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Suit Up Or Ship Out?
ilovestuff wrote to us with a disscussion starter from ZDNet Australia about the changes in dress code at IT jobs. How much is everyone else going through?
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It's been a long time in coming, but no real surprise, working in the City in London has always required you to wear a suit no matter what job you did, which is why I avoid the city now.
However outside the City its always been much more smart casual, which generally means no jeans or t-shirts, I can live with that.
If there is a dress code, I'll pack up and leave, or not work there in the first place.
Dressing up is a good idea if you have a lot of stiff-necked, starched-shirted clients coming by. Its also a good idea if you have employees who like to abuse casual dress codes.
That said, I'm part of a detail of code-monkies consigned to a 'skunk works' away from the corporate offices. We dress casual within limits. No jeans, no sneakers, no t-shirts. When a big-wig shows up, we get all 'gussied-up.' It gives them warm fuzzies. It keeps the revenue flowing.
Basically, it is a reasonable policy. It works for us, we work for them.
--- have you healed your church website?
One time my boss was out sick so they sent me in to represent our department at a large meeting with the customers. I think I was picked because I happened to be wearing slacks and a button-down shirt (even though it wasn't mandatory). The customer was upset because the product was late and was demanding to know why. I told the customer what I thought the real due date for the product would be (about 4 times what he had been told by management). After that I didn't get invited to any more meetings with the customers.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
I'll ship out, thanks.
I'm no slob. I dress in clean jeans every day, I iron my t-shirts, and I buy and use deodorant, as well as soap and shampoo.
But I'll be buggered if I'm going to work for a company that thinks that professionalism has anything to do with the clothes you wear.
Trends like this have nothing to do with the collapse of dotcom culture, and everything to do with office managers grasping at the straws of job justification in an economy where things are not so stable, and their jobs could easily fly out the window like anyone else's.
I work for Yahoo! Australia & NZ, and I'm happy to say that I could wear a sleeveless hunting shirt with military boots, dread-locks and 15 year old cargo pants with more holes in them than I have centimeters around my waist. No one would even blink. Why? because they all know that I'm 100% capable of doing my job on any given day, no matter what I'm wearing.
Any employer that treats me differently -- or believes differently -- shows an immense lack of trust in me, and therefore cannot be trusted by me. A company less interested in its employee's happiness and more interested in its image will die a slow, painful death, and management will wonder why none of their employees will go the extra mile the whole way down.
So here I am, taking your bait and replying. At work, at midnight, in my jeans and my ironed t-shirt. Why? My employer goes the extra mile for me, which means I do the same for them.
jeremiah johnson.
"* Why is there no Union for IT workers?"
Probably because for the most part and until recently, I.T. people were treated well. Unions form when working conditions become unbearable for the workers. Interestingly, this may be a good ploy for disgruntled employees whos jobs are teetering. Get all those employees together and start talking Union. I wonder how quickly conditions would improve at work since employers absolutely hate to hear union talk. But there's little they can do about about it because it's illegal to fire workers for attempting to form a union.
"* Why is the current practice of laying off your IT staff, then "re-employing" them as contractors (at a lower rate) not illegal?"
Probably because I.T. workers haven't organized to oppose this (see answer to first question, which probably answers all the rest). Having seen and heard how unions operate, though, I'm not sure which is worse: Union, or no Union.
How is that an inverse relationship?
you just need to toss every resume that has the letters MCSE on them
The corrolary of this is to insert every other superficial bigotry in there:
"You just need to toss every resume that has the OS Linux on them" "You just need to toss every resume that mentions XML" "You just need to toss every resume that isn't from a guy name `Dave'"
Check the envy at the door. There are a lot of extremely clever people who have MCSEs along with a swath of other designations and accolades. Why? Because it's a structured approach to learning things about running and administering Windows that you likely would not know otherwise. Now I know that every Linux user believes themselves experts at Windows or any other OS, but the truth is that usually that they don't have the slightest clue beyond a laughable surface knowledge (which is why they'll always come on Slashdot exclaiming about their bad experiences with Windows, or how difficult managing and running Windows enterprises is, etc).
Must be those damn geeks with the "University Degrees".
They can be, and they can be PhD+ whizzkids wearing $1000 dollar suits. They can also be the same whizzkids in jeans and a T-shirt, or spoilt brat rich kids in a snazzy suit that daddy bought who have yet to discover the word "shower". I'm not sure there's any great corrollation between what they wear and what they can do.
And what if their idea of style is different to yours, and vice versa?
I'm lucky enough to have recently moved to a new job in a very nice office. The company is doing better than most in the current climate, and the staff know their stuff. We have an informal dress code (and, wherever possible, a pretty informal policy on everything else, too). I have a postgraduate qualification, and I'm among the least academically qualified people there; everyone else on my immediate team has at least a PhD from a respected university. This is not an office full of morons... And yet, most people wear smart cas or jeans+T to work. The only person who regularly wears a tie is our MD, and since he owns the place, that's obviously his choice.
Personally, I'm sometimes more comfortable wearing a shirt and tie to work. I find it helps me to put my "professional" face on, and I like to look reasonably smart when I'm working. I also find that changing back when I get home helps me to let go of that "professional" face and go back to my regular persona. OTOH, I have no problem with the office "dress code" at my new place, and I certainly don't judge my colleagues by their ability to tie their tie in five different ways. I'm far more impressed by the quality of the products they produce.
I'd draw the line at poor personal hygiene, but personally, I'd see an office that let its staff dress comfortably (whatever that means to them) as the one showing respect. There are obviously times when a "professional" image is in order -- visiting client sites, sales people, etc. -- but as a general rule, I fail to see why it's necessary, or what companies hope to gain by taking away what is essentially a free perk.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.