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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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because of this. They demanded suit and tie every day. ( Not kaki pants and a sport jacket, but an actual suit!).
Additionally, they worked wierd for IT hours, of only 8:00-4:30. They do not work overtime, weekends,or anything else. I didn't want to be in a programming department that was that regimented. It is a creative process, and if I wanted to work late to figure out a problem, they didn't want that.
Why am I "more productive" in a $50 pair of dockers and a dorky polo shirt then I am in jeans, tshirt, flannel, and sneakers (personal uniform of choice). I know on Friday when I can dress like this, I am happier, more laid back, and generally easier to get along with (flannel hides the gut, don't have to suck it in! :P ). Instead, corporate management pukes dictate that I shall dress in clothes that I wouldn't be buried in, all in the name of "professionalism" and "productivity". Goddamn, if I EVER am a manager and sit someone down to tell them that they need to dress "more like me" and I am wearing that dorksuit, jesus god put a bullet in my head.
Where I am, a tie has been on the "must wear" list for about a year now, even though as a regular part of Software's job, we have to test our code on the production floor with machines that have all kinds of moving parts with lots of torque behind them. On our "casual" day, jeans and T-shirts are verboten. However, we are constantly being pressed to release code that is not ready with no concern for whether it's buggy or not, and this is code that runs a high-powered laser machining tool. I guess the motto at our place should be, "It doesn't matter if we *are* professional, it only matters that we *look* professional".
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Lets face it, IT is changing, rapidly.
Traditionally, your average IT guy, lived and breathed computers, he was not master of one, he was jack of all trades and (normally) master of one particular area. YOu couldn't just go into uni and be taught everything you needed to know to go out and do computing, you had to live and breath it at a young age.
The times have changed, now every man and his dog does IT degrees and the market is being flooded with well presented, sociable creatures who dont actually understand what they are doing, they don't understand what teh computer is doing, they have not LEARNT the computer, they have LEARNT the program.
The traditional IT workers who can't dress to save there lives and have little social skills are finding it alot harder to compete with these socially adept creatures, and thus the attitude of the workers and the employees has changed
My theory anyway
Microsoft IIS is to webserving as KFC is to healthy eating
This would stop most of this nonsense, if enough people left their jobs to do real IT work. Not content with the crass stupidity at paying
salaries at early 90s levels, they want to
also want the workforce to wear suits?
Interestingly enough, I have some questions to employers, and government:
(This is not a comprehensive list btw)
Not kaki pants and a sport jacket, but an actual suit!
Oh my! Heaven forbid!!!
Have you ever had to wear a suit and tie to work everyday? It is one royal pain in the ass, getting stuff presses at the cleaners, scratchy collars, wool suits in the summer. I did it for 5 years at EDS (they were very strict, you couldn't leave their cube without your suit coat on, that and they are based in Texas, can you say 100 degree summers). Suffice to say requireing programmer/engineer types to wear suits is gonna do NOTHING for the good, buissness casual is about the limit. Requiring suits just makes the execs feel better.
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, but I bet you would have better code and happier employees (who will stay with you) then the first group.
The first time they entered in my room to tell me about how to dress, I was crawling under my table, connecting cables together...
:)
They actually understood it would be quite uncomfortable to force me to wear a S&T in order to perform such a speleological work
Trolling using another account since 2005.
OK, so I had the misfortune last year to be made redundant twice from nice Web Media companies where I could where pretty much what I wanted. This was nice, it meant I didn't have to stress about what I picked out of the wardrobe in the morning and could dress for the weather.
Now, I used to work for the public sector before this for nigh on two years as an external consultant and it was suit and tie every day.
More ironing, sure, but lent a lot more credibility to an otherwise young punk in amongst some of the UK's most senior pharmacologists.
Now I'm back in the public sector except I can forgo the tie unless I'm meeting a senior client but I still look like I'm staff/a professional.
Except Friday which is "Dress Down Day" when we can dress how we like.
Now, we're all thinking: "If it's OK to dress down on Friday and still go out and see the clients, why the hell do we have to suit and tie-up Monday - Thursday? Surely there's no difference?"
Many of our clients in the same organisation do not have a dress code yet we do, except on Fridays.
Would it really be such a big step if we were to shed the business suit Monday to Thursday?
