Goldman Sachs relaxes dress code for techs in fight for talent • Hacker News Board

Re: Goldman Sachs relaxes dress code for techs in fight for talent

#151

Post by samstave » Sat, Jul 15, 2017, 11:01 PM UTC

johan_larson wrote: post #118

samstave wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're a part of the same team and you need to wear these outfits which you will likely never wear outside of work, but the huge bonus goes to the client favoring sales team, and no - we won't pay for the garb we require you to maintain the illusion that we are all equals! Honestly, one of the things I absolutely love about tech/Silicon Valley is nobody cares at all how you dress. Although, I noticed the sale force o…

> Honestly, one of the things I absolutely love about tech/Silicon Valley is nobody cares at all how you dress. Things aren't quite as loose as you seem to think. If you want to see where the boundaries are, start gradually dressing more and more informally, and note when you start drawing criticism from your manager and senior coworkers. I expect you'll get more attention than you want if you were to come to work sh…

I dress for myself. I dress well, casual and comfortable. I shall not wear a suit to suite others, nor will I dress like a bum. I have found a set of clothes I like, looks good and I feel comfortable I. And I buy five-to-ten of the outfits and I wear the same thing visually every day, though they are physically different garments.

Re: Goldman Sachs relaxes dress code for techs in fight for talent

#152

Post by aanm1988 » Sat, Jul 15, 2017, 11:02 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #15

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #12

I worked on the American trading floor of a Swiss bank. After the crisis, Zürich decided to reign in us free-wheelers. So they came out with a new dress code [1]: "Among the 'dos' and 'don’ts' for women: 'Make sure to touch up hair regrowth regularly if you color your hair.' Men are commanded to, 'Schedule barber appointments every four weeks to maintain your haircut shape.' Neither sex is allowed to 'allow their und…

Goldman Sachs has always had a ridiculously antiquated dress code for people who will never come within fifty feet of a client. When I was much younger I didn't understand the concept of people who never had to deal with clients having a dress code but now I sorta do: the company is trying to create or promote the concept that everyone in the company is a member of the same team and have more in common with each othe…

Oh please, it's an antiquated set of rules that serves no purpose in the modern workforce. If you want to build a team there a load of other ways that don't require clothes.

Re: Goldman Sachs relaxes dress code for techs in fight for talent

#153

Post by fgandiya » Sat, Jul 15, 2017, 11:04 PM UTC

Oh cool... If only this happened six months ago when I had my interview. Then again, attire was the smallest problem of the interview.

I remember reading Glassdoor to see what working for the company as a dev was like and most of them complained about how low the pay was compared to tech.

Maybe they should pay more for a wider talent pool?

Re: Goldman Sachs relaxes dress code for techs in fight for talent

#154

Post by Sir_Substance » Sat, Jul 15, 2017, 11:10 PM UTC

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #127

ashark wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Cialdini's Influence is to be believed, everyone says they don't treat people wearing (or driving) nice stuff better, but subjecting this to scientific scrutiny reveals that they overwhelmingly and significantly do . If that's true then dressing well is pretty damn rational in general, and especially if money's on the line.

I tend to do the opposite. I distrust people who wear suits, especially in settings where it's not common to do so. I see it as a possible indicator that they are trying to hide their limitations. For example, people giving their talk wearing a suit at a scientific conference? Very high chance of bad science. If you do amazing research you don't need a suit to impress anyone, the ideas you present will be more than e…

>I see it as a possible indicator that they are trying to hide their limitations.

Fir myself, I don't know if I see it as that, but I certainly see it as an indicator that they might be the kind of person who judges /other people/ based on how they dress.

I don't care how you dress, but if you care how other people dress, I'm definitely judging you for that.

Re: Goldman Sachs relaxes dress code for techs in fight for talent

#155

Post by naturalgradient » Sat, Jul 15, 2017, 11:10 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #64

naturalgradient wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GP is likely referring to this story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldman... I am just now realising that this case is still ongoing. That's crazy. A DA literally made it his mission to get the verdict reinstated: 'On April 4th, 2016, almost nine months after Aleynikov was acquitted by the NY Supreme Court, the Manhattan District Attorney Cyr…

>'On April 4th, 2016, almost nine months after Aleynikov was acquitted by the NY Supreme Court, the Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance's office filed an appeal seeking to reinstate the guilty verdict' how's this not double jeopardy?

Because it's still the same case going through the motions.

What I find more interesting is the following on the Manhattan DA's wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_Vance_Jr.#2009_Manhattan...

'After Vance very publicly staged an accusation and spending 5 years and reportedly $10 million on prosecuting the Abacus Federal Savings Bank for larceny, the bank and its employees were found not guilty on all 80 charges. Despite its small size, the Chinese-American family-run bank was the only New York bank so charged during the Great Recession, despite Vance admitting that Citibank, among others, had behaved badly. The story is well told in Steve James' feature-length documentary, Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, September 11, 2016.'

n=2 is not much but there is at least initial indication of a pattern where this DA is very specifically seeking cases where he is in a much better position (more manpower, resources) than the prosecuted party to win. Going after the little guy. Nice.

