I don't think it's generally true that The Brand Age is as bleak as this essay might suggest.
Branding is not inherently unproductive, nor is it guaranteed to produce worse watches. They may be larger and less accurate, but consumers still (evidently) find value in the brand. A Grand Seiko or a Nomos or a Patek is perhaps now even more interesting & identity-productive than a watch from the 60s.
As technologists I think we're prone to dismissing improvements that aren't engineering-backed. But all life is storytelling, and labeling that work as "button-pushing" is… dismissive, to say the least.
jgrahamc 34 minutes ago [-]
"Because at Patek he'd encounter the most extreme brand age phenomenon: artificial scarcity. You can't just buy a Nautilus. You have to spend years proving your loyalty first by buying your way through multiple tiers of other models, and then spend years on a waiting list."
Strange game, the only winning move is not to play.
I've heard other brands do this (Ferrari?) and, of course, there are lines outside "luxury" brands like Louis Vuitton. Why bother?
This is so silly. Do you really not have any hobbies where you spend inordinate time or money on things you could objectively accomplish quicker and cheaper, but having less fun, in other ways? Like, I ski. It’s a silly way to get up and down a hill in the 21st century.
I’m not a watch guy. But mechanical watches are beautiful. There are idiots who buy them. But that doesn’t mean everyone who does is an idiot.
kridsdale1 6 minutes ago [-]
We can say all the same things about cars, but nobody thinks it’s odd that there’s a status culture about cars worth more than $75,000.
7777777phil 1 hours ago [-]
Nike is a useful test case (1) here. Brand was the whole competitive moat for them and once athletic gear commoditized, then management spent five years cutting the things that sustain it: athlete relationships, premium positioning, product development. Each cut looked (somewhat) rational on its own but none of them were, taken together.
EDIT: Nevermind comments are apparently just a pg meta discussion..
fragmede 38 minutes ago [-]
The question is, in this new software world order, how much do brands matter vs what they've done vs network effects. I could have Claude code shit out a Facebook or Twitter clone, or an Uber clone, and have none of the baggage of Cambridge Analytica, being owned by Elon Musk, or Travis kalanick of Greyball and S. Fowler legacy. An Uber driver-turned-dev could easily stand up a competitor and give way more money to the drivers simply by not having the overhead that Uber has with lawyers and executive salaries in this age of ChatGPT. Drivers will go to where there's riders and money, and riders will go to where there's drivers and cheaper rides. (and no drivers.) If someone needs an app idea to work on, it's the incumbents, without the suck. Facebook without "People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks."
Because looking at Truth Social and Gab, people do adopt brands as part of their identity; and Uber but for drivers, or Facebook, without the spying, are trivial to make the software side of things on now. The fact that we haven't seen a dozen Uber competitors spring up is a testament to the fact that branding is a helluva moat. It's impossible to put a dollar value on it, but ChatGPT has no moat, except that it's Chat-fucking-GPT. The original chatbot and no matter how good Claude gets, it'll never be the original.
lionkor 24 minutes ago [-]
Also those vibe coded competitors will not make it. Feel free to try though
JumpCrisscross 10 minutes ago [-]
> those vibe coded competitors will not make it
Some of them will. And I suspect the set of markets in which they do will only increase—traditional SWE is probably dying, hard as that is to accept. But the fundamentals of engineering and business are nowhere close to going away. And those are the actually-hard parts of business.
kridsdale1 24 minutes ago [-]
(I look over to the Coca-Cola Classic on my table that I picked because my taste buds prefer the classic brand)
stackghost 22 minutes ago [-]
Your taste buds prefer the flavor, not the brand. If they changed their name to "Caramel Diet Fanta" but kept the recipe identical, you'd still enjoy the taste.
The New Coke brand failed because people didn't like the taste, not the other way around.
organsnyder 16 minutes ago [-]
Every time I drink a Coke (or any other soft drink), the brand's baggage (good and bad) is present. Unless you're doing a blind taste test, it's impossible to avoid that.
