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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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I don't care what they make me wear, it's better than the McDonald's prison uniform I wore before I came here.
In fact, I'd rather they were dicking around with the dress code, if it kept their minds off dicking around with my pension. Too late.
From what I have seen, most of the "culture change" in this direction has been tied to the visibility of the employee. If they have a role that they are in contact with customers (even a remote chance of it), it makes a lot of sense that they follow some standards.
In the past, however, a lot of companies let things slide since having a disheveled programmer that the customer only talked to once in a while was better than no programmer at all. Places like consulting firms won't put up with it at all anymore since everyone there has some chance of customer interaction.
Once my boss urged me to wear a suit and tie to work. But sadly one of the computers hiccuped and i had to take it to the shop. Needless to say i got dirty like hell from assorted dust under the desk that i had to change my clothes. Since then no more suit for the tech guy ....
... whenever a text is transmitted, variation occurs. This is because human beings are careless, fallible, and occasiona
No more foozball and smoking dope at work guys. Sorry! Oh well, I have no sympathy for these people whatsoever. Work is just that - WORK. You know, going to work with your pets, in jeans and a t-shirt, doing absolutely nothing all day, and getting paid more than someone who gets dressed up, does a commute, and works an 8-10 hour day is just unfair.
Boy, what an outrage.
Of all the nerve, to expect computer guys to communicate with other people in the business, to work with them, to adopt the same dress code, and generally become good corporate citizens instead of that grumpy guy sitting over in the corner who won't talk to anyone.
I for one am outraged. I should be able to not be a team player, to dress slovenly, and be totally grumpy and non-communicative with my co-workers, just because my skills are with computers, instead of, say, accounting or HR.
Boy, of all the nerve.
- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!
How does a lax dress code cause 'additional expenditure'?? If the current policy states a more lenient dress code, then it seems changing the dress code policy to something more strict would not only require more money spent in HR's time to transmit this statement to the employees, but also more time wasted in the management chain dealing with delinquent employees!
Now I'm not one to be completely for walking into work in jeans and a ripped T-shirt, but I just think this idiot they got for the interview is just... well, an idiot!
Having worked for EDS for 5 years back in the day when it was suit and tie for EVERYONE (couldn't leave your cube without your suitcoat on) I can say first hand that it makes absolutly no differnce in company performance, hell if anything wearing a suit while pulling cable makes a person a worse engineer type, not to mention how much static wool generates. The whole dressing up things goes back to old school upper management who has no concept of the kind of people they want to attract.
All changing the rules does is screw the loyal people a company, since come the next economic boom the company will have to slacken its requirements, offer increases pay to new employees etc etc, leaving the existing hard working loyal types in the preverbal lurch. Oh well those corporate MF's will never learn (too much time binge drinking in college I guess).
I do think a little buissness casual is good, cause if there is no dress code I am coming in wearing my old Metallica t-shirt (metal up your ass), some ripped jeans and combat boots.
Here in Sweden the dresscode has never been too strict, nor is it going to be, in the engineering sector. Of cource I wear a suite and tie when I'm on a customer meeting (but on-one forces me into doing that, I just want to make a good impression), but except from that I go with what ever I feel like. Naturally, one can't look/smell like a bozo, but a t-shirt and jeans (or shorts) is OK.
Started out with EDS, which in those days you couldn't get much stricter in dress code.. the poor sales guys were even told WHERE to buy their clothes..
Then the far opposite, where Dockers and polo shirts were overdress...
I think it really all depends on what industry you work in. You dont wear a 3 piece suit in a automotive plant, but dont forget your tie in an attorneys office..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Actually, the most challenging software engineering jobs I know of are purely "9 to 5" (or whatever regular hours) jobs. These are CMM level 5 shops, and work on little simple programs like the Space Shuttle guidance and control software.
That's not to say that "wear a suit" is a requirement at those shops, but the idea is that leadership and cohesiveness are vastly important to reliable software. In other words, the space shuttle isn't going up guided by code that a guy wrote late last night :-).
What a moron you are.
Your job is your job. Working until 1 AM off the clock only proves that you are an ass.
