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?

Comments

first post

[Botchka]

My job is really lax as far as attire...pretty much everything goes except jeans with holes and shorts..

Re:first post

[l33t j03]

Yeah, I notice that you guys have slipped. Every Wednesday morning when you ride by hanging off the back of that garbage truck I tell my girlfriend how the neighborhood is going to hell.

Slippers & pyjamas...

[navywife]

The cats don't seem to mind.

I turned down a well paying job at Walgreens

[Greg151]

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.

Re:I turned down a well paying job at Walgreens

[Arcturax]

Where was this at? Seattle area I hope? I've got some friends out there who are desperate enough do the job wearing whatever they want. The means stark naked or in a full suit of combat armor if just meant they had a job again.

Re:I turned down a well paying job at Walgreens

[tshoppa]

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.

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 :-).

Re:I turned down a well paying job at Walgreens

[duffbeer703]

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.

Re:I turned down a well paying job at Walgreens

[Paladin128]

Some of us actually enjoy our job. Working long hours coding to fix one peoblem is occasionally intellectually rewarding. I don't take jobs that I won't enjoy. I'm not married, not exclusively dating, and my social life conssts almost entirely of friday/saturday activities.

One of my previous employers was a start-up, which is a whole different ball game. We were under-staffed because we were under-funded which lead to the occasional crunch time to meet a deadline. I didn't mind as my co-workers were very cool, the CEO payed for our dinner if we stayed extra hours, and often payed for a car service home, rather than have us take the subway/PATH/bus to get home, which saved me like 40 minutes on my commute.

Re:I turned down a well paying job at Walgreens

[duffbeer703]

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.

Re:I turned down a well paying job at Walgreens

[Paladin128]

When I stop enjoying my work/lifestyle combination, I'll change that. It's really that simple. Right now, I dress how I want, work the hours I want (which means as few or as many as it takes to get the job done on time; I can choose to not show up for two or three days, get the week's tasks done on the final two or three days, and no one cares!)

I'm also getting to a point in my life where I'm thinking that I shouldn't tie myself down with a serious relationship or marriage because it's not right for me. I'm far happier doing what I want with my money, which prioritizes hardware upgrades before presentable curtains or high-fashion clothing or any silly shit like that. I rather like being single.

Re:I turned down a well paying job at Walgreens

[Reziac]

You make a good point about regular hours. Someone really in control of their creative processes can indeed decide to work 9-5, much as a seasoned fiction writer, who writes for a *living*, learns to allot a daily block of time during which they will write. A great deal of this ability comes from simply making yourself conform to a schudule and sticking to it.

As to dress codes, they can can be and often are just a control issue, but it can also be a way of identifying with the tribe (ie. your company) or declaring that you and your company are worth taking seriously.

Insisting that you'll not work where you can't be scruffy informs the world "I have no self-respect, so no need for you to respect me either". Whether that's fact or not is irrelevant -- it IS how others will interpret it, and will treat you accordingly.

There have been studies and surveys done of people who work at home, and the general conclusion was that those who put themselves on a schedule and "dress for work" are more productive, and more likely to succeed, than those who think it's okay to work in their pajamas just because no one can tell them not to.

It is, as someone points out above, largely a matter of attitude. Yours toward yourself and the world, and the world's toward you.

Re:I turned down a well paying job at Walgreens

[cduffy]

Insisting that you'll not work where you can't be scruffy informs the world "I have no self-respect, so no need for you to respect me either". Whether that's fact or not is irrelevant -- it IS how others will interpret it, and will treat you accordingly.

Then those "others" are folks I'd rather not work with.

My last job was in a software house where a T-shirt and shorts was appropriate dress within the engineering department; an engineer wearing a suit was obviously due for a meeting with customers (important customers, even!) or a visiting outsider -- most certainly not one of the gang. (Indeed, I was teased mercilessly during my interview for coming in in a suit). The message there was that it was more important for the engineering staff to be happy and productive than to have an outward appearance of corporate conformity. Those with the suits were those who had the annoying bother of dealing with customers and investors and had to follow a myriad of little rules (come to work at this time, leave at that time, ask your supervisor before taking a break, etc etc etc) while we were permitted the lattitude to do as we wished -- just so long as the product got shipped. I've never found as happy a workplace. (Yes, they're still around).

That said -- I'm unemployed right now in a very tough job market, and I'll wear a suit if that's what it takes. OTOH, if I get two offers separated only by dress code, I'm taking the one with the casual wear; it's more likely that the employer permitting casual wear in engineering will take that same hands-off approach to management which worked (and works!) so well with my last company.

Re:I turned down a well paying job at Walgreens

[cduffy]

Your job is your job. Working until 1 AM off the clock only proves that you are an ass.

An ass? I think not. An idiot, maybe -- but then, maybe not. There've been times when I've found my work personally fulfilling; or when the team needed to finish getting those last 30 bugs out to meet the ship date; or when a bunch of the engineers took a (non-management-approved) break in the middle of the workday to go to the beach and watch the eclipse (true story!), so we make up the lost hours later. There are lots of good reasons to deviate from a 9-to-5 schedule.

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.

Not all spaghetti code is written late at night, nor is all code written late at night spaghetti. More importantly, coding time done at night can be implementing and bugfixing designs created and reviewed during the day.

The real objection I have, though, is that you presume to know what kind of code the poster writes (and, by extension, everyone else who works late every so often) without ever meeting either of us, or looking at our code. Assuming someone to be a moron when knowing nothing more than a few paragraphs of text about them strikes me as a dangerous habit, both for the accuracy of your character judgements and your popularity among those you so judge. Perhaps it'd be worth being a bit more cautious, no?

Re:I turned down a well paying job at Walgreens

[cduffy]

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.

Ya know, that really did happen to me (between my first and almost-third years at a Sunnyvale startup). Know what happened?

The employer and I parted ways (amicably), and I'm the happier for it. I don't wish that I was less dedicated my first year there, and I don't regret having spent more time with family and friends towards the end of my employement. Indeed, I think I would regret having been an intentionally worse employee during the beginning of my stay (so as to keep expectations low), and I know I'd have regretted sticking to that schedule later on.

In short: It's reasonable for one to work as long hours as one feels appropriate; just because it creates an expectation of similar future performance doesn't imply any obligation to conform to that expectation.

Re:I turned down a well paying job at Walgreens

[shoppa]

Quite difference from the early days of NASA when people routinely worked 20% and more unpaid overtime.

You will not find that at a CMM Level 5 shop. If they cannot budget the personnel to get the job done on time, do you think they're gonna make CMM Level 5? These are outfits that are way too good to get involved in Death-March class projects.

Again, nothing I write above has anything to do with wearing suits or not; it all has to do with the quality of work and nothing to do with wearing a suit. (Most suit-type shops wouldn't be able to Make CMM level 2 in any event, they're probably just struggling to emerge from pure chaos.)

Re:I turned down a well paying job at Walgreens

[Reziac]

I said scruffy, not casual. There is a difference, but a lot of people here clearly don't understand that. Just as some managers don't grok that the guy stringing network cable doesn't need to be in a suit. BUT -- what if he's working at a client whose OWN clientele expect to see spiffy-looking personnel? It's not fair to impact someone else's business by looking like a misplaced janitor.

And a great many of the posts here sound *not* like someone making a well-considered choice re practical and/or comfortable clothing, but rather like a kid who refuses to comb his rat's-nest hair, solely because dad said he wasn't leaving the house looking like that.

Offhand I don't know where you'd find hard data on self-discipline vs success (tho there are several books devoted to the subject, aimed at SOHO startups), but I can tell you that every couple years Costco (which caters primarily to small and home-based businesses) runs a survey, and overwhelmingly the responses favour acting like you're at work even tho you're working at home -- including getting your ass out of PJs and into clothing that your clients would expect, if they were sitting in your home-office.

