Or replace the $80+ "tech" climbing pants or selvedge jeans, expensive trail runners or toe shoes or whatever, tech company t-shirt, and American Giant (on the

Or replace the $80+ "tech" climbing pants or selvedge jeans, expensive trail runners or toe shoes or whatever, tech company t-shirt, and American Giant (on the cheap end, it goes up from there) hoodie with: $25 Lee jeans or Target cargo pants, cheap big box store sneakers or cheap work boots—not, say, Redwing Heritage or you'll accidentally start fitting in with the hipster-tech variant of tech fashion, because they're kinda impractical and expensive-for-their-features compared to other work boot options, and yes of course I own some—a Nascar shirt and a wal-mart hoodie that's missing its plastic aglets because it's been washed once. You can definitely dress in a way that doesn't look that much "lower" to an outsider but looks very wrong, and, gasp, poor to someone in-tune with tech worker fashion. So it's not just dressing too nice that does it, and hell, for that matter you can spend about as much as the cost of an on-sale Brooks Brothers suit buying a "tech shabby" outfit[0], with results that will definitely be appreciated by many your fellow tech workers, or simply overlooked by others in a way that Red-State-Working-Class or suit-and-a-tie won't. [0] The aforementioned Red Wing Heritage boots are north of $300 for most models, full retail, and check out Arc'teryx and such for how expensive trail shoes can get ($150+, and they're not the most expensive brand), but even something like Danners are pretty pricey compared to what normal people buy for shoes; dropping $200 on a hoodie and rain layer is easy (again, go for expedition-clothing sorts of products to run up the price tag but also the tech worker cred—$300 just for a paper-thin rain jacket isn't even the top of the range); $80 merino wool hiking shirt ("I just love how it keeps me dry, but also I love talking about merino wool with other people who know how expensive it is"); and shit, jeans, sky's the limit, you can hit $200 on those while still just "buying more quality" and not even in just-paying-for-the-label territory yet.