Maybe by having to regiment yourself, you'd actually pay attention and DESIGN things, instead of cobbling together some spaghetti shit that you wrote half asleep.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Dressing neatly shows you have respect for others.
It does make it clean and more professional looking.
Wearing outlandish shirts, or ripped jeans shows or suggests that you don't care about your appearance.
Wearing some nice pants, or jeans and a polo shirt (what I wear) can have you neat, somewhat professional looking and still be comfortable. Actually I find polo shirts more comfortable because the nice ones tend to be higher quality.
Wearing a suit for a suits sake isn't good, I've seen some nasty suits where they would have been better off without it.
By looking as though you take your job seriously, and make an effort to appear neat, clean and professional. People do react differently depending on your appearance.
The bottom line here is that it all depends on how important it is to you. I recently spent a very long time unemployed and searching and at a certain point I had to ask myself how important finding a job that had various perks or rights associated with them. At one point I interviewed with a bank that wanted, not only to make me dress up in a suit, but they wanted to take my piss on a regular basis to make sure I wasn't smoking weed on the weekends. I decided that was too much; that I'd rather be unemployed than have to deal with those two conditions. When a job came along that respected my privacy, I took it, and while I'm kind of disappointed that I have to wear khakis and a polo shirt every day instead of shorts or jeans or whatever, it wasnt worth turning down this job. I'll bet that there are folks out there for whom it would be worth it to turn down a job, because their personal comfort or style is worth more to them than mine is to me. As jobs become increasingly scarce, those who can afford to hold out for jeans and t-shirt workplaces will shrink, but lets not kid ourselves; this is about what that particular aspect of work is worth to you.
Let's just avoid this whole "corporate america is screwing us" rhetoric and remember that you can always quit and look for a job that will let you wear jeans IF its worth that much to you.
This too shall pass.
Stop whiiinnnniiiinng.
I have no sympathy for people that will now have to present a mature appearence and attitude, like most of the rest of the world in the workplace. Asking IT people to wear a tie or to show appropriate communication skills does not bring them in line with a road sweeper. It just makes the ones with an unprofessional attitude adopt a more mature style of behavior and a more professional style of dress.
Personally, in my company, as long as it looks decent, I even allow jeans and sandles (if the jeans are torn or too faded, they're out), but I ALWAYS expect good communication and people skills. I've worked with a few coders who may have been great coders, but their lack of communication skills have made it impossible to get them to listen or produce the product that was necessary. None of them are working for me now. If you want to wear jeans and sandles and listen to Metallica while you code, fine, that's why God invented headphones, but when it comes to interacting with the rest of the staff, I expect these people who claim to be so much more intelligent than the rest of the world to use that intelligence to figure out how to interact. I also expect common courtesy, something I've noticed a significant portion of coders I've dealt with (not a majority, but enough to notice) don't show. There's just no excuse for not knowing how to show common courtesy.
Yeah, sure. Not wearing a suit == being grumpy, noncommunicative and antisocial. I've never understood people that need to force others into uniforms. Your kind of smugness is also completely alien to me: "Ha! Thought you could get away with wearing something else? Well, get in line, and damn well enjoy it like the rest of us!".
We have a great culture going here, many techs are allowed to dress the way they like. Why do you want to take that away from us and conform us to some stupid corporate tradition? Nobody will work harder because they wear a tie.
"Which group of programmers would you hire, a room full of suit wearing 9-5r's or a room full of cheesy-poof eating coffee drinking work around the clock for 3 days straight types (wearing god knows what). Sure you wouldn't want to show the second group to investers..."
Why on earth not? That's just as stupid as the manager demanding everyone clean up their desks and looks sharp because the CEO is visiting the department. Execs and stockholders are not incredible neat freaks who will have a stroke at the sight of an untidy workplace with casually-dressed employees in it.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Neither. I know from personal experience that when you try and work x days straight (actually, typically more than 10 hours in a day) you go from being productive, to making as many mistakes as actual code - to negative productivity where you introduce more bugs than actual working code and break existing functionality.