Re:I turned down a well paying job at Walgreens

[whereiswaldo]

I'm in total agreement. However, I'd like to add that if my employer was willing to buy me a different suit jacket/shirt/pants/slacks/tie for each day over two weeks, a couple nice pairs of shoes, and to pay for dry cleaning expenses and time spent dealing with dry cleaning, I wouldn't mind so much wearing a suit each day. As it stands now, I don't get paid enough to spend that kind of money on expensive clothes, and thankfully they don't expect that of their programmers.

Frankly, I have a trust problem with people who _overdress_. It usually shows me that they are insecure and under-qualified and only wear expensive clothes to give people that "I know what I'm doing" air about them and make themselves feel better. People like that get found out eventually.

Re:I turned down a well paying job at Walgreens

[Mac Degger]

It somehow strikes me that the people who would go for the 'regimented regime' of dressing up for work even if they work from the home are exactly the kind of people who would agree to participate in and send in such questionairs.

More of them, less of the other...how can your numbers mean anything then?

Yet another case of statistics being meaningless.

Re:I turned down a well paying job at Walgreens

[sjames]

Dress codes can vary from psychologically useful to annoying control issues. There's a difference between wanting to be 'scruffy' at work and wanting to wear clothes that are unobtrusive.

I prefer unobtrusive. That is, the sort of clothes that I don't think about at all while I work. Clothes that I vdon't worry about if I have to crawl under a desk to wire up som cat5 and don't restrict my movements when I'm reaching between and around equipment in a rack. Clothes that I'm not all that worried about if heat sink slime or solder splats get on them. For that matter, clothes that I'm not worried about if coffee spills.

The reason for all of that is that I prefer to think about the job I'm doing, not the clothes I'm wearing while I do it. Not scruffy clothes mind, black pants and a pullover w/ the company logo would be fine, and certainly creates that sense of identity.

When working at home, I do put on a work shirt in order to psychologically seperate the day. When I'm more or less done for the day, I put on an 'at home' shirt for the same reason. The primary difference is that a 'work shirt' has a pocket. I believe that DOES improve productivity at home.

It has been my observation that suit and tie shops tend to be those places that use big and expensive (often new) stone age hardware and software when a cheap PC would do and, in spite of everyone looking busy and getting tired by the end of the day, never seem to actually accomplish anything. These are also the places where what amounts to a 4 hour hack is seen as an impossable dream. These places also seem to run mostly on paperwork. That 4 hour hack is possable, but only after the 2 week 'work order' process has been completed.

Re:I turned down a well paying job at Walgreens

[Reziac]

Finally, someone who actually read what I wrote [g] That's what a lot of people here failed to differentiate: dress codes can be used to batter the slaves into submission, or equally to encourage everyone to really feel like team players. It's not so much WHAT you're required to wear as management's attitude about it.

There is something to what you say about strict suit-and-tie shops tending to be behind the times -- I believe it's called "conservative" ;) But the problem isn't the S&T per se. MOST of the business world runs in a S&T environment, and the IT dept. is a relative newcomer.

Coders bitch about how they have to put up with management's stupid decisions, but when the newfangled coding/IT dept. all show up for work dressed like pimply teenagers just because they CAN, they establish themselves as beneath the S&T set's notice in the tribal hierarchy. So long as coder/IT types think how they dress doesn't matter, they're not going to get the kind of say in business that they probably should in today's world. It may not make sense, but that's how it is in the Real World.

Re:I turned down a well paying job at Walgreens

[sjames]

There is a huge difference between people working at all hours to maximise their productivity and for the sheer love of programming and a death march.

Predictability, reliability, and provability are critical where human life is at stake, but if we insisted on that for every computer related project, we'd probably still be submitting programs in batch mode on punch cards.

Some of the real 'killer apps' hardware and software are, in fact, based on the opposite. A good example is LAN protocols. The reliable, predictable and orderly system, known as 'Token Ring" is all but dead. The chaotic one based on random backoff and timings that are unpredictable in the short term, but 'generally' work out OK statistically over a longer term has won out in cost and reliability.

The Internet itself is another example. Routers behave more like cells in an a-life simulation than anything else. Although any one router will behave more or less predictably for a given input, the overall net is fairly non-deterministic and chaotic. It's overall behaviour is an emergant property. While that does cause problems from time to time, it is, overall, why we have an Internet at all.

I'm not claiming that CMM 5 is a bad thing, just that it is the right tool for 'some' jobs, not all jobs.

One of the more interesting approaches in cases where human life (or even great deals of money/property) is at stake is to divide the task into two programs. One is developed to the strictest standards and review process. It's development is slow and reliable. It changes very slowly (if at all) in production. It's job is to ensure that all outputs are within safe parameters. It's performance will be safe, dependable and likely 'uninspired'.

The other program is meant to be innovative, cutting edge, and creative. If all goes well, it's performance will be much better than the first. If it doesn't work out, old-reliable will ignore it and keep things safe and reliable.

As a side note, the early days at NASA were an inspiring human triumph exactly because they were dedicated to doing the 'impossable' now. NASA's successes do not come from predictability, reliability and repeatability as much as from knowing WHEN to be predicatble, repeatable and reliable and when to get 'creative'.

The Soviet (now Russian) program demonstrates a different mix of the same thing. It chose to be more ad-hoc and brute force about things. Rather than insisting on reliability, make unreliable behaviour O.K. While that mix did (and does) create some truly stunning failures, it has also created stunning successes.

While watching our step will keep us from stumbling, if we don't look up to the horizon from time to time, we'll just shuffle around in circles forever.

Theres a limit here

[ReVMD]

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.

Re:Theres a limit here

[robbieduncan]

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".

Re:Theres a limit here

[sql*kitten]

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.

Re:Theres a limit here

[jafac]

it sounds terribly snobbish, because it IS. Terribly snobbish. There's just no damn good reason for suits for technical people.

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 /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.

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.

Re:Theres a limit here

[Pig Hogger]

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.

That's nothing. Back in 1827, on the Stockton & Darlington Railway, enginemen wore top-hats...

Does it matter what I wear?

[6Yankee]

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.

pajamas and a tshirt...

[Anonymous Coward]

is the dress code at my 'IT job', which is searching for work, and filing for unemployment. on casual fridays, the pajamas are optional.

Gah, no thanks...

[CoolVibe]

I am notoriously incompatible with ties. Also notoriously incompatible with people wearing them. I am especially incompatible with people that demand that I wear a tie.

If there is a dress code, I'll pack up and leave, or not work there in the first place.

Re:Gah, no thanks...

[JanneM]

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.

Re:Gah, no thanks...

[CoolVibe]

Still no. A tie is a tie. I will not wear one. (insert green eggs and ham scenario)

I don't wear outlandishly teared up clothes. I know what a shower is, how to use one and what one uses soap for. I might have a somwhat unconventional hairstyle, and a slightly warped taste about what prints I have on my t-shirt, but I usually dress okay (although the color of my wardrobe is somewhat onesided: black).

So 1. I don't stink 2. I wear clothes without holes in 'em, and 3. I know my stuff and do what I do to the best of my abilities.

I think those three factors (especially the first one) count most when dealing with people and clients.

Re:Gah, no thanks...

[Anarchofascist]

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.

Re:Gah, no thanks...

[sql*kitten]

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.

Re:Gah, no thanks...

[The G]

The tie is there to hide the buttons.

The buttons are there to close the shirt.

The shirt has to be closed because we don't have adequately stretch fabrics.

Oh wait, we do.

The T-shirt is high-tech. It solves all of the problems that the old mode of dress is built around. But no, somehow, the formal thing to do is to wear an unnecessary tie to hide unnecessary buttons.

And don't even start on collars, which are there to hide the stitching which we don't need because mankind has since discovered frickin' cotton.
--G

Re:Gah, no thanks...

[CoolVibe]

Tacky? Pff... you have no sense of humor.

Oh, and I don't need your sympathy. The most heard comment I usually get about my shirts is the "Hey, cool shirt" one.

I have no sympathy for you either :)

Re:Gah, no thanks...