Chris.
Im a pretty experienced programmer, but I bailed on silicon valley because there are no jobs left there. Im working on the east coast now, at a place that makes me wear a tie and collared shirts. Once you get over the shock of having to spend more than 20 bucks a year on clothing (you can go for years without updating if you live in a server room), wearing a monkeysuit (not even a full suit) isnt really that bad. Plus it gets you in the habit of shopping for decent clothing for when youre not working.
Its a small drawback to work in a place with job security (hard to imagine after 3 years of failing startups) and 9 to 5 hours with good salary. I think that is a pretty tolerable tradeoff.
Also, there is still plenty of opportunity to be counterculture- no one said you had to dress in browns and blues only. Dress flashy if you get bored. If someone objects, tell them youre just conforming to the dress code lol troublemaker.
... at least where I work (IBM).
Over the last decade IBM has shifted from a serious suit-and-tie kind of place to pretty much anything goes, except in front of customers, of course. After the last couple of rounds of layoffs, however, I've noticed a distinct shift in dress among the survivors, and it's not because of anything management has said.
IBM still dresses casually but I've noticed in my part of the company that dockers have largely replaced jeans and button-down shirts or turtlenecks have pretty much eradicated t-shirts. Sports coats and nice shoes are even seen on the upwardly mobile.
Management hasn't said anything, and there are very few employees around from "the old days", so it isn't that people are reverting back. I'm convinced that it's just basic caution; after seeing a bunch of others tossed on the street, everyone wants to go the extra mile in looking and acting like a professional, a valuable employee who must be retained -- just in case layoffs strike again.
My theory is that we'll see dress shift subtly up and down the scale in inverse proportion to the stock price.
Stock up == times good == dress irrelevant.
Stock down == times bad == better look good in every way you can.
Of course, for me, like many IBMers, this only matters when we actually go into the office. Large portions of IBM work from home these days, an experiment prompted by dot-boom but retained because it works well and saves on real estate costs. Again, though, when the stock is down face time with your boss becomes important...
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I have been working in the City for over 2 years now and have not been required to wear a suit since my interview (apart from at a couple of recruitment things). A lot of the other major banks have switched back recently but here (CitiGroup) and Goldmans have stuck with "business casual".
I'm also in the City, and what I'm seeing is that people are now gradually dressing back up, perfectly voluntarily. I suppose some of it might be due to fears about looking casual when jobs are being cut, but I suspect there's more to it than that. Personally, I like dressing for work, and changing into jeans and a t-shirt when I get home, it draws a nice line between work and the rest of my time. Like many people for a while my job was my life, but now even tho' I do enjoy my job, I do it to pay for my life.
An observation: most people who claim that suits are "uncomfortable" formed their opinion at a time when they could only afford cheap suits. A good suit is far more comfortable even than very casual clothes, it's made of high quality material and it can easily be modified to fit you exactly, rather than a generic "Size X" that casual clothes come on. People look good in suits; tailors have literally centuries of experience starting with military uniforms at making clothes that people look good in. Suits have plenty of pockets for stuff. Suits are versatile, you can go fully formal or in shirt sleeves.
Another possible reason is that humans are very status-oriented. If you've been to grad school and earn $$$, do you really want to dress like a mail room clerk? It sounds terribly snobbish, but I think it's a good explanation.
Like it or not how we dress is still important. Do you really want to take your wife out to a nice restaurant (where you will probably be spending upward of $200 for the meal) where the waiters are wearing jeans and t-shirts. Do you really want guests showing up in shorts and sneakers to a formal wedding that you have spent a lot of time an money planning? I don't necessarly like getting dressed up in the morning, but I do it because I am expected to.
I've got to answer this one.
...
The photos you see are the photos that NASA management of the time wanted you to see. Said management, of course, were 1950's and 1940's aerospace engineers who had climbed the management ladder, and they were indeed buzzcut-tie-cigarette types. But they weren't the ones doing the real engineering work any more. The ones who actually sent men to the moon, the ones who were crunching the numbers and getting the rockets off the ground, were hippies. Long hair, joint, and tattered work shirt were their uniform. And there were ferocious culture clashes between them and the older guys, but they got the job done.