JumpCrisscross 18 minutes ago [-]
> I could have Claude code shit out a Facebook or Twitter clone, or an Uber clone
No, you couldn’t. At best you’d turn out a video game simulating Uber. The idea that all of the business is in its software seems to be one Silicon Valley perennially unlearns.
alephnerd 8 minutes ago [-]
I've found the newer generation of founders understand that. The issue is they don't use HN anymore.
I've noticed a significant tone and demographic shift on the site over the past 2-3 years with more Western Europeans and Midwesterners and fewer Bay Area+NYC users, and fewer decisionmakers or decisionmaking adjacent people using the site.
And the deeply technical types who used HN largely shifted to lobste.rs.
Karrot_Kream (another longtime HN user) identified this shift as well [0]
Brand are brittle. It takes a single CEO associated to some pedophile network or make a nazi salute and it's ready to plummet.
If the business really mainly on the technical merits of the product/service, even blank brand is an option. Many brand as a façade to a single plant is a different tradeoff.
nadis 34 minutes ago [-]
> "Brand is what's left when the substantive differences between products disappear. But making the substantive differences between products disappear is what technology naturally tends to do. So what happened to the Swiss watch industry is not merely an interesting outlier. It's very much a story of our times."
Really interesting parallel between decidedly traditional technology and today.
ChicagoBoy11 45 minutes ago [-]
His point of Omega doubling-down on the things that would progressively harder to establish a moat on made me think about what we have been seeing with higher ed. It seems the "smart ones" definitely read the book that making the "education better," in a world where it is mostly free, was a fool's errand, and now the margins that they all compete it stray far, far away from the quality of the schooling. I work in K-12, and see the same things happening here too.
P.S.: It is odd to me to have such a length pg essay been up for such a long time with just a handful of comments. Did something happen? I would've expected a wealth of discussion on a post like this by now.
fragmede 32 minutes ago [-]
The something that happened was ChatGPT. Enough commenters didn't like the idea that everything they write publicly online is fed in as training data for AI that there's been a shift in this site's community. That, and everyone got laid off, either for section 174 or AI reasons, but Twitter employees are no longer collecting that fast paycheck and posting here. I'm sure a data scientist could make a good analysis of if what I'm saying is backed by actual data, but that's my feel based on spending more time on here than is healthy.
creeble 39 minutes ago [-]
> So the only thing distinguishing one top brand from another was the name printed on the dial
Respectfully disagree.
Since the 60's (and one could argue, even long before that), watches are 1) fashion, and 2) male wealth-signaling fashion. That's it. Nothing more. And for males who subscribe to this wealth-signaling cult, they know from a long way away what watch brand is on that guy's wrist.
Okay, today's brands signal maybe a little differently than just wealth. Casio G-Shock watches aren't substantially different than their non-G-Shock counterparts in any significant way, but they cost way more. The G-Shock brand signals... I dunno, sportsy-ness? Maybe it is closer to a pure fashion brand here.
I think we've been in "The Brand Age" since the advent of advertising. There are plenty of products that have virtually no differentiation besides brand, and there (almost) always has been.
JumpCrisscross 22 minutes ago [-]
> they know from a long way away what watch brand is on that guy's wrist
No, they didn’t. The makers of movements and makers of cases were separate. From far away you only know the case on the wrist. Not the movement. (I think Rolex was the first mass-market Swiss watch brand to vertically integrate. Patek may have been the first boutique.)
creeble 17 minutes ago [-]
The movement isn't part of the brand. It's not part of the signal. The case/dial/sometimes band are the brand. And if you couldn't tell them apart, they wouldn't be any good at signaling, the entire point of wearing them.
JumpCrisscross 14 minutes ago [-]
> movement isn't part of the brand. It's not part of the signal. The case/dial/sometimes band are the brand
The movement was the expensive part. Audemars, Vacheron and Patek only made movements. The retailer would then put it in a case. That’s the entire point of PG’s essay.