[CoolVibe]

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.

You misinterpret. With "people wearing ties" I mean the people who wear ties all the time because they think they have to.

In contrast (and many post here on slashdot) there's the people who wears ties because they "have to", but as soon as the client is gone the tie is gone as well.

Note that there is a distinct difference between those people. I rather consort with the second kind, rather with teh first. And usually I interact with them when they are in "tie-off" mode.

As for the first kind, well, necessary evil I guess. I'll do my job, I'll help them as best as I can, but I don't have to like them.

A tie as a fashion acessory? BWAHAHAHA! Puhleeze. I rather hang myself with one rather than wear one. Heck, my clothes are in one piece (no holes), I don't smell, I know what personal hygiene means. That should do it I guess.

Also, I crawl about under 19 racks and raised floors. I crawl around desks and crawlspaces. I'm not going to wear a suit anyway. Such are the benefits of a developer/sysadmin.

Re:Gah, no thanks...

[CoolVibe]

Screw badges. I won't wear suits and ties because of mainly 2 reasons:

1. I abhorr and loathe the tie. No matter what it stands for
2. It's not functional for me to wear one, since I crawl under, between, above and behind stuff regularily. Wearing a tie in these conditions is life threatening even. What if your tie snags while you fall off something? You'd have yourself a hanging in the server room... Great.

Also, I won't hide behind a tie if I fuck up. That's utter bullshit. If I fuck up, I'm man enough to admin that I _did_ fuck up, I'll act responsibly and mop up the mess. No more or less should be required.

Also, it's better for me to stand out. That way I am easier to spot and locate. I don't need to blend in and hide. I want my users to know who and where I am.

So screw the suit and the tie, I'm not wearing 'em... ever...

Re:Gah, no thanks...

[dghcasp]

Let me rephrase that for you...

I don't understand the fundamental rules of business. I don't believe that perception plays any part in a working relationship and feel that you should judge me solely on my 31337 coding skillz, even if you have no proof of them other than my word. I don't play well in teams unless everyone is exactly like me. I want to show you that I'm not dependable and have no fundamental interpersonal skills by quitting if I disagree with anything you ask of me instead of rationaly discussing the issue and seeing if we can compromise.

Is that really the impression you're trying to present? Because it's the one you are...

Re:Gah, no thanks...

[EllisDees]

>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"

Nah. I don't have to wear a tie for people to know that I'm good at a job. My work speaks for itself. There sure are a bunch of fuckups who *do* wear ties, and it doesn't seem to help them one bit when it comes time for our performance evaluations.

Re:Gah, no thanks...

[jelle]

"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...

Re:Gah, no thanks...

[CoolVibe]

How do you know the way I work in teams? Does one need to wear a suit and tie to be a team player? That's such absolute crap.

You assume way too much.

Re:Gah, no thanks...

[kiwimate]

I abhorr and loathe the tie. No matter what it stands for

Just out of curiosity, did you also, in common with the vast majority of eight year olds, abhor and loathe school when you were there?

It's not functional for me to wear one, since I crawl under, between, above and behind stuff regularily. Wearing a tie in these conditions is life threatening even. What if your tie snags while you fall off something? You'd have yourself a hanging in the server room... Great.

That's why God invented tie pins. (By the way -- if you're ever walking down a busy street and see a group of suits with their ties blown over their shoulder by the wind, do everyone a favour and point them in the direction of the nearest accessory shop so they can purchase one of these handy little devices too, please.)

Also, I won't hide behind a tie if I f**k up.

Nor will I. Despite the rash of scandals, most of the suits whom you appear to loathe are also quite responsible -- that's how they got to their current position. (And spare me the "but what about...". I'm no naif -- I know there are those who progress by flattery and nepotism.)

Read your post again and listen to the permanent pout that you must have. Don't worry; you're very unlikely to ever get to a position where you're required to wear a tie.

Nothing here so far

[Bigbutt]

While the workforce here at the office has been trimmed, there's no apparent change in the dress of my cow-orkers. Management (big 'M') has not said anything to any of us.

Not too long ago, my manager came into the server room and declared, "everyone needs to start wearing slacks and button down shirts. Ties aren't necessary but we need to present a better image to the customer."

Me, "That's fine, I quit."

Him, quickly, "Except you, [John]."

[John]

Re:Nothing here so far

[Tablizer]

You're joking, right? The market may be saturated, but it's not with the talented people. People who actually know their shit can still name their salary, let alone their clothing.

Bull! You cannot tell at an interview. You can weed out the low-end fairly easily, but development skills cannot be tested easily in 2 hours otherwise.

It is an image game. The best actor wins.

Re:Nothing here so far

[aebrain]

That's Australian management all over.

Not always. OK, more often than not. It doesn't help that we're paid 1/3 or less of post-dotbomb US salaries. This was brought home to me when I saw the budgetary cost of the average programmer in Europe - USD $160,000 or $320,000 AusD. That includes payroll taxes etc etc, but is still four times what it costs to hire the average programmer here - who gets $20,000 USD, about half the cost. And even superstars wouldn't get more than $70,000 USD

But not every company is like this. OK, I'll name names: I work for this mob. The CEO gets less than the senior technical people. Every 2 weeks, all employees get together and we discuss the firm's accounts, what our plans are, how we can help each other. It's a (literal) Soviet. And we do all sorts of interesting stuff, like spaceflight avionics, help people get CMM 3+ etc. We work 9-to-5 in theory, but closer to 10-6 in practice. We have lives, and consider long hours to be a sign that we've screwed up in resource planning. It happens, but rarely.

Dress Code? "Whatever's appropriate". When flogging a tool to IBM, suit, tie, etc. Otherwise "civilised", whatever you're comfortable with. Some wear suits by preference, some not.

No, I wouldn't leave this place for 10x the money I'm getting. After 22 years in the business, I know how lucky I am.

Depends on Visibility

[Dialithis]

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.

Re:Depends on Visibility

[hacker]

"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."

The article was talking about IT "dot-com" types, not managers or salespeople. That being said, I agree that anyone coming in contact with customers should cleanly represent the company, IF that is their focus (i.e. a cable installer on a telephone pole can wear jeans, as long as he has the company shirt logo on.. (and in fact, jeans are safer on the pole than slacks)).

However, MOST of the IT "dot-com" technologists are developers, coders, hackers, and people who you want 25 hours a day, focusing on CODE, the core thing that makes your business or product successful. Sticking them in front of customers is not only going to probably confuse and anger your customers, but will slash productivity by half, since the coder is no longer CODING.

The point is moot, as a developer, we'll just take our skills elsewhere, or we'll just start our own business with our own products, and compete with yours.

Self-contradicting?

[Inoen]

Quote the article:
The increase in productivity is not worth the extra cost and it takes away from the key focus, which has to be work

Last time i checked, there was no extra cost imposed on an employer when employees didn't wear suits.

And if it takes focus away from work, it can hardly be considered an increase in productivity, can it?
Or... If it is an increase in productivity, it can't be taking focus from work?

What did i miss?

...or maybe that guy missed something.

Re:Self-contradicting?

[Hard_Code]

You miss the obvious correlation that wearing jeans and t-shirts leads you to become a scruffy communist open source programmer, thus reducing your productivity to the company. Or something like that.

Re:Self-contradicting?

[geekoid]

because ther is a cost associated with monitoring casual dress. There are people who will take casually dress to far, and that could become a liability issue. Or some people may cause some problems because they have to wear a suit, when other don't.
Now that the market sucks, they don't have to take that risk to keep employees.

Oh yeah... Productivity

[isa-kuruption]

"The increase in productivity is not worth the extra cost and it takes away from the key focus, which has to be work."

This is a great quote! The increase in productivity (i.e. the AMOUNT of work done per unit of time) is NOT worth the extra cost of taking away from uhm work... right?

T-Shirt and Jeans all the way.

[Kong the Medium]

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 ....

Re:T-Shirt and Jeans all the way.

