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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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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.
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.
This one hits it on the head. In our line of work, many of us may have to crawl around on a server room floor, under desks, etc. If you sit at your desk all day and there is no chance you are going to get up from it, then maybe a suit would be appropriate, but, if they want me to crawl around on the ground in a nice suit, they better be paying me enough to afford buying a new suit every week.
Don't Tread on Me
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 :-).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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!"
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.
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.
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