The notion that the sidebar icons should be aligned with the firm brand logo doesn't make sense to me, these things are not the same. On that point, the before looks better than the after, to me, as the difference is differentiated.
The "what good looks like" example provided, HeroUI, avoids aligning these:
The "what good looks like" example provided, HeroUI, avoids aligning these:
https://www.heroui.pro/components/application/layouts