[Heem]

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.

Re:T-Shirt and Jeans all the way.

[pesc]

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

That's why all tech personell that are actually permitted to touch the expensive computing hardware should wear white robes. Over the suits. Like in the good old days! ;-)

Re:T-Shirt and Jeans all the way.

[duffbeer703]

That establishes a good tradeoff for me. If I wear a suit, no crawling looking for shit.

So instead of me getting away from programming tasks and other real work, we have some $12/hour wire monkey crawling under tables and racks.

Re:T-Shirt and Jeans all the way.

[swv3752]

I remember several years back at a former job, we were holding a party and invited many customers. I was one of the "hosts" and was wearing a suit. While several employees were about in thier regular uniforms, the manager requested that I haul out the trash. I gaze down at my suit clad body then returned his gaze and replied, "Sure thing, just as soon as you cut me a check for the dry cleaning bill." He just turned away and made some one else do it.

Managers are looking for ways to subvert the will of thier employees. If they can make you dress formal and still grunge about, all the better.

Re:T-Shirt and Jeans all the way.

[$rtbl_this]

That's why all tech personell that are actually permitted to touch the expensive computing hardware should wear white robes

And risk looking like this? (Yes, I know it's not white...)

Not only do I have to wear a suit now

[imrdkl]

All of my Leisure suits are out of fashion, and the birthday suit is against new policy.

Err...

[Wakko Warner]

If being a night janitor at Walgreen's is now considered "programming". . .

Not

[Spackler]

They can have my jeans, as soon as they pry them off my dead, cold ass.

Re:Not

[testharness]

They can have my jeans, as soon as they pry them off my dead, cold ass.

Well if your ass is cold and dead, and you need help to pry your jeans off, than all I can say is you should have taken them off several months ( or is it years?) ago, and washed them.

Re:Not

[ivrcti]

So, why is your ex-mule wearing your jeans?

Re:Not

[Wraithlyn]

He never said 'ex' ;)

Change in my dress code.

[SkulkCU]

They make me wear shoes now. It wasn't so much a change in the IT dress code, as it was a result of the complaints from other employees. IT dress code, on the other hand, now includes those propeller-hats, so that the other departments can easily identify us...

It depends on your clients ...

[HealYourChurchWebSit]

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.

it depends a lot on you

[phunhippy]

it really depends alot on you.. examples:

1. your important and they don't want to lose you.... then you can pretty much do what you want(me for example)

2. your easily replaceable... dress as they ask and you might not get an involuntary career adjustment.

Status Check...

[decaying]

Live in Australia : check
Have IT job : check
Wore Jeans and T-Shirt to Work today : check

ZDNet telling managers that it is now OK to force useless clothing styles on people that never meet clients : check

Wow! Communicating with others?!

[The Wing Lover]

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.

It gets better!

[isa-kuruption]

"People see any additional expenditure as fun and that means you don't have to go for that additional comfort for your employees because you don't need to do it anymore because you don't need to compete to hold on to your employees," Rush adds.

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!

Re:It gets better!

[isa-kuruption]

Well, they could get my benefits straightened out and answer the f'ing phone when I call them!

Strange statements

[Arcturax]

The article had some rather strange statements about casual dress costing the employers money. How does that cost them money? They don't have to buy the clothes and then jeans and a t-shirt costs a hell of a lot less than a suit!

Someone who understands corporate culture far better than I do care to explain how casual dress costs the company more money?

Re:Strange statements

[sql*kitten]

Someone who understands corporate culture far better than I do care to explain how casual dress costs the company more money?

If everyone wears a suit, it's simple. You put on your suit, your shirt, your tie, your shoes and go to work. Easy.

But if you can wear what you want, suddenly there's a bit more thinking involved. The question about what to wear today rears its head. And when you get to work, you can spend hours bitching about/admiring your colleague's clothes. It's the same reason that some employers aren't too keen on excessive decoration of work areas, or bringing your pets to work, or having music playing out loud, or watching DVDs on your PC. The office is a place to work, it's not a social event.

Personally, I think that a compromise between the two extremes should be struck. Productivity is important, but it can be taken to the point where it's all activity and no useful work - and it's rare (in my experience) that anyone does work a solid 8 or 10 hours, there are always gaps when you are waiting for something. In those times, why not do something fun? So long as the balance is kept. In the dotcom days, it became all fun and no work, which is even more damaging that all work and no fun.

Been there done that it doesn't work well

[jsimon12]

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.

Re:Been there done that it doesn't work well

[6Yankee]

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.

That's fine - just remember to iron that t-shirt if you're meeting with a customer :)

I've yet to hear an explanation

[billmaly]

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.

Bound to happen

[OrangeSpyderMan]

As a previous poster pointed out, the change in the supply:demand ratio compared to a few years ago is one of the key factors that means this kind of thing was bound to happen. In a market where for most positions you can get four or five suitable candidates quite easily, any HR Director is looking for the one thing that makes a difference, and presentation is one of those things - especially in companies who are increasingly considering the IT depts. as cost centers in the same way as they do the telephones, the maintenace contracts on their metal presses etc. They demand service quality, and the perception of quality in the service they receive can be heavily influenced by the presentation of the people they employ. Most beancounters will automatically consider a sysadmin in jeans and tux t-shirt as being less "impressive" than a guy in a shirt and tie - as long as both get the job done.

Given the choice between two printing presses that both produce very acceptable output, cost the same and have the same features - would you choose the one that's dusty and scraped, even if only superficially, over the shiny polished one with a fresh paint job? I think not.

Re:Bound to happen

[Pig Hogger]

Most beancounters will automatically consider a sysadmin in jeans and tux t-shirt as being less "impressive" than a guy in a shirt and tie - as long as both get the job done.

And it is well known that a beancounter has no fucking clue as what is "the job done" by a sysadmin, so he'll hire the suiter over the jeaner.

Re:Wow! Communicating with others?!

[Arcturax]

You need the tie to cut off the blood to your brain so you can be in a proper state to understand management's reasoning on things.

It's all about perception

[NormalVisual]

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".

Its not just the dress code..

[nervlord1]

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

Re:Its not just the dress code..

[sql*kitten]

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.

It's a result of the technology maturing. For example, in the old days if fsck failed, you might have to go in there with fsdb and fix it yourself. And back in the day, SunOS 1.x admins thought fsdb was newfangled nonsense. Nowadays, on a modern journalled filesystem you never have to do that, and on a modern storage array if a disk goes bad you don't have to recover what you can from it, you just hotswap it and throw it away.

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.

It's the same in every industry. How many people know how their TVs work, or their cars, or their cellphones? Back in the day, the only people who had these things were engineers, now everyone has them. Eventually, the pure-IT people will be like garage mechanics.

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

In a mature technology, the problem is not "how to do it", but rather "what should we do". IT always used to be about the former, but now it is about the latter. It is so easy with modern tools to build bread-and-butter applications that it is more important to work out what applications should be built - the complexity is no longer in the technology, but in the application of the technology, how it represents and manipulates data in the "real world". To answer those questions, you need to have good communication and social skills so you can find out what the people paying your salary actually want do, then you need to work out how to use computers to do that.

That's not a bad thing; you can't outsource it to India, it relies on the IT people being right there in the thick of things. People who can't adapt to the new way are going to find themselves in an increasingly precarious position in the job market.

Re:Its not just the dress code..

[FurryFeet]

...they have not LEARNT the computer, they have LEARNT the program.

But at least they have LEARNED English (one hopes)...

Re:Business attire is a must....

[Arcturax]

It really depends on what you are doing. In my case, I write code all day and almost never have to deal with customers except over the phone if I'm trying to get input to debug something.

If I had to meet with customers, they would tell me before hand so I could change into proper attire to meeting a client.

But in the meantime, jeans and a t-shirt works just fine as long as there are no holes and dirt and such on them.

Long hair shouldn't make any difference at all. We have several people here where I work with long hair and they have met with clients and there has never ever been a problem with it.