Re: Goldman Sachs relaxes dress code for techs in fight for talent

#156

Post by samstave » Sat, Jul 15, 2017, 11:17 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #119

johan_larson wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly, one of the things I absolutely love about tech/Silicon Valley is nobody cares at all how you dress. Things aren't quite as loose as you seem to think. If you want to see where the boundaries are, start gradually dressing more and more informally, and note when you start drawing criticism from your manager and senior coworkers. I expect you'll get more attention than you want if you were to come to work sh…

Or go the other way and turn up in a suit.

"You must have an interview today!"

Re: Goldman Sachs relaxes dress code for techs in fight for talent

#157

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, Jul 15, 2017, 11:19 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #98

qq66 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Indian immigrant to Minnesota in the 1970s, my dad adopted a habit of ALWAYS wearing a suit. This gave him the benefit of the doubt in a lot of interactions where he wouldn't have otherwise had it. He kept up that habit for a long time and wore a suit to parent teacher conferences, my 4th grade violin "concert," etc. It most certainly got him a deference from others and did its job admirably. He never got OK wi…

That's something I got from my dad as well - dress for the job you want,not the one you have. I also found that dressing well fixes at least some of the age discrimination you face as a young person, you get treated much better while wearing a suit and a tie than when just wearing a t-shirt or a plain shirt.

So if you want a job at google but work at a bank, wear Hawaiian shirts and shorts?

Also, over dressing can be as much of a problem as underdressing. If you came to a def interview at say Facebook in a suit, it could get awkward.

Re: Goldman Sachs relaxes dress code for techs in fight for talent

#158

Post by samstave » Sat, Jul 15, 2017, 11:20 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #83

samstave wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: how old are you? If you're even the slightest bit concerned with anything anyone is wearing, then you need to focus on something else.

I'm old enough to not care sometimes and to play the game sometimes and to know the difference Tell a suit wearer that they should dress casual tomorrow and they'll say OK. Tell a geek they have to wear a suit tomorrow and they'll freak out. Now tell me who cares more about clothes?

Hmm.. that's a good point actually with a slight rebuttal:

The suit wearer also has a closet full of casual clothes

The casual wearer will not have a line of suits - thus his freak out

What is the payscale between the both vs type of work and hours?

Would be great to get a map of all this

Re: Goldman Sachs relaxes dress code for techs in fight for talent

#159

Post by brad0 » Sat, Jul 15, 2017, 11:22 PM UTC

somethingwitty1 wrote: post #94

sbov wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've only ever done tshirt and jeans stuff. I couldn't imagine wearing a suit every day, but it might be fun to have a "dress up Fridays". Ideally, anyone could wear whatever they want whenever they want. In practice, it doesn't seem to work out this way, even at the tshirts and jeans companies.

Bunch of the teams I've worked with over the years have had "formal fridays". I can confirm it was a fun tradition.

I thought I was the only one!

What kind of company did you work for where this happened?

Re: Goldman Sachs relaxes dress code for techs in fight for talent

#160

Post by DonbunEf7 » Sat, Jul 15, 2017, 11:23 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #97

wildmusings wrote: post #77

If you view human beings as perfectly rational machines then dress codes make no sense, but that's not what we are. Dressing formally puts you in a different frame of mind. It reminds you that your work is serious and that different standards apply to how you act and talk than in your casual personal life. If you dress to work the way you'd show up to a dive bar, then you're that much closer to behaving like you do a…

But when the elites adopt casual dress in their professional lives, what is left are much more subtle and hard-to-adopt class signifiers: manners of speaking, interests, childhood experiences, travel, etc The NYT had an article on this recently: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/opinion/how-we-are-ruinin... I took a friend with only a high school degree to lunch. Insensitively, I led her into a gourmet sandwich shop…

Sorry, and I know that this is on NYT, not you, but what the utter fuck is that paragraph about the sandwich shop?

Walk through, say, Boston's North End. It's like walking into Italy. There are old men sitting in front of cafés muttering in Italian about the way the young folk dress. There are fresh pizzas and sandwiches with their smells wafting through the air. The streets are narrow, mostly pedestrian, and cobbled, with few cars coming and going. And, yes, if you go into a deli in the North End, you can buy cured meats with Italian names.

This is not a wealthy neighborhood. There was a period of time in the past when Italian-Americans were the subject of quite a bit of prejudice and stereotyping. It's news to me that Italian culture is somehow "completely illegible" to the poor, and I can't help but feel that whatever point the author wanted to make is lost or perhaps flawed.

(Somebody will say that the North End is uniquely Italian. Sure, but I grew up on the West Coast and learned about Italian sandwiches from an Italian sandwich shop anyway, because Italian sandwiches are not somehow confined to a tiny corner of Boston. Again, what the utter fuck.)