> if you couldn't tell them apart, they wouldn't be any good at signaling, the entire point of wearing them
Which might lead you to revise your hypothesis around why these watches were bought and made in the “golden age of watches.” Then as now there is such a thing as quiet luxury.
kridsdale1 19 minutes ago [-]
They were. The Acquired podcast on Rolex really opened my eyes to this whole world. They defined the playbook in the 1930s that Apple repeated in the 80s and especially 2000s.
kridsdale1 21 minutes ago [-]
I entered this cult last year. It’s been super fun to spot and infer from a distance, as you say, these hidden signals that men have chosen to spend $20,000 to $120,000 on.
G-Shock says “I do things that are so dangerous and so off the grid your Rolex or Apple Ultra would shatter and die”. And it’s true, out of my whole collection, that’s the one that will still be within a ms of true time 25 years after the power goes out after the nukes go off.
crowcroft 4 minutes ago [-]
In almost every category meaningful differentiation is a myth. It sounds nice to tell yourself you've got it and talk about moats or whatever, but it misses the point.
What people usually mean when they talk about differentiation is distinctiveness [1]. Design isn't a differentiator for these watches it's about being distinctive. At the end of the day when telling the time is commoditized, and expensive watches are just a status symbol it's all you've got.
warren buffett always said brand was the only moat. only IP can be protected. Everything else can be replaced, rebuilt.
bogardon 41 minutes ago [-]
Is it just me or are an increasing number of (high profile) people in the tech industry into luxury watches these days?
kridsdale1 17 minutes ago [-]
Gotta do something with those RSUs.
I asked Claude to psychoanalyze why I got obsessed with them and it said I’m likely striving for something tangible that appeals to my engineer mindset that isn’t now obsolete in the age of AI. It’s my career’s existentialism.
observationist 37 minutes ago [-]
Status games are evergreen, and a lot of conspicuous consumption has fallen out of fashion. They've gotta flaunt their wealth and position somehow, and lambos are just too crypto-bro and gauche.
It's also a sales tactic - a watch can be a schelling point if you're looking to network with someone who's into it.
kridsdale1 15 minutes ago [-]
Watches were understated in the 70s and turned more to gold in the 80s and a super proliferation of diversity in the 90s. 90s also had machismo Schwarzenegger sized cases for steroid men.
2000s brought Hiphop bling culture to them which embraced maximalism with size further increasing and 85 diamonds and rubies being something worthy of showing.
2010s austerity led to a retreat all the way to 1940s style trench and dress watches, cases back to 38mm.
Post Covid, boldness is having a comeback. See the newest Planet Ocean. We are seeing bling and ostentatious gold again on celebrities this year.
mrexcess 30 minutes ago [-]
Anecdotally, in the trenches, I'm seeing a proliferation of Casio F-91w and AE-1200s. Maybe a counter response, lol.
busterarm 1 hours ago [-]
I can't respond to tzury's comment because it's already flagged and dead but I honestly don't think that's quite fair on this board.
The very same people who would be flagging that comment wouldn't bat an eye at saying they won't read or support anything by folks like DHH, or a hundred other prominent tech figures who have committed some ideological-wrong.
It's just a similarly heavy-handed reaction from the other side of the divide.
I don't find anything wrong or downvotable about people voicing perfectly valid criticisms about pg, his opinions, who he associates with and signal-boosts...unless these standards you all want to apply wrt cancellation are "for thee and not for me".
mikestew 27 minutes ago [-]
The very same people who would be flagging that comment wouldn't bat an eye at saying they won't read or support anything by folks like…
First off, you might be right for some small number of cases, but I’d flag any and all rants such as this, regardless of the target. Off-topic, and doesn’t contribute to the conversation.