A Swedish Perspective

[e8johan]

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.

Re:Wow! Communicating with others?!

[Kanon]

What he said only without the sarcasm :)

It all Depends..

[nurb432]

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..

Re:It all Depends..

[JaredOfEuropa]

"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.."

Makes perfect sense... People with the dress sense of the average programmer or even sales guy should not be allowed to go buy a suit on their own. Send those people to go buy a dress and they show up in a green one, or a really cheap one with a horrible fit. And for gods sake give some thought to the shirt and tie to go with it. No Bugs Bunny or other "novelty" ties. No tie clips. Double breasted is only for older folks, people. As for colors, only dark blue or dark gray is acceptable. Go easy on the pinstripe.

I wish people would either wear a suit properly or just don't bother and go casual. In case suits are a requirement, I am all for sending the employees off to a haberdasher that will turn them out decently.

Solution

[oPless]

Start own business.

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:

• Why is there no Union for IT workers?
  
• Why is the current practice of laying off your IT staff, then "re-employing" them as contractors (at a lower rate) not illegal?
  
• Why is most of the programming work done overseas, where you have to ridiculously overspecify the project to get maintainable/extendable code?
  
• Why are our governments allowing Visas for people to do IT work, when there are IT people available for work in their own country?
  
• Why do employers/government wish to abuse our human rights read our email, and look at the websites we read?
  
• Why does this kind of article make me sick?
  

(This is not a comprehensive list btw) ... answers wrapped around a brick and thrown through your representatives window please.

Re:Solution

[Valpis]

Why is most of the programming work done overseas, where you have to ridiculously overspecify the project to get maintainable/extendable code?

Most of my specs are written on PostIt, if I am lucky to get some at all...

Re:Solution

[StormReaver]

"* 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.

Re:Solution

[spoonyfork]

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.

Re:Solution

[IamTheRealMike]

Why is there no Union for IT workers?

We've never needed one, but I wonder. There's a lot of bad stuff going down in the tech world lately. Bad laws especially, but also good-to-honest corruption in the government (Microsoft political pressure etc). And of course you have shady working practices now, which wasn't always the case.

I wonder what would happen if we did organize a union. Most big unions ensure their members are happy through the threat of strike. Well, that wouldn't work too well for the IT industry, as there tend not to be many of us in most companies, perhaps some sys admins and some programmers. And like I said, the issues tend to be more ones that affect us all as an industry, as opposed to single organizations.

Just imagine if the US govt passed whichever mad law it is that would outlaw Linux (CCTPDA??). If I remember correctly, Europe has an equivalent in the works. I think most of us, even those who didn't use Linux, would be pretty pissed. What would happen to the Western economy if parts of the net were sort of shut down for a few days? I think they'd get the picture.

Right now of course this is just paranoid speculation, but in the future, who knows. We may suddenly find we need to start standing up for the tech industry.

Re:Solution

[csguy314]

• Why is there no Union for IT workers?
  
  Because union meetings would amount to drinking beer and eating pizza. And thus our union demands would amount to asking for more beer and pizza.
  
  
• Why is the current practice of laying off your IT staff, then "re-employing" them as contractors (at a lower rate) not illegal?
  
  Because we as IT staff are cheap and plentiful. Just ask all the /.ers that are unemployed.
  
  
• Why is most of the programming work done overseas, where you have to ridiculously overspecify the project to get maintainable/extendable code?
  
  because they're cheaper...?
  
  
• Why are our governments allowing Visas for people to do IT work, when there are IT people available for work in their own country?
  
  See last response...
  
  
• Why do employers/government wish to abuse our human rights read our email, and look at the websites we read?
  
  because we email each other crap and read pr0n.
  
  
• Why does this kind of article make me sick?
  
  Not enough pr0n?
  
  

Re:Solution

[azadrozny]

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.

Re:Solution

[dghcasp]

Why is there no Union for IT workers?

Because generally IT workers are strongly against it... Many of them fit the stereotype of "I must dominate by being thought smarter than the others" and thus resist unionization because they fear that they will be judged on something other than intellectual domination, or that they will ever have to be part of a "united front."

Why is laying off workers and re-hiring them as contractors not illegal?

Because government makes laws, businesses donate to government, and workers just whine because they have no cohesive voice (see item 1.) How many techs do you know who would be willing to participate in a general strike or walkout to protect rights of others? I think it'd be more like "If they need protection, that shows they're not elite enough and should be culled."

Why is government allowing foreign workers?

Because they're well trained, extremely happy to be making a huge wage (compared to at home) and thus work hard, don't have the whole "cowboy" attitude and work well in teams?

Why does this kind of article make me sick?

Because you're assuming that the world should work according to your way of thinking instead of the way it actually does.

Re:Solution

[geekoid]

How long would a company keep running if there sysadmins and/or programmer went on strike together? not long, I'd wager.
A IT Union would be incredibly powerfull, since a strike would effect every human being in the country immediatly.
You couldn't run cash registers, atm systems, credit card systems, internet connectivity, etc...

Sure, these thing are 'automateed' but in my experience there is always an issue that needs to be resolved immediatly.

Re:Solution

[geekoid]

"Because they're well trained, extremely happy to be making a huge wage (compared to at home) and thus work hard, don't have the whole "cowboy" attitude and work well in teams? "

As someone who makes a lot of money rewritting/fixing code written by foriegn coders, I would say that most shops overseas arn't well trained, but management dosn't know how to tell the difference, so they just go with cheap.

Re:Solution

[oPless]

My experiance with foriegn coder is similar. Cheap Code != Good Code.

As little as possible will be done to meet specifications. No thought to maintainablility/Extensability, etc.

I wasted about 6 months of my life rewriting huge chunks of code, some of it was clearly cut and pasted from MSDN and "cleverly" munged into C++. Not a particularly value for money. They'd (my ex company) would have had equal or better results from a hacker fresh out of highschool.

Re:Solution

[oPless]

So why doesn't someone do something about it!?!

It's a bloody good idea no? Imagine if only a quater of IT personel signed up in the US alone. They'd be a huge lobbying faction to rival the Teamsters etc.

Damn, I'm turning into a communist! ;-)

Re:Solution

[oPless]

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.

Actually if you specify TOO much, you might as well write the code yourself.

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.

Thats pretty low, of course I have issues with authority. Especially ones that lie, cheat and decieve. I recently took out a mortgage on the basis of information than the MD clearly stated when asked the question "Will I have my Job in 6 months time, I'm considering buying a house". The firm went belly up the month after purchase! Maybe I'm bitter about it, but you've just destroyed any credability you may have had by that childish remark.

If there is one good thing the battering the IT industry has had, is that a lot of the cowboys have gone back to be taxi drivers and whatnot, and it appears the UK job scene has hit rock bottom. Though who knows when they'll take another MSCE(or whatever the "qualification of the day" is) and come back and flood the market. Ah well...

Re:Solution

[coaxial]

I would answer that with a question. Are there unions of other white collar sallaried professionals?

Yes. The Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace. Local 2001 of the The International Federatation of Professional and Technical Engineers. SPEEA represents the 24,500 engineers, technical workers, and other professional employees at Boeing.

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.

I'm not antiimmigrant like the original poster ("Damn foriegners taken our jobs."), but I am dismayed by you apologizing for wanton exploitation of these workers.

You're right. Availabilty was just a cover story. It is just a ploy to push down wages. As far as getting them "better", I'd take exception to that. The United States is widely regarded as having one of the best higher education systems in the world. So the relavent education difference between natural born Americans and immigrants, is nothing.

Paying H1Bs less is illegal, plain and simple. Companies get away with it for a variety of reasons.

1. Are ignorant of the laws
2. Are ignorant of the prevailing wages
3. Are afraid to speak up because they don't want to
   1. get fired and then sued by their previous employer for breaking the employment contract
   2. are afraid immigration problems
4. Come from a culture where it is expected/accepted that they will be exploited unfairly.