It is a myth that you'll get more work done by simply working more overtime. It's something our department learned the hard way. We were WAY more productive once we had a manager who refused to schedule work that would lead to overtime. We'd do MUCH more in a 40-hour work week than an 80-hour work week for many reasons: people were more alert, people were happier (they got to see their families and do their own thing).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Instead of marketing and PHB dressing down to regular clothes they need the entire staff to clone up to their level? If i see an IT in suit i cant take him serious, ill assume point'n'click level.
HTTP/1.1 400
Y'know, you can be a team player, and communicate effectively with other people in the business, and be a good "corporate citizen" (whatever that's supposed to mean) without wearing a suit.
At the start of the year, I had to go to a client site for a meeting. I had been advised that they had a dress code, so I wore shoes, suit trousers and a shirt and tied my hair back (it was long then), rather than my normal boots, jeans and T-shirt.
The meeting went fine, everyone seemed happy, until I got back to the office. A few hours later, the project manager approached me rather apologetically, and told me that there had been a complaint about the dress standard of those of us who went to the meeting. Basically, they objected to us not wearing ties.
Funnily enough, my not wearing a tie didn't seem to affect my ability to get their project done on time, despite both the timescale and the budget being woefully under-estimated. Of course, I'm sure that they'd still rather it went over time and budget, but that we all looked the part.
Bottom line is, it's not the clothes that are doing the programming, it's me. If you want it done right, there are a few things I need, and one of them is to be relaxed and happy. Force me into uncomfortable clothes, and I'll be distracted, and so make more mistakes and take longer over my work.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
The first group. Dress really doesn't speak to programming quality, but it does to personal commitment to professionalism. I haven't looked at any statistics for this but it seems if you look sharp at the interview then people tend to take you more seriously than if you showed up wearing torn jeans and a KISS T-shirt. just my $.02 worth.
I have a big problem with both ties and buttoned shirts. I'm one of those people with a pretty muscular neck, and getting shirts that fit is a pain. Far worse is that just having something around my neck makes me feel like I'm choking; I can't really focus on what I'm supposed to be doing and have to stop myself from constantly pulling on the collar. And yes, I get this reaction with a well-fitting, somewhat loose collar and without the tie as well.
You want me to wear slacks and a jacket? No problem. Black leather shoes? I already use them. An open or round-collared shirt? Sure, why not. Tie or shirt with buttoned up collar? I'm out of here.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Actually, in every job I've worked in, the only really well dressed techs are the MCSE's and VB programmers.
I wear what's comfortable, but also have proper hygene. Also, it's much more space/cost efficient to only have one wardrobe instead of two.
Lex orandi, lex credendi.
If there is a dress code, I'll pack up and leave, or not work there in the first place.
You silly little boy. More jobs for the rest of us, I guess.
Here's a clue for you:
A tie is a badge which (when flashed in the visual field of a subset of the set of business drones) means "I have some role in the smooth running of this operation", unless combined with a white shirt or any colour shirt with wrinkles which signals "I am the lowest foot-soldier in this operation, and my opinions should be treated like dingo turds".
Personally, I don't care whether or not the people I'm dealing with wear ties, but there is a recognisable business species which will not respect your opinions unless you send the correct set of signals. Unless you send these signals, your opinions will not be respected.
The business community was recently confused when a new species, the techhead, arrived on the scene, with a unique form of dress. Initially the new species was accepted, but since the tech crash their uniform now signals "I have a lot of weird ideas, most of which will lose you money, drive down your stock price and possibly destroy your business".
You don't need to apologise, explain, or correct this new response. Sure you could try, but it's unnecessary. Wear the new badge, and blend into the background!
It's a cliche, I know, but the time has come to deal with it! This is a side effect of dealing with the business world, and an insignificant side effect when compared to things like mismanagement, strict work hours ("you must start work at 9", "you must stop work by 6") and co-workers who have trouble with high-tech concepts more complex than door-handles.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
Why is there no Union for IT workers?
I would answer that with a question. Are there unions of other white collar sallaried professionals? If so, look to why they created 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?