Second, for those as you describe, when they go off on an off-topic rant about DHH, someone else will conveniently flag it.
tomhow 41 minutes ago [-]
> The very same people who would be flagging that comment wouldn't bat an eye at saying they won't read or support anything by folks like DHH
You have no way of knowing that. The guidelines against off-topic controversy and generic tangents apply, no matter who the author.
renewiltord 5 minutes ago [-]
People like being repetitive on this board. Read Google in title and say “I never use Google because killing Reader”. It’s not like LLM. It is worse. Like hashmap. Deterministic same answer. That’s fine for them. But I have no interest in starting everything with a litany, land acknowledgement, and whatever other modern preface required.
We acknowledge this message board is the rightful unceded home of the startup enthusiast people. We affirm their right to it and recognize their sovereignty.
See, you enjoy me bringing pet subject into discussion with nebulous relation? You want always to see it? Good. I will do so. No downvote it unfair.
fragmede 51 minutes ago [-]
You've got enough karma to click [vouch] on the comment if you think it shouldn't be dead. It's a bit of a rant, and while there are good points, they're lost in an emotional diatribe and, I mean, I feel for them, but I can also see why it was marked dead.
tzury 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
mpalmer 1 hours ago [-]
No thanks, I am thoroughly set on billionaire takes about how to be successful and what to pay attention to. That goes double for VC billionaires.
Rendered at 19:45:19 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Branding is not inherently unproductive, nor is it guaranteed to produce worse watches. They may be larger and less accurate, but consumers still (evidently) find value in the brand. A Grand Seiko or a Nomos or a Patek is perhaps now even more interesting & identity-productive than a watch from the 60s.
As technologists I think we're prone to dismissing improvements that aren't engineering-backed. But all life is storytelling, and labeling that work as "button-pushing" is… dismissive, to say the least.
Strange game, the only winning move is not to play.
I've heard other brands do this (Ferrari?) and, of course, there are lines outside "luxury" brands like Louis Vuitton. Why bother?
PS I'll stick to my Casios: https://blog.jgc.org/2025/06/the-discreet-charm-of-infrastru...
This status-through-martyrdom ritual to get it from retail at MSRP is utterly bizarre.
[1] https://www.chrono24.com/patekphilippe/nautilus--mod106.htm
ego, of course
This is so silly. Do you really not have any hobbies where you spend inordinate time or money on things you could objectively accomplish quicker and cheaper, but having less fun, in other ways? Like, I ski. It’s a silly way to get up and down a hill in the 21st century.
I’m not a watch guy. But mechanical watches are beautiful. There are idiots who buy them. But that doesn’t mean everyone who does is an idiot.
(1) https://philippdubach.com/posts/nikes-crisis-and-the-economi...
EDIT: Nevermind comments are apparently just a pg meta discussion..
Because looking at Truth Social and Gab, people do adopt brands as part of their identity; and Uber but for drivers, or Facebook, without the spying, are trivial to make the software side of things on now. The fact that we haven't seen a dozen Uber competitors spring up is a testament to the fact that branding is a helluva moat. It's impossible to put a dollar value on it, but ChatGPT has no moat, except that it's Chat-fucking-GPT. The original chatbot and no matter how good Claude gets, it'll never be the original.
Some of them will. And I suspect the set of markets in which they do will only increase—traditional SWE is probably dying, hard as that is to accept. But the fundamentals of engineering and business are nowhere close to going away. And those are the actually-hard parts of business.
The New Coke brand failed because people didn't like the taste, not the other way around.
No, you couldn’t. At best you’d turn out a video game simulating Uber. The idea that all of the business is in its software seems to be one Silicon Valley perennially unlearns.
I've noticed a significant tone and demographic shift on the site over the past 2-3 years with more Western Europeans and Midwesterners and fewer Bay Area+NYC users, and fewer decisionmakers or decisionmaking adjacent people using the site.
And the deeply technical types who used HN largely shifted to lobste.rs.