Accepting and immoral and illegal acts is completely indefensible, but then again what should I expect from someone that just defended slavery, and has been rightfuly outlawed under the 13th Amendment. Past crimes do not justify future crimes.

You also probably think that labor laws in any form are immoral. ("Hey if he wants to dive naked in a vat of carcinogens for two cents a day, why not?" Ummm, because desperate people do desperate things? There's a social contract to protect the weakest? There a minimum standards of human dignity...)

If you think I'm full of shit perhaps you can get a nice warm feeling by reading another slavery apologist.

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.

This is your strongest argument, but here's a question for you. The companies own the phones. They own the wires (inside the company at least). They pay the phone bills. However they can not listen in to your phone calls? This is an illegal wiretap. What's the difference?

Dress codes are a symptom of authority and order. It would appear to me by your questions that you have issues with both.

Uniforms make sense when your dealing with the public, or when it's a safety issue (think antistatic smocks, overalls, etc.) but when you're not, its simply a petty control issue. It strikes me that those enforcing dress codes have control issues, and those that enjoy them have issues where they feel the need to be dominated.

Re:Solution

[spoonyfork]

Accepting and immoral and illegal acts is completely indefensible, but then again what should I expect from someone that just defended slavery, and has been rightfuly outlawed under the 13th Amendment. Past crimes do not justify future crimes.

I appreciate your reply and I believe in your sincerity. At the risk of being baited for a flame/troll, I would however ask you to re-read my post. I did not in any way apologize for slavery or say that what the H1B's are going through in the US is acceptable and moral. I was merely stating the mode of thinking as to why companies like IBM Global Services are involved in this practice. My admission that my own family came to the US in a very similar way was included to show that I sympathize with their plight.

What have I done to help out? I believe that all politics are local so I vote for respresentatives in my area that support (among other issues) immigrant rights.

Re:Solution

[oPless]

Interesting points, but you assume that I'm
American, I'm not, I'm British, no make that
English :)

Unions make things more painful for companies,
true. But they also stop stupid things like this
happening. Also our respective governments would
take an IT strike more seriously than any other
Imagine all the computers being switched off
in the banking/local government due to a strike
chaos no? At the risk of being labeled a
socialist (I'm not, heh) us guys in IT should
bloody well get our fingers out.
With a political movement such as a union, WE
would have some measure of CONTROL over the
government. The Teamsters are quite a powerful
organisation in the USA if I'm reading the
figures correctly on opensecrets :-)
Want to do something about RIAA/etc?
lobbying is the answer ... the same tactics
as M$ and RIAA (et al) use.

Visas, H1-B was a problem for the US much like
the fasttrack visas are in the UK (until
organised lobbying actually won some concessions)

As for a lot of work going out to foriegn
countries where very little effort is done
to get the code up to spec. It's true -
you get what you pay for. Management
*will* get burnt for this it's just a matter
of time.

If you take that attitude about company email,
then you won't have any problem with the
government listening to you phone calls and
opening your post will you? After all it's
their country that you're living in.
Did someone say the consitution? (We don't
have this in the UK) While we're at it why
don't you just bring slavery back while you're
at it? Hmm ?

Your last comment is some what true. Most things
that cause me displeasure is actually absue,
and so it should do you too! I for one hate
to think that we as the western world are going
back to indentured servitude to self serving
corporations that think that going back to
similar tricks of the industrial revolution
is actually a good thing.

Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[jsimon12]

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.

Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

The only people calling for programmers to wear suits are the sales weasels and functionless middle managers that already have to wear them. They want everyone to be as miserable as they (and hey, those things aint cheap either) Fortunately none of the companies in Florida that I'm aware of have such a stupid requirement. I see some old guys in Sales that wear suits out of stubborn habit, but most people seem to realise that being pitted out and sweaty is even worse than *gasp* not conforming to made up corporate costume requirements... Certainly not the one I work for. If they tried to enforce that on the programmers, they would quickly have no product. Yea they'd have the source code, but good luck getting someone who really understood it and was willing to wear a monkey suit at the same time.

Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[JaredOfEuropa]

"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.

Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[Alioth]

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).

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).

Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[wrax]

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.

Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[tjensor]

I wear a suit and tie every day to work. I have also had jobs IT where I did not wear a suit and tie. I have to say I prefer wearing the suit. When I get home, I can take off my suitm and there is a demarcation between work and home which can really help you relax.

I eat cheesy-poofs. I drink an unhealthy amount of coffee. Hopefully my code is pretty good. My suit in no way reflects on this.

Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[Greyfox]

IBM on the other hand has the worst reputation in the industry but is actually the most relaxed company I've ever worked for when it comes to dress code. They do ask you to dress up a bit when dealing with the customer face to face, but even there the old blue-suit days seem to be gone.

It is my personal medical opinion (I am not a doctor, but I play one on TV) that ties cut off blood flow to the brain, which is why (IMHO) so many good programmers seem to go brain dead after they move to management.

Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[rnturn]

``That's just as stupid as the manager demanding everyone clean up their desks and looks sharp because the CEO is visiting the department.''

Agreed, but I know of plenty of places where it seems the goal of management isn't so much turning out a good product but making sure everyone conforms. Casual dress, leaving papers on your desk when you leave at night, and (OH MY GOD!) personal effects tacked to the wall of the cubicle. In some dinosaur-brained managers' minds, these are all things that indicate a breakdown in management's authority and must be squashed. Not that there's indication that they're a detriment to employee's productivity.

A department of a former employer actually purchased a laser printer for every employee's desk. The justification? If employees were required to get up and walk down the aisle to pick up a printout, they'd just stop and talk to coworkers. And you know you just can't have that happening. Thank goodness I didn't work for that department. The money that manager blew just to keep the employees under management's thumb was just disgusting.

Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[mesocyclone]

Ah... EDS

What a strange outfit that used to be. They would interview your wife to make sure she was appropriate wife material for an EDSer. The company was almost paramilitary, with a boot camp for new hires. Ross Perot actively recruited military veterans, so they fit very well. He did this both for business reasons and because he is genuinely a very patriotic (if bizarre and misguided) guy. I saw a flag in his personal office that was signed by all the POW's that returned from Vietnam.

I worked for EDS in the late '70s as a result of a wierd deal whereby we didn't have to join the corporate culture. I had a direct authorization from Ross Perot to wear a beard (possibly an EDS first).

I only went to the Dallas country club headquarters once, but I remember a guy staring at my beard so hard he tripped getting off an elevator. Of course, I was wearing a suit THERE.

In spite of all this weirdness, I found the people there to be very nice. They also worked very hard and were competent at what they did (which was fairly low tech).

Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[mesocyclone]

I don't know what you guys were doing, but I have done lots of quality systems level work (like building custom OLTP monitors, device drivers, com protocols, etc) on very long hours. I think it depends very much on the environment and on attitudes. If you get on a team that is really moving, you can work 18 hours a day, enjoy it, and do it for months.

On one of my first big projects, we ended up working so much that our "days" extended to about 28 hours. We would work for 20 hours or so, sleep 6, waste an hour or two getting to and from work and eating, showering, etc. As a result, our hours rotated and we had to distinguish between "yesterday" and "virtual yesterday." It was a fun project. Oh, and the long hours were not the result of management incompetence, but rather vendor incompetence and dishonesty ( a certain former pioneering minicomputer maker failed to deliver on OS enhancements and an OLTP monitor, so we had to roll our own).

Of course, it helps to be young (which I was when I did all that stuff).

Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[MWelchUK]

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)

Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[richieb]

I don't know what you guys were doing, but I have done lots of quality systems level work (like building custom OLTP monitors, device drivers, com protocols, etc) on very long hours. I think it depends very much on the environment and on attitudes. If you get on a team that is really moving, you can work 18 hours a day, enjoy it, and do it for months.

Maybe if you are a 20 year old with no life outside work you could do that. However, I've built similar system working 40/50 hour weeks. Some of these have been running in production for over 15 years.

