251–260 of 292 posts
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It's not counter signalling. It's just the complete death of high culture. Hoodies aren't some statement about how you're too cool to care, it's just that no one cares to look good.
Hoodies are very comfortable.
You might say that "let's circle back" is annoying business jargon, but it is a very common phrase and aside from the typos correctly applied in this example.
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Yes, I hear that a lot. Might as well push on a rope, though. In my early career years, a fellow employee came to work in track shorts and flip flops. He was a very, very good programmer. But he never got raises, and never got promoted, and complained to me about it. I suggested it was the way he dressed. He said the same things you wrote. A couple decades later, I ran into him again at a conference. He ran his own q…
> He also was dressed sharply. As I said, it's context sensitive. Personally, I stopped dressing nicely at work after way too many people assumed I'd throw ethics at the trash and do what they say for the hint of a small promotion. Weirdly, that never stopped the people that actually wanted to do things from talking with me. But if you are talking to (potential) customers, the calculation is completely different.
For example, when Obama would talk to union workers, he'd wear jeans. But a pretty nice pair of them.
This is almost textbook countersignalling. The same as: - Signalling: I dress more formally than everyone else to make up for the fact I'm less professional in other ways - No signalling: I dress like everyone else because I am like everyone else - Countersignalling: I wear ratty old clothes with holes in them, and nobody will dare to question it because I'm the important one here
Alternative hypothesis—-efficiency. Executives are very, very busy. As long as you can figure out what they mean, polish doesn’t add much. (Unless it does because it’s an earnings call, board meeting, etc.) I’m quite convinced in most cases they are not spending time or energy consciously choosing to signal anything about status. They’re just not willing to pay the opportunity cost of keeping their attention on an in…
The busy CEO is signaling status with this form of writing, they're so important and so many people demand their time that they have to skip on polish. That's the definition of status.
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> You can call it whatever you want but people make inferences This is an incorrect definition of a signal. I agree that intention is irrelevant. But a powerful person blending in with their dress isn’t actually sending a signal. There is nothing to perceive because they look like everyone else. The signal is only in if they’re recognized. Your definition of signal is congruous with any trait someone thinks a powerfu…
If you dress down in a context where formal attire is expected, it's a signal. What it signals depends on what happens. If you're shunned and avoided, then you're just a loser or a hobo. If you're clearly valued, listened to with interest etc, despite that mismatch, it is a countersignal. You could only afford to do this by having high status and importance in the community that outweighs such expectations. It doesn'…
In the working world, few people really care about grammar, but we spend out life growing up in classrooms where teachers critique and be rate us on our grammar.
This is almost textbook countersignalling. The same as: - Signalling: I dress more formally than everyone else to make up for the fact I'm less professional in other ways - No signalling: I dress like everyone else because I am like everyone else - Countersignalling: I wear ratty old clothes with holes in them, and nobody will dare to question it because I'm the important one here
Look at it this way: there are five orders of magnitude between a “mere” ten-millionaire and the likes of Elon or Bezos!
To most people that’s the “same” level of rich, but each factor of ten is dramatically richer!
However, signals like “purposefully disheveled” and “well manicured” are essentially binary, so… they’re alternated. Each strata layer of factor of ten indicates this by flipping whatever the layer is doing below them. They won’t be confused with “two layers down” because that’s such a gulf that nobody will misunderstand.