Because they are not employeed under contractual agreement.
Why is most of the programming work done overseas, where you have to ridiculously overspecify the project to get maintainable/extendable code?
I don't know what being overseas has to do with this question but unless the project scope is very clearly defined, it is difficult to develop and maintain code for it. The example you are thinking of was probably burned on this before and decided to do (in my opinion) the right thing.
Why are our governments allowing Visas for people to do IT work, when there are IT people available for work in their own country?
Availability of IT workers isn't the issue. This is around the cost and quality of the IT workers. They can get them better and cheaper from places like Pakistan, India, and China. They work longer hours for less pay and generally have a higher level of experience and education. The US has a history (hundreds of years) of indentured servatude. That's how my family got here from Europe.
Why do employers/government wish to abuse our human rights read our email, and look at the websites we read?
Access to email and websites is not a basic human right recognized by any government. Besides, the company owns the computer and networks you are using for your own personal interest. They have the right to know how they are used when they are responsible for them and while they are paying for them. Sorry, they own the computers and what occurs on them, not you.
Why does this kind of article make me sick?
Dress codes are a symptom of authority and order. It would appear to me by your questions that you have issues with both. I would ask your parents or your therapist why you have problems with them.
Speak truth to power.
Here is a question for you, and answer it seriously in your own mind: If you work with someone, does their fashion make a difference in your *professional* opinion of them? If you say yes, then you are probably in some type of managment/sales/marketing role. Those people work off of image, technical people work off of knowledge. That is the way it works. If you are telling me that I have to dress up to make the marketing folks happy, then you are full of crap and need to think about your priorities. Now if you are saying that I need to dress up because I will be working with customers directly, then you may have a point. And I find it pretty naive of you to think that all technical people are slovenly, grumpy, and non-communicative. Hey, I know, let's make them dress uncomfortably, that will improve their demeanor! Maybe we need another mission statement, or Hawaiian shirt day! Quick, someone think of a catchy acronym that outlines our business paridigm initiative.
These are precisely why technical people snicker at the business folks.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
This has very little to do with anything real except control. What do most people do when they believe they need to be in control but don't understand what's going on? They exert control over the trivial things they do understand.
Client has no clue about whether your graphical design is good but needs to show they're in control of the project? That red is a bit too bright. Soften it a bit.
Manager has no clue about how long it really takes to write decent software but needs to show they're in control of the project? That's taking entirely too long. Cut everything by half and forget about testing.
Software becomes an employer's market and upper management needs to show those uppity coders who's in control (in preparation for adding 20 hours to your workweek)? There's a new dress code. No exceptions.
How can we afford to ever sleep
So sound again
--ebtg
I am notoriously incompatible with ties. Also notoriously incompatible with people wearing them.
Well, that's your problem, not theirs. You are making just as much a clothing-based judgement about them as you think they are making about you.
I don't see why people are so down on ties. A tie is really the anti-uniform, the majority of suits you will see are a variation on the two classic colors of navy blue and charcoal grey, but your tie can be almost any color and pattern you want, even in the most conservative of surroundings. Self-proclaimed creative people should be the tie's biggest fans, not the opposite.
I love my job... and my life.
I think you'll find that the work habits you develop now will either stick are create an expectation from your employers that you continue to work at such a pace.
Maybe you don't find it crappy to work like that now, but when you lose a relationship, miss your kids growing up or wake up one day and realize that you existance consists of work and sleep you might feel differently.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
There is one situation where being required to wear a suit to work is beneficial: job-hunting.
If you have an "appointment" during the day, it's a lot more convenient to already be dressed up for the interview than having to return home or change in the car.
When I was working at a company with an informal dress code (no denim, no sporting shoes), employees showing up in suits usually meant that someone had an interview, or wanted everyone to know they were a flight risk.
The better dressed they are, the bigger lies they tell. It just screams "ENRON" to me.
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
I think one of the problems a lot of people have with suits is that they've only worn one or two suits for graduation and interviews. These were probably three times or more expensive than their casual wear even if they bought the cheapest suit available and they didn't even think about buying the next more expensive suit.