Read about Heroic Programming. I feel sorry for the guys who had to maintain your code...

Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[mesocyclone]

As I said, " systems level work." The code wasn't that bad... in fact, I would say that most of the defects in the code were due to our inexperience (we were young and hadn't built OLTP systems before, and in those days there were not PC's for people to learn on), rather than the schedule. The system was in production for 10 years, before it was replaced due to a hardware change (in those days, we had to code the core stuff in assembly for speed - the mainframe only ran about 1 MIP, and we had thousands of simultaneous users).

And yes, we had no life outside the work hours. In fact, our wives staged a demonstration at the office (mostly just for fun). And I wouldn't (couldn't) work those hours today. That was 30 years ago!

Oh, and since then I have built similar systems with work schedules ranging from 30 - 60 hours per week depending on which project it was. They weren't as much fun, though, but were probably healthier for me.

Do not underestimate the power of a good, motivated team. And also recognize that you can often do good code when you are fresh, and then do good debugging of that code as you get more tired. This helps maintain the quality of the code.

Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[richieb]

Do not underestimate the power of a good, motivated team. And also recognize that you can often do good code when you are fresh, and then do good debugging of that code as you get more tired. This helps maintain the quality of the code.

Oh, I don't. I think a motivated/gelled team can perform near miracles, even during a 40 hour week.

I usually do my best debugging in a shower. When you have a nasty problem you can't figure out, it's best to step away from it, and more often than not the solution will pop into your head when you are doing something else.

Life outside work is often a great source for new ideas for the actual problems you are trying to solve at work. You should try not to loose the sight of the forrest while down in the bushes...

Finally, there are some things more important than work - like taking your daughter trick-or-treating on Halloween... :-)

Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[spaceyhackerlady]

If I wore a suit and tie to work people would look at me even funnier than they already do.

I've known women who could pull such things off, but I'm not one of them.

...laura

Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[RealAlaskan]

Have you ever had to wear a suit and tie to work everyday?

Never had to, but I've done it by choice. Suits are comfortable! Loose but not baggy fit, doesn't bind, light-weight fabrics that are great for hot weather, available at the thrift shop for less money than the raggedy blue jeans that everyone wants; the list of advantages goes on and on.

Think about this: the bigwigs in your company (any company) set the dress code, and they can set it to be whatever THEY want to wear. They could choose sackcloth and ashes, or jeans and t-shirts with rude sayings, or something comfortable and impressive looking.

... wool suits in the summer ... they are based in Texas, can you say 100 degree summers ...)

Think about the Arabs. They wear woolen bedsheets, more or less, and the Arabian peninsula makes Texas summers seem COLD. Wear one layer of light colored, loose fitting clothing of a thin weave. Sounds like dress pants and a white shirt. If you must wear a blazer, be sure it's unlined. Linen is great for this.

Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[Fjord]

I disagree with this. I've had times where I've worked even up to 108 hours in a week and the fact is that I got a lot more done in that time than I would have in 40 hours. Maybe not as much as in 108 hours over 3 weeks, but there were always other time factors that made it neccessary to do that amount, such as once the site had already launched and there were severe problems with it (I was not on the original programming team).

There is no way I could keep that up forever though, only being able to do it every now and then, but it some people can be productive in those circumstances.

Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[Tablizer]

you couldn't leave their cube without your suit coat on, that and they are based in Texas, can you say 100 degree summers

Try putting a big noisey fan in your cubicle. When enough complaints about it pop up, maybe they will cave in. Being sweaty all day sucks......and stinks.

Sure you wouldn't want to show the second group to investers,

I think companies should have an Invester Alarm or Important Client Alarm so that people know when to suddenly spruce up. After the alert is over, then go back to being being comfortable and productive and bring your Cheezo's bag back out.

Clip-on ties all the way!

"Investor Alert!.......(click)(click click)(click)"

Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[jelle]

But how about the tie and the correlation with it and oxygen flow to the head?

Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[jelle]

But I hear the girls like to see men in suits. Maybe I'll reconsider...

Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[Pig Hogger]

I worked for EDS in the late '70s as a result of a wierd deal whereby we didn't have to join the corporate culture. I had a direct authorization from Ross Perot to wear a beard (possibly an EDS first).
I only went to the Dallas country club headquarters once, but I remember a guy staring at my beard so hard he tripped getting off an elevator. Of course, I was wearing a suit THERE.

Some 35 years ago, my father was working for (insert old insurance company name here) whose head of personnel perhaps had a dump only 3 or 4 times a month and who took his holidays in South Africa. Needless to say, he was adamantly opposed to any kind of facial hair whatsoever.

One day, some advertising manager walked in back from a holiday with a beard. In tears, the head of personnel stampeded to the president's office with the guy's death warrant.

- But why do you want to fire him? His latest ad campaign increased "sales" more than 15%, asked the president.
- Because he is wearing a - sob - beard!!!
- And why is that bad? Look at our founding fathers here (pointing to a painting of the first directors, back around 1880 or so on the wall), they certainly didn't think that beards were bad...

My dad was never seen without a moustache since...

Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[amuro98]

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.

Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[Tablizer]

I found a new metric to plot the state of the tech economy. Graph the inverse of the ratio of programmers who are required to wear suits (Y axis) against time (date on X axis).

Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[intermodal]

Interview is one thing. Every day is another. Tying appearance to professionalism is utter bullshit. Professionalism is a matter of quality of work and devotion to getting it done right the first time. Professionalism is not wearing a suit and keeping your cube/office/cabin/yurt/teepee/workstation free of paper and personal effects. I currently work with the finest group of professionals it's ever been my pleasure to work with. Yet I've never seen a suit on anyone but one of our producers, who was wearing a tuxedo to a release party with a shirt resembling the Texas flag. These men have done the best work they could on long hours (without a definite "have to" being told to them) because of that professionalism I spoke of. Let's see someone more concerned with suits pull a group like that together, and then ask the programmers if they're happy with their job, and check the quality of the product. If it's equal or better, then you can speak. Until then, leave the suits to the petty tyrants and let the computer people be what they are.

Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[rodgerd]

Comfortable for you, perhaps. I have a big neck, and finding shirts that don't throttle me when a tie is done up is a pain.

Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.

[RealAlaskan]

Actually, physical property is a very natural idea. Go outside and pick up a rock. That's YOUR rock, and no one else can have it unless they take it away from you. Dogs can understand the idea of property at this level; just try to take a bone away from one.

Ideas are fundamentally different. They can be shared in a way that just isn't possible for rocks and bones.

I tend to wear

[jukal]

...clean clothes. That's about the only standard. As you long as you don't stink you are fine here in Finland. :)

I am a sysadmin

[mirko]

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 :)

Hmmm that's a toughie ~~~

[gelfling]

At the office:

Shorts or jeans, golf shirt (not tucked in), Airwalks, socks.

At the home office:

What-ever.

Dress Down Fridays

[CptLogic]

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.

Re:Dress Down Fridays

[hether]

The rationalle at the last company I worked for was that the clients also have dress down Fridays at their companies. So when we go out to see them we are effectively matching their attire.

Respect

[nuggz]

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.

Re:Respect

[CrosseyedPainless]

Wearing outlandish shirts, or ripped jeans shows or suggests that you don't care about your appearance.

No, it shows that your appearance values differ from the norm. That makes outsiders nervous about how your other values might differ.

You know everyone, dockers won't kill you

[banky]

Our fathers and grandfathers sent men to the moon wearing friggin TIES. Ever see those shots of NASA, back in the Apollo program? Buzzcut, tie, cigarette, each and every one of them. And these were engineers! Sending people to the moon!

Like our work is any more complex or important. Oh, no, catsbyweb.com needs a new MySQL repliation server. Wearing a tie would "impair my creativity". Woe, is me.

But playing devil's advocate: I'm taking a management class (I'll be so happy when this semester is over...) right now, and it is pretty obvious from the text and lecture that management has been out to end any vestige of "dot com culture" since it started. Their "embracing" of the whole new culture thing was just a nice side-effect of the system being flush with money.

