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In Silicon Valley, some men say cosmetic procedures are essential to a career

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Re: In Silicon Valley, some men say cosmetic procedures are essential to a career

#171

Post by jacquesm »

aaron695 wrote: post #164
jacquesm wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The day I have to dye my beard or get plastic surgery to stay relevant in tech is the day I'll happily retire.

What you miss is you'll find it harder to prove you are relevant as you age. On things people fresh in the industry are up on, you'll will be behind on. You might still be 100% relevant to the job at hand but you will find it harder to show. This exists today, the only thing that will change is it will apply to you. If you're happy to let age beat you, then it's up to you. If you are morally unhappy tech does this yo…

I think all this is related to a lack of confidence. I find myself more in demand rather than less as the years pass.

Re: In Silicon Valley, some men say cosmetic procedures are essential to a career

#172

Post by SamReidHughes »

frandroid wrote: post #161
rayiner wrote: post #12

> Only the previous week, he says, he returned from a 10-day trip to Italy’s Amalfi Coast. Before that, he boasts, he journeyed to a yoga retreat and juice cleanse in Bali, the perfect setting to unload the stress he absorbs working at a well-known tech company in Silicon Valley. After ending a five-year marriage and shedding 10 pounds of subcutaneous fat several years back — his sun-kissed body now carb- and toxin-f…

It's California... A friend of mine who is quite attractive and _maybe_ had an extra 10 pounds moved to Southern California for grad school, and immediately felt like she was fat and started going to the gym, whereas I had never her mention her weight before. The social environment is just that different.

But that's SoCal, which is a bit different in that respect.

I'm not sure how exactly... maybe in NorCal she'd go rock climbing or something.

Re: In Silicon Valley, some men say cosmetic procedures are essential to a career

#173

Post by WWLink »

adamch wrote: post #100

80% of male attractiveness comes down having a good haircut and clothes that fit you. Assuming you're in SF and have a high-paying software job. Find a hair stylist in a mid-range salon who you can actually talk to, show them some pictures of haircuts you like, and let them find something that works. If you find a professional and are OK paying them a bit extra, you'll get good results. As for "clothes that fit", I h…

Why's it always gotta be a haircut? Fuck haircuts!

Re: In Silicon Valley, some men say cosmetic procedures are essential to a career

#174

Post by WWLink »

iamcasen wrote: post #122

When I lived and worked in SF it was hilarious to me how rapidly the culture shifted. In only 6 years, it went from a lot of competent, interesting, varied personalities, to an army of chrome backpacks, folding bikes, and brown leather boots. Due to the vast wealth flooding there from VC coffers, people drank the Koolaid and drank it fast. I've watched people change their whole personality over night as if they const…

That sucks. I grew up in the bay area and haven't been around much in.. almost a decade. DANG WTF?!

Did it really change that much? lol.

Re: In Silicon Valley, some men say cosmetic procedures are essential to a career

#175

Post by WWLink »

catalogia wrote: post #66
jm20 wrote: post #36

Attractiveness has always affected opportunities afforded to people and other people’s perceptions of you. This is not just in tech. Hell, it influences elections! This is just human nature and has been studied extensively. It’s just trendy to bash Silicon Valley for this, because, you know, everyone on Wall Street is wearing suits for the comfort factor... However, I think there’s an upper bounds on where that matte…

Of course conformity is the reason for the suits, but I'd like to point out that if you're wearing suits 5 days a week it would be foolish to not buy a comfortable one. Good materials and a good fit can make for a very comfortable suit. More comfortable, I dare say, than the casual attire I must wear when working for west coast tech companies, lest I not conform to west coast tech company expectations. T-shirts and h…

Yeah, in an ideal world, I really don't give a damn what my coworkers wear. Seriously.

In a less ideal world: As long as management doesn't get the idea to mandate dress clothes or GOD FORBID business casual, I'm fine.

Fuck business casual. I will never ever ever ever wear a polo shirt. Polo shirts are for old hairy guys that play golf.

Re: In Silicon Valley, some men say cosmetic procedures are essential to a career

#176

Post by nojvek »

anon9001 wrote: post #64
oppositelock wrote: post #19

Other commenters may be dismissing this article as obvious, but silicon valley does have a problem, particularly in young, hip startups. These companies want to hire young, hip people, and when products being produced are very vague with no clear market, then things like image matter a lot. Juicero, comes to mind. That's fine, you don't have to work there. However, as you get older, develop wrinkles and grey hair, th…

I think this cuts both ways. I'm getting older, but I get along really well with the fresh meat. What works for me is to come across as an OG hacker and stay up to date on whatever the hot tech is. I'm also as immature as ever and have a pretty good command of dank memes, which I think helps more than people want to admit. I'll follow the culture wherever it goes, the same as I have since I was a teenager. I just alw…

I past 30 now. Most of my friends are managers but I love building things and chose to be an IC.