Karrot_Kream (another longtime HN user) identified this shift as well [0]
[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Karrot_Kream
If the business really mainly on the technical merits of the product/service, even blank brand is an option. Many brand as a façade to a single plant is a different tradeoff.
Really interesting parallel between decidedly traditional technology and today.
P.S.: It is odd to me to have such a length pg essay been up for such a long time with just a handful of comments. Did something happen? I would've expected a wealth of discussion on a post like this by now.
Respectfully disagree.
Since the 60's (and one could argue, even long before that), watches are 1) fashion, and 2) male wealth-signaling fashion. That's it. Nothing more. And for males who subscribe to this wealth-signaling cult, they know from a long way away what watch brand is on that guy's wrist.
Okay, today's brands signal maybe a little differently than just wealth. Casio G-Shock watches aren't substantially different than their non-G-Shock counterparts in any significant way, but they cost way more. The G-Shock brand signals... I dunno, sportsy-ness? Maybe it is closer to a pure fashion brand here.
I think we've been in "The Brand Age" since the advent of advertising. There are plenty of products that have virtually no differentiation besides brand, and there (almost) always has been.
No, they didn’t. The makers of movements and makers of cases were separate. From far away you only know the case on the wrist. Not the movement. (I think Rolex was the first mass-market Swiss watch brand to vertically integrate. Patek may have been the first boutique.)
The movement was the expensive part. Audemars, Vacheron and Patek only made movements. The retailer would then put it in a case. That’s the entire point of PG’s essay.
> if you couldn't tell them apart, they wouldn't be any good at signaling, the entire point of wearing them
Which might lead you to revise your hypothesis around why these watches were bought and made in the “golden age of watches.” Then as now there is such a thing as quiet luxury.
G-Shock says “I do things that are so dangerous and so off the grid your Rolex or Apple Ultra would shatter and die”. And it’s true, out of my whole collection, that’s the one that will still be within a ms of true time 25 years after the power goes out after the nukes go off.
What people usually mean when they talk about differentiation is distinctiveness [1]. Design isn't a differentiator for these watches it's about being distinctive. At the end of the day when telling the time is commoditized, and expensive watches are just a status symbol it's all you've got.
[1] - https://marketingscience.info/news-and-insights/differentiat...
I asked Claude to psychoanalyze why I got obsessed with them and it said I’m likely striving for something tangible that appeals to my engineer mindset that isn’t now obsolete in the age of AI. It’s my career’s existentialism.
It's also a sales tactic - a watch can be a schelling point if you're looking to network with someone who's into it.
2000s brought Hiphop bling culture to them which embraced maximalism with size further increasing and 85 diamonds and rubies being something worthy of showing.
2010s austerity led to a retreat all the way to 1940s style trench and dress watches, cases back to 38mm.
Post Covid, boldness is having a comeback. See the newest Planet Ocean. We are seeing bling and ostentatious gold again on celebrities this year.
The very same people who would be flagging that comment wouldn't bat an eye at saying they won't read or support anything by folks like DHH, or a hundred other prominent tech figures who have committed some ideological-wrong.
It's just a similarly heavy-handed reaction from the other side of the divide.
I don't find anything wrong or downvotable about people voicing perfectly valid criticisms about pg, his opinions, who he associates with and signal-boosts...unless these standards you all want to apply wrt cancellation are "for thee and not for me".
First off, you might be right for some small number of cases, but I’d flag any and all rants such as this, regardless of the target. Off-topic, and doesn’t contribute to the conversation.
Second, for those as you describe, when they go off on an off-topic rant about DHH, someone else will conveniently flag it.
You have no way of knowing that. The guidelines against off-topic controversy and generic tangents apply, no matter who the author.
We acknowledge this message board is the rightful unceded home of the startup enthusiast people. We affirm their right to it and recognize their sovereignty.
See, you enjoy me bringing pet subject into discussion with nebulous relation? You want always to see it? Good. I will do so. No downvote it unfair.