171–180 of 232 posts
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Watch I guess, Patek trumps Rolex and so on...
There's few things that make a worse first impression on me faster than someone wearing a watch as a status symbol.
Odd, I worked at Goldman Sachs in London in approx. 1999-2001 and visited the New York office a few times and remember it being the usual "smart/casual" (veering to very casual). When did it smarten up?
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…
> Dressing formally puts you in a different frame of mind. Actually, it makes me feel like I'm talking to a sales person. It is as if dressing up is used to conceal something about the intentions or shortcomings of the person. I probably don't explain it in the right way, but that is more or less the feeling it evokes.
There's this assumption of "universal reference" in social signals, so for me to be told that "wearing a suit puts you in a different frame of mind", as in one which makes you work/feel better about yourself is completely wrong...in the sense of what frame of mind it puts you in.
For me, a suit is the uniform of the con-man, the salesman, the fraud, the bludger, the twit. You put on a suit because you want to fool people who can't think rationally and they're incapable of making judgments except by what you look like through signals of conspicuous consumption.
Imagine being constantly told that you should dress in a uniform with such connotations to make yourself psychologically feel better/superior (especially compared to clothes that you have yourself chosen because they do make you feel better).
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Yesterday? When has tech ever beat finance in pay?
For engineers it almost always does, unless you are the top .001% of talent.
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That's the exact reason why I hate wearing and even worst ever being forced to wear one.
You can either chafe, or acknowledge reality and use it to your advantage. When I was younger, I chafed. Now, I enjoy getting seated at that restaurant table before you.
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> white dress shirt It would seem that as an American you refer to a white shirt - but what do you term that which I (as a Briton) would call a dress shirt? (Worn with evening, or the most formal of morning attire. That is, with your -ahem- tuxedo !)
Formal shirt, I think.
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Common dress absolutely drives a certain esprit de corps . The irony in my example is that the corporate code ruined the informal one we'd developed over the years (white dress shirt, fleece or vest and brown shoes with tan slacks or black shoes with light pinstripes). Before the rebellion, I could identify, on the street, our teams (and who were the interns--black suits with skinny ties, almost all of them). Afterwa…
> white dress shirt It would seem that as an American you refer to a white shirt - but what do you term that which I (as a Briton) would call a dress shirt? (Worn with evening, or the most formal of morning attire. That is, with your -ahem- tuxedo !)
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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.
I remember when a candidate came in wearing a suit, and our VP Eng said, "suit eh? Guess he didn't do his homework."
"Must be an East Coast thing" I can't recall being in any work situation since the 80's where dressing up was even a good idea. I mean, wearing suit, tie etc would identify you as being non-technical and hence not worth listening to. Fascinating to hear that there are still workplaces with dress rules in 2017.
The reality is that the effects of the industry's arrogance have simply shifted form over the years. You think being able to dress in shorts and thongs at work is a measure of being respected ("recognition that the quality of our work isn't measured by how we dress") but that's simply not true.
There are very few successful companies where more than a very small handful of technical people are listened to or respected.