Some Silicon Valley workers are taking their résumés off LinkedIn and putting them on their wrists, showing off rare, customized watches from Swiss manufacturer Tudor.
The latest round of wrist-flexing began when a post highlighting custom watches made for Googlers circulated on Monday. The post attracted other tech workers sharing their own customized timepieces.
Boris Power, OpenAI’s head of applied research, responded with a picture of the custom OpenAI version, complete with the phrase “Good Research Takes Time,” engraved on the back.
Eliano Younes, Palantir’s strategic engagement head, jumped in to note that some of the data giant’s staff got customized Tudors, saying they were a limited run of 468.
The watch face in the image shared by Younes features an inconspicuously small Palantir logo.
Uber software engineer Alex Feng also posted Uber’s custom model. The caseback is marked ‘1/100,’ indicating it is the first watch in a limited run of 100.
Sebastian Speier, a former Instagram employee who now works for Perplexity, also shared a picture of a customized watch. Nate Lorenzen, who worked at Facebook for six years, said employees had custom watches made while he was at the company, adding that he was “dumb to not buy every single one of these.
The watches aren’t typical corporate swag handed out by management, like Wall Street’s once much-vaunted Patagonia gilets.
Instead, they are generally commissioned by employee-run collector groups, whose members organize enough interested buyers to meet Tudor’s minimum order.
Tudor’s customization program requires a minimum order of 40 watches, and production can take about six months, according to Powerfunk, the managing editor of Grey Market, a luxury watch news site.
Buyers generally pay full retail price. The Pelagos model, used for Google’s custom watches, retails for about $4,500.
Tudor did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Each customized Tudor watch design is rare by default and often available only to members of the group that commissioned it, meaning the watches can become valuable collector’s items once they reach the resale market.
A Google-themed Tudor featuring the Chrome dinosaur sold for more than $10,000 at auction earlier this year, while an Apple “pirate” edition attracted a $13,500 bid.
Comparable standard models typically resold for a fraction of those prices, Business Insider previously reported.
Luxury watches have become increasingly visible status symbols among tech’s biggest names. Mark Zuckerberg owns rare pieces worth millions, while OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been spotted wearing an ultra-limited-edition $480,000 Greubel Forsey, produced in a run of just 33.
