Things are getting daft in Silicon Valley with staff turning their CEO’s into rich people cults (are you sure you spelt that right? Ed) and wearing their faces.
The Wall Street Journal reports that staff at big tech companies are starting to see their bosses as gods and want to wear their images.
In most industries, wearing clothing with a CEO’s face on it would get you laughed out of the building. In Silicon Valley, it is basically the dress code for the tech-bro cult.
Palantir sells a $75 T-shirt with chief executive Alex Karp’s face on it, which is a sentence that should never have been necessary to write.
Defence-tech outfit Anduril sells flower-print Hawaiian shirts inspired by founder Palmer Luckey’s look, and the first batch at $79.99 sold out.
A bunch of e-commerce sites offer leather motorbike jackets advertised as similar to ones worn by Huang and Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, with prices starting around $140.
Leather Cult tries to flog a $250 “Jensen Huang Leather Jacket. Be the ultimate fashion king with our leather jacket that lets you be the debonair personality in the room.”
Tech CEOs used to be literal nerds who looked like they were dressed in the dark by their moms, and everyone was fine with that. Now plenty are pushing a louder, rebellious bro vibe, and their fans are buying the uniform.
PayPal software engineer Hardik Nahata said: “Jensen Huang is like the Taylor Swift of Silicon Valley. He has that aura about him.”
Executive coach Alisa Cohn said: “Startup founders often share a ‘brazen, somewhat bizarre personality’ that fans want to connect with. It’s silly and funny. It’s like, ‘Let your freak flag fly. But it’s also about building a cult.”
No one leans into the tech-boss-as-hero routine like Palantir, and its Reddit crowd got twitchy when someone suggested the merch posts were a bit much.
A Reddit user wrote: “Unpopular opinion: all these merch posts are so ‘fan boy’ and extra cringe.”
Another loyalist wrote: “When is the robe and hood coming out? People say we’re a cult so we should just embrace it.”
A third commenter replied: “For me, it’s easy to ignore what people think… Not trying to please anyone. Just spending money where I want… Palantir’s the fu*king best.”
Mark Zuckerberg took founder worship to a new pitch in 2024, walking onstage at a Meta Platforms event wearing a black T-shirt reading “Aut Zuck Aut Nihil. [either Zuck or nothing.]”
He made it with LA designer Mike Amiri, and while neither sells it, an Amazon version goes for $15.99.
It has zero reviews. What a silly cult.
