirt and a paper thin targus backpack and the option to buy swag. When I rolled over to acquired startup we got a swag budget to bribe megacorp employees into meetings with us. It worked very well. We'd get Sr VPs in to a room with just a t-shirt for their kids.

I don't work on the west coast though I am originally from there. I've worked at 4 companies in Texas in the last 10 or so years ranging from 10s of thousands of employees with international presence down to only 35 employees when I started.

Every single one had free coffee and snacks as well as free swag at least once or twice a year. Meaning shirts, sweatshirts, hats etc. Mostly lowish quality if I'm being fair, but my last company would give everybody really high quality stuff like 3-4 times a year.

Idk. I worked for a massive company that is as east coast as they come. We'd still get free swag all the time. Usually for participating in events or coming to talks and stuff.

Same thing with the startup I worked for, and the midsize/small company I work for now.

From my experience, this is not how it is outside the bubble of SV.

Worked for 15 years at a large telecom. The only company swag I have, I won in a lottery, or stole.

Is there in general any kind of market for functional swag (T-shirts etc.) for companies that have hit the graveyard ?

Definitely, check eBay for overpriced vintage DEC, etc swag. Whether the stuff actually sells, I don’t know.

DEC? We all know Wang is what the cool kids are wearing.

I went to my local Goodwill store looking for the final touches of my Halloween costume. I was disappointed to find the t-shirt bins were completely filled with tech company T-shirts, barely worn.

I used to have a nice black gloss mug with only the word THINK engraved on it in nice white letters.

Someone took it away from me at my new job though.

But I am guessing your new company won't kick you to the curb when you get to be 50+?

They kicked me out way before I got to be 50 :)

Sorry to hear, hope all is good now.

Sounds like the IBM building in Southfield.

My how far they've deviated from that history.

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