How do I know this? Because my Dad was one of those hippie engineers
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
If you're just sitting on your fat ass all day, tapping a keyboard, it's not like it matters what you wear. You're not capping an oil rig. Grow the fuck up. You're an adult with a job that presumably is ultimately necessary for people to earn their paychecks. Dress like it.
Those who bitch about suits/ties being uncomfortable need to buy ones that fit. Go to a place where they'll measure you. It's not difficult. Wear a properly fitted suit and you'll realize that jeans that are actually tighter and more confining.
It's an ugly but true fact that if you dress better, people treat you better. People in stores are more attentive, and women are more likely to give you a first chance if at first glance you look like you have a job with responsibilities, rather than some guy who unloads trucks at UPS.
Wearing a suit does not help your skills, but it will affect how management feels about you. It may be "selling out" to dress like management, but when it comes time for cutbacks, do you think some superficial manager is going to cut the people who at least look like they fit in with everyone else or the guys in t-shirts who dress like gas station attendants?
"A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in; for him the old will do.... Only they who go to soirees and legistlative halls must have new coats, coats to change as often as the man changes in them. But if my jacket and trousers, my hat and shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do; will they not? ... I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes... If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.... Otherwise, we shall be found sailing under false colors, and be inevitably cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind."
-- Thoreau
Well, where I work we have the dress code of "clothes required" and that is it. Some guys wear business casual and some where t-shirts and tennis shoes. You can check us out here. Anyway, my thought it is this, most computer guys (programmers,scientists, etc.) are problem solvers.That is their job. To solve problems with the tools they are given or to give users the appropriate tools to solve their problems.I think it does not matter what they are wearing. As long as they solve those problems. And if you are all jazzed up in a suit then you (in my opinion) give the impression you are trying to sell something and not solve my problems. So, until they give me a cool 'computer scientist lab coat' I am going to wear what I am comfortable in and be the problem solver I am supposed to be. :)
Can you see Iron City here?
The market has tightened significantly and whether people like it or not, you're going to have to work a lot harder in this environment than you have ever done in your life.
Apparently this guy has never worked at a dot.com startup. I've worked for two, and worked my butt off at both, rarely working less than 80+ hours/week. The reason I worked so hard wasn't because of the paycheck, the stock options or some suit/PHB telling me to, it was because I was personally invested in seeing the companies and their products/services succeed. This is not to say that people outside of the dot.coms don't also work hard -- they do. It's just simplistic (and inaccurate) to portray dot.commies as slackers.
The notion that a suit looks more professional or mature is also crap. First of all, I know a lot of suits who are neither professional nor mature (and utterly incapable of communication). And secondly, I seem to remember a time not too long ago when women and people of color were considered to be less "professional" than white men, and thus unworthy of higher-ranking positions. Please tell me we're not headed back in that direction!
Is that really the impression you're trying to present? Because it's the one you are...
There are two sorts of highly moderated response here.
The first boils down to the canonical hacker-coder "Omigawd! Not me! I'll starve first, respect me for what I do not what I look like!" idea.
The second looks more like "You losers, come back and join the rest of the world. People care what people look like and if you can't figure that out you're not as smart as you think you are."
I have got to wonder: How high a correlation is there between people who posted the latter and people who got stuck wearing suits or ties to be employed after the dot-bomb collapse?
-JDF (I like shirts with collars... and blue jeans, dammit.)
The best description is here. It provides a good, concise description of CMM levels 1-5. Highly recommended as the best 1/3 page summary of CMM there is.
It also provides in much more detail a description of levels 0 to -3, the Capability Im-Maturity Model, and that part's hilarious.
Zoe Brain - Rocket Scientist
"The tie is there to hide the buttons."
;-)
That's an Interesting theory, so I had to research it.
Actually, the french soldiers liked the neck tie ('cravate') because it was so much more convenient than the white collar they used to ornament their shirts with (the cravate was colored, hence easier to keep a clean appearance). And the french learned about the tie from the croats, explaining the name cravate.
Anyways, so the tie never was about function, but about appearance. It was an ornament more practical than its predecessor. So its a culture thing. But I'm still not sure about the hiding the buttons. Did the white collar hide the buttons too? I need closure
ps: I read this on the Internet, so it has to be true...
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.