Re:You know everyone, dockers won't kill you

[Daniel Dvorkin]

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 ...

Re:You know everyone, dockers won't kill you

[Pig Hogger]

Ever see those shots of NASA, back in the Apollo program? Buzzcut, tie, cigarette, each and every one of them. And these were engineers! Sending people to the moon!

Hey, that's just because their head honcho was a nazi...

Keep the geeks away from the customers!

[invid]

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.

One (possible) explanation

[CdotZinger]

Seeing the worker bees uniformed like prisoners gives management a greater feeling of dominance over the workers--and this feeling is their subconscious barometer of "productivity."

Possibly.

This depends on you and your values.

[ipmcc]

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.

an apt /. fortune cookie...

[zephc]

"I suggest a new strategy, Artoo: let the Wookie win." -- C3P0

Sometimes you just have to roll with it: what is more important: your job, or wearing a 15 year old Iron Maiden shirt to work?

It's not as bad as your arms being ripped out of their sockets!

im there already

[BeerSlurpy]

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.

Re:im there already

[BitchHead]

There's a place here in Cincinnati called Smitty's. The window display in that place is an advertisement for the 'dress code revolution.' Management wants you to wear a suit? Smitty's has 3 piece suits in every neon colour imaginable, with matching mock-alligator shoes to go with 'em. See how long management wants you showing up in a 'corporate dress code' when your suit blinds people from 100 meters.

Mathematical Relationship

[stashluk]

There is an inverse relationship between the amount spent on clothes, and the amount of bull slung at work. Notice how well lawyers dress...

Re:Wow! Communicating with others?!

[jonbrewer]

Gosh, I think I'll shave today, maybe wear some slacks, and I think I'll stand at the coffee machine for half the day talking about some TV movie I didn't watch last night.

Maybe I'll even spend an hour in the cafe, instead of taking my lunch back to the office so I can work while eating.

I'll definitely take a double-dose of antidepressants and maybe some pain killers. I'm sure people will like me better if I do.

To quote the protagonist from As Good as it Gets, "You make me want to be a better man." :-)

suit up or ship out (my email to the editors)

[Naikrovek]

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.

Re:suit up or ship out (my email to the editors)

[invid]

1) Wear suit to work.

2)???

3) Profit!

Re:suit up or ship out (my email to the editors)

[sql*kitten]

3) Profit!

Well,

1) Wear whatever the hell you want
2) ???
3) Profit!

didn't seem to work, did it?

Re:suit up or ship out (my email to the editors)

[Naikrovek]

Worked for Yahoo!, buddy.

Re:Suit yourself

[BeerSlurpy]

Yeah dude we dress nicer so you wont notice when we wear interview clothes.

As for dress code having to do something with funding, utter horseshit. The VCs only care that they see product shipped and benjamins received at the end of the day- they dont care if the developers are wearing sandals and pajamas.

Work vs NightClub

[Cipher9]

I wear pretty casual clothes at work. A (mostly ThinkGeek) T-Shirt, jeans and sport shoes are my kind of thing. While at work nobody complains about how i dress, the nightclub i went to last saturday, kicked us out just because of the sport shoes. How about that :-)

Re:Work vs NightClub

[Pig Hogger]

the nightclub i went to last saturday, kicked us out just because of the sport shoes.

That oughta teach you to go to leather/latex bars!

Re:Wow! Communicating with others?!

[TheWanderingHermit]

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.

Re:Wow! Communicating with others?!

[pommaq]

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.

I think it's just fear of layoffs

[swillden]

... 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...

Re:I think it's just fear of layoffs

[swillden]

Frankly, that'd be pretty impressive to be branded as a bunch of good looking folks. Heck, it'd be a matter of pride after a short while.

I understand that it was a matter of pride (before my time), and there are certainly some of the "old guard" around who think it's shameful that IBM has lost that "distinction". The rest of us prefer to work without a noose around our necks ;-)

Re:Depends on Expected Visibility

[BluBrick]

We have an "expected visibility" rule. Day to day minimum dress code is "Business Casual" - collared shirt, tie optional, no sport shoes, no denim - that sort of thing(*). "Casual Friday" means intact jeans are permitted, but not uncollared T-shirts. The above is the standard UNLESS you expect a to visit a client or to have a client visit you, then it's strictly collar and tie(*). All in all, it seems to work well. If you get an unexpected customer visit you or get sent on a sudden site visit, they see that everyone is pretty well dressed. And the customer can still see that you make an effort to impress when the meeting is expected, particularly if they have seen you in your day to day wear. Onnly thing is, I don't buy business wear as often, and that which I still have no longer fits like it used to do (since I hit 36, my broad mind and narrow waist have begun trading places ;( (*) or equivalent dress standard for women

Did he really say that?

[cornice]

From the article:

Asked if he thinks there will ever be a return to "dot-com" culture Rush replied: "Elements will come back. If we can't have elements like that in society we stop challenging our traditional values and when we stop doing that, we stop maturing as a species."

I sure hope this was taken out of context (as many interview comments are) because he won't last in his position for long if he thinks business cares one bit about maturing as a species.

This is so silly.

[miffo.swe]

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.

Re:Wow! Communicating with others?!

[Tim C]

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.

Make it an OSHA issue

[dnight]

If you don't like the tie, get it caught in a laser printer fuser and claim it almost killed you (yank the cord before it squeezes your face, please). I think OSHA would have fun with that one.

Re:Make it an OSHA issue

[Pig Hogger]

If you don't like the tie, get it caught in a laser printer fuser and claim it almost killed you (yank the cord before it squeezes your face, please). I think OSHA would have fun with that one.

The last day I wore a tie to work was when it got caught in a $8000 wire-wrapped prototype computer board installed in a mainframe on an extender board. It took 8 days to repair the damage (including recreating the data on the trashed filesystems - the computer promptly crashed, of course), and it probably helped delaying the project enough for it to be scrapped.

No, I did not hear anything about it, nor lost my job for it.

I don't know what the big deal is:

[hrieke]

I have my jeans and I have my dress pants. I rather wear my dress pants- they are that much nicer and far more comfortable.

I've also noticed that people tend to pay more attention to what I'm saying when I'm dressed nicely than in my jeans and tee.

The only downside is that I spend a bit more time and money with care and cleaning of my dress clothes.

IT Dresscodes and 'fashions' - and some advice

[Qbertino]

After my art-diploma I shortly considered studying fashion-design. I didn't , but eventually joined the IT field instead.
One thing that realy caught my interesst during the dot.com craze is, that managers would actually pick the let's-go-visit-our-customer-this-morning show-of geek by the geekiest of clothing. The weirder the better.
bizarly dressed geek == top class programmer
The cliche really sticks, even if not allways and for shure.
I actually chose to be left alone, but be taken serious when I actually do have something to say. Thus I settle for the supersafe classics for IT-pros, and if you're not shure about how to dress, take this as an advice from someone who knows a little about fashion (and has sewn the one or otehr garment allready):

1.) Double-black thick jeans that *fit* (find your brand, messurements and model) and are long enough to cover the top of the shoes when standing.

2.) Top quality sports or leisure shirt. I'm serious. Do not - under any circumstances save money on a shirt if money's gonna get you a good one. Then rather buy less. Cheap shirts allways look and fit like cheap shirts, even if they're new. The last one I got is a thick, blackish-green checkered Ralph Lauren without pockets (leisure shirt?). Cost me 80$ (Sale!). Once it's dry, I just put it on and even when I have to where it for days in a row it still looks like freshly ironed.
Don't be afraid of non-ceo colors or aparently old-fashioned colors though. You wan't to look good and classical, not spineless. And if it's a good shirt it will look good.

3.)) Black or very dark kneesocks. Kneesocks is a no-brainer. If I ever catch you in short, tennis, sports or no socks you'll get wrapped into barbed wire and shot into the sun. No kidding.
Only exeption: Summer heat. Then you wear no socks and