You can find more comfortable suits if you are willing to pay a bit more. Suits don't even have to be dry clean only. My Tilley jacket is comfortable, has ten working pockets, and the cleaning instruction tag says "Give it hell!"
(which, if you are reading this, you are not)
How ridiculous. 148.
If people aren't able to dress with some semblance of style, they should go work somewhere else, somewhere less demanding (would you like fries with that?).
I've worked as a systems/network admin for stock exchanges to top tier law firms. Each of these companies allowed lax dress codes.
Ever worked an average of 14 hours a day, 6-7 days a week in a suit? Ever crawled under desks, floors, above ceilings, behind racks and between walls tracing cables? Ever worked out of hours when the air-con is typically off?
I once worked 27 hours straight on a weekend trying to find undocumented button addresses for new 'unsupported' digital handsets on an NEC NEAX PABX. I had a bunch of new handsets dropped on me by the NEAX 'expert' who was on a short contract (from overseas) to design the roll-out of these new units (D-Term V's), who incidentally NEVER actually attended the site in question to find out that our PABX did not support them at all, according to NEC and Telstra. So I find this out after removing everyones phone, their old 4 wire digital cards, and patching then replacing with new phones, 2 wire digital cards and patching and then.... the programming.... which didn't work. I was faced with undoing all this work or trying to first figure out if I could indeed make these units work fully. So eventually I did figure out all the addressing required, literally through manual brute-force trial and error. There was no way this mission critical dept could be without phones come Monday. After 27 hours, they were all completely working, to the shock of my IT work mates and NEC. How would you like to work 27 hours straight, without air-con, living off McDonalds, in a bloody suit?
Being a contractor, I was being paid hourly, so I wasn't a chump as some here might think.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
But I feel a distinction needs to be drawn here between "every day" and "in an interview". I am far more productive in a slightly relaxed environment, but I would never dream of going to a formal interview in anything less than a suit. It is at interview that it is important to impress visually after that the quality of your work should be more important. Having said that, you get a kinda kick out of suiting up if you have to travel on public transport (I've worked in London - Nuff Said)
The two successful companies I've worked for both settled on the general pattern of first sheltering the customers from the geeks while the geeks are being geeks. As soon as there is a weird technical problem, or the customers need to see a freak show, they are introduced to the technical staff. We have a few key customers who just eat up a team of us working on a problem, drawing on whiteboards, typing, and yelling down the hall, pointing at code, at each other, etc.
As for those companies returning to some dress code, where there is not proximity to the customer, you will find people who wear suits who are disturbed by other people who are not wearing suits. As far as I can tell, it's some sort of nakedness, protection and projected image thing. The suit-wearer may expound on how poorly the khaki's reflect on the company, but the body language will be the same as if you are geek-nekked. Yes, they are threatened by your 'leet-geek-nekked-ness, their inability to control it, and the fact that you are not hiding behind a suit like everyone else. Read "Dressing for Success" and some other books for the choices made when buying a suit and how/why the affect other people's judgment of the suit-wearer.
It works the other way around, as well. Many of the people I work with will distrust, either actively or passively, anyone wearing a suit. If you are wearing a suit, you are automatically categorized as shady, untrustworthy and probably criminal. Many of our customers wear suits when dealing with mgmt and sales. When it's a technical issue, they shift to kaks and polos.
The company I work for is seeing a backlash against the technical staff for perceived excesses during the boom. At least that's my best take on it. So now, the rats all have their swimming caps on, but aren't needing to jump, because other companies are flying helo's out to pick them up. In other words, we've got excellent people here with irreplaceable domain expertise, and we're losing them because upper management is trying to bf them. Yes, we're losing them in spite of the industry slump. Out of all those tech people in the world looking for work, our people are landing jobs. We're losing them for stupid reasons. Middle management is horrified because 1) their fief-base is eroding 2) upper management is doing and saying the weirdest and strangest things which are serve only to make software developers lives miserable at the company and 3) middle-mgmt is next. It's a software company, and a software company needs two things: product to sell, and sellers of the product. The dress code is just another way to reduce our ability to produce product.