I think tech is very fast paced. You gotta constantly be learning. Terraform, k8s, docker, rust, js frameworks, other language paradigms, deeplearning etc

It’s a lot to learn on your own.

Places you interview may ask “have you used React / Some X tool”, the best response you can give is “yes, I’ve dabbled myself and built X prototype”. Or for core things “yes, I’ve had my fair share of experiences and contributed Y to their open source repos”

Re: In Silicon Valley, some men say cosmetic procedures are essential to a career

#177

Post by selimthegrim »

sokoloff wrote: post #136
catalogia wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course conformity is the reason for the suits, but I'd like to point out that if you're wearing suits 5 days a week it would be foolish to not buy a comfortable one. Good materials and a good fit can make for a very comfortable suit. More comfortable, I dare say, than the casual attire I must wear when working for west coast tech companies, lest I not conform to west coast tech company expectations. T-shirts and h…

The (somewhat) new stretch denim (with 1-3% elastane) makes for amazingly comfortable jeans. If you haven't tried a pair, give them a shot.

Seconding this - picked up a great pair thrifting in Atlanta

Re: In Silicon Valley, some men say cosmetic procedures are essential to a career

#178

Post by catalogia »

sokoloff wrote: post #136
catalogia wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course conformity is the reason for the suits, but I'd like to point out that if you're wearing suits 5 days a week it would be foolish to not buy a comfortable one. Good materials and a good fit can make for a very comfortable suit. More comfortable, I dare say, than the casual attire I must wear when working for west coast tech companies, lest I not conform to west coast tech company expectations. T-shirts and h…

The (somewhat) new stretch denim (with 1-3% elastane) makes for amazingly comfortable jeans. If you haven't tried a pair, give them a shot.

Fully agree, that's what I wear now. It's a lot more comfortable than traditional denim, but still not quite as comfortable as the silk slacks with elastic wastes that I wear to weddings and whatnot.

Re: In Silicon Valley, some men say cosmetic procedures are essential to a career

#179

Post by smolder »

yters wrote: post #152
smolder wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pragmatism of investing in the superficial to satisfy other people's expectations does not make it less superficial. We waste an absurd amount of time fretting over image collectively for one reason: to satisfy each others need to judge things by their covers --IOW, to satisfy each others need to make flawed judgements. It's wise for one person to care about their image, but not for a whole group of people to gat…

It's an easy thing for a third party to check, easier than evaluating technical skill, and easy for a motivated person to fulfill. As such, it also serves as an easy filter that has a lot of false negatives, but probably fewer false positives than a non-subject matter expert trying to evaluate expertise. It also signals consideration for other human beings, not expecting them to jump through a bunch of expertise eval…

It's circular to call that considerate. You're saying it's useful because people care, I'm saying people care about something useless.

You can apply the same logic to an obese person as chronically under-dressed/fashion-averse one: They ought to be considerate enough to show their attention to detail through managing their health better and careful calorie intake.

I stand by my point that it's a shortcoming of our culture that we give those signals (i.e. "t-shirts aren't very professional!") any weight at all.

I won't claim an inverse trend but I've worked with enough relatively-useless and very well dressed people that it's basically noise.

Re: In Silicon Valley, some men say cosmetic procedures are essential to a career

#180

Post by adamch »

hadiz wrote: post #118
adamch wrote: post #100

80% of male attractiveness comes down having a good haircut and clothes that fit you. Assuming you're in SF and have a high-paying software job. Find a hair stylist in a mid-range salon who you can actually talk to, show them some pictures of haircuts you like, and let them find something that works. If you find a professional and are OK paying them a bit extra, you'll get good results. As for "clothes that fit", I h…

This advice is throttled around here. There is an implication to this: if you're bald, you're fucking screwed as a man. Attractiveness would not be achievable.

This is simply untrue. The great thing about being bald is you can never have a bad haircut. Bald men, like men with long hair, or women with really short hair, appeal more to some people and less to others. But there's definitely no need to conclude you're screwed.

Physical attractiveness also matters way less for men in general. Personality and lifestyle are much more important.

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