-- They say you die a little bit each day. Have a nice day!
Can I expense my clothing bill? How about a tax deduction? (I'm serious -- if the clothing standards are "required" by the company, then there should be some compensation.)
The thing about this and any management-mandate is, if you are not replaceable and management realizes this, (and not being able to replace you means failure of the department, division, or company) then you have virtually unlimited bargaining power.
Otherwise, you need to toe the line. It's that simple.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I always think in decades. When I am forty and fifty I don't plan on competing for the same jobs as people in their twenties and thirties. Noone is going to hire a 25 year old program manager, because people with those skills, at that age don't exists. There are skills you can only obtain through life experience and education. I am currently going to school for a Masters degree. It won't do much to help me now, but it will set me apart from the rest in 10 years. Any time a good oportunity for advancement presents itself I jump on it. I recognize that older people can be left behind, but I don't think that paying union dues to the Teamsters is going to help me grow and prosper.
I've noticed the same trend. I tend to think that VB programmers tend to have to make them selves appear more professional than they really are. It's a sales tactic. Look good and people tend to equate that with working good. Most guru's are comfortable in the skills that they bring to the table, and thus put less weight on [ultimately] insignificant things like appearance.
Let's not beat around the bush, you may pretend you like it, you might think it makes you look sharp, but deep down you know it is only cultural conditioning that makes you think so. You would look just as sharp in a Star Trek costume as in these bland, antiquated, frivolous uniforms, if that is what everybody else wore.
And make no mistake, a suit is a uniform. It may not your name on the collar, but it serves the same purpose. You are indistiguishable, you are part of the team. Your identity does not matter so much as the persona you present. It says to your client "I'm willing to go to great expense to impress you". It says to your boss "I'm willing to go to great effort to kiss your ass".
Every time you go to the dry cleaners, every time you spend a day's pay on the next day's clothes, every time your spill your drink and curse the waste that is forced upon you, you are submitting your will to the superficial whims of those effete do-nothings who nonetheless lord over you in the social hierarchy.
Nothing says "I'm your bitch" like wearing a suit. Remember that.
Sigh. It's the same old story. When a company is controlled by people who actually do the work, or at least understand it, crap that doesn't matter doesn't matter. When the company is controlled by bean counters and hall monitors, crap that doesn't matter matters.
Yah, I know there are comfortable suits out there... my current suit is lightweight, good quality, and really not a bother to wear at all. I have only that one suit, though, used for weddings and funerals (and other special occaisions). So, if I accept a position where suits are required business attire, I am now in a situation where I can expect to shell out:
This comes to ~$4000 in the first year of employment; ~3000/year afterward (presuming I pick up an extra suit or two to replace worn ones, new styles, new ties, etc.)
This is roughly the same as taking a $6000/year pay cut from the offered salary.
So, really, this is no different from a company saying "Well, if you want to work here, you'll have to make your own parking arrangements - we don't cover that" or "Well, if you want to work here, you'll have to find your own vision care package - we don't cover that." The company is trying to take something that benefits them (not paying for parking, not payiung for vision coverage, presenting a professional image) and shift the cost of that onto the individual employee.
That's why I treat working attire the same way I treat medical coverage, paid parking downtown, and other benefits. Yes, I will consider a job working somewhere where suit and tie is required attire... but working there will cost me money, and I expect my salary to reflect that added expense. Conversely, if I accept a job somewhere else where attire is casual or buisness casual, I can live with a lower salary, because I avoid the bother of having to wear a uniform to work.
In other words... if my wearing professional attire on the job benefits the company, I expect to be compensated for that effort on my part, the same way I am compensated for my other efforts as an employee. If the company is unwilling to pay me for doing something that benefits the company, then they really shouldn't be surprised when I say "No".
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
it sounds terribly snobbish, because it IS. Terribly snobbish. There's just no damn good reason for suits for technical people.
/pick up dry cleaning, with burns more gasoline, takes more time, and generates more traffic on already overcrowded suburban/urban streets. These expenses and inconveniences are borne by the worker. Add that onto an already full schedule. And subtract the costs from their already taxed budget.
In an earlier posting, someone pointed out the absurd impracticalities of suits in a Texas environment. That's not the half of it.
Then there's the additional cost - not only of the suits, but the maintenance - dry cleaning (which uses some heinously unfriendly to the environment chemicals, by the way), and extra trips to drop off
I have no argument with demanding a professional appearance in the workplace - especially when there's face to face contact with customers. But that does not have to mean a suit. Business Casual should be good enough.
In fact, there have been many occasions where showing up in a suit actually hurts a technical person's credibility. You look at a guy in jeans and a t-shirt, and you know that that person has their job because they know their shit, their employer can't afford to impose a dress code, because they're so valued for their technical prowess - I'd rather have a person like that working on my system. If they're wearing a suit - you can assume they're just another charleton trying to "look professional" and shmooze their way through life.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I think the buff guy from UPS who spends his time loading and unloading trucks has a much better chance at picking up chicks compared to the fat assed programmer.
You can't grep a dead tree.
I have been through this.
:-) It was one of those things after 6 years, I knew they couldn't do the job required to bring the business to the next level. (They were control freaks to so they would get all defensive about things if I tried to get even the basic business information....).
:-)
My X business partners were a real problem in this sense. During the boomb time and the cray hours I was working to collapse the business technology into something manageable by one person, at times I put in 14 hours. Sometimes 20 hours.
What my X business partners would then say, " XXXX you know you should try and come into work a little bit more presentable."
I would of course smile, and say, " Sure **** I will try and do that."
Problem is, these two not only worked from 7-5PM, thier "contributions" to the business at the time STOPPED after 5PM.
As a business partner and technology guy, my SECOND JOB started after 5PM.
So, what I smiled and said was quite different from what I was thinking...I was thinking something like: "You MORON, I just got done refitting the customer systems ALL NIGHT LONG, what the F*** do you think YOU would look like if you did the same thing?"
This fell on deaf EARS of course, because the two guys I was business partners with not only had ZERO sense of any business, but they never really got the fact that I had far more responsibility than they did, and as a systems guy, contributed to the business far into the night while they had thier asses tucked away for a nice 8 hour sleep binge.
If I could have had the same kinds of responsibilities my X business partners had, I could look damn daper too in the morning, comming in all nicely dressed shaved and smellin like a rose.
In short my X business partners were idiots. However, they were nice people.
But, what I think I am trying to say is that now that I own my own business, I REALIZE that my network guy, has two jobs. He has to be around during the day to help with systems, but I realize he has to maintain systems, and sometimes that means he has to take networks or groups of machines offline. You can't do that during the day, so he has to work at night as well.
So I always say: "I don't care when you come, or what your hours are, but I expect things to be working and keep working 80-90% of the time. If I have to get involved because you don't address peoples complaints, then you are going to have problems with THE BIG CHEESE. So don't make me get all Limburger over your ass....
I find this arrangement works nice. I have had a couple of people ask me why *** gets all the hours flexibility in his job and we as programmers, or sales people do not. I simple reply "Well, first of all *** works day AND nights, has two jobs, and well, if his systems don't work, that paper you push on your desktop don't mean shit. You guys have 9-5pm responsibilities and *** has 24 hours 7 days a week responsibilities."
Most people back off right away, those that don't I train as IT department network guru's and once they see the responsibility requirements, most quit after 3 weeks.
So, management (which now includes me....) should think about network operations or IT operations as a 24x7 job requirement and as such, employees working under such high stress positions, get special favors. (No standard hours, no dress code (within reason of course but no suits or ties, but no Ripped clothing either sandals)......etc.)
They do at my company because the CEO has been there and done that and I KNOW it SUCKS.
Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
At one of my previous jobs, I was employee #4. I was also the first engineer on staff.
When I was asked to meet the board, I asked if I should wear a suit. Their response was "Heavens no! You're supposed to be our engineer!"
Depending on the investors, they might be disturbed if they *don't* see the second group...
Suits don't fool anyone. If you don't got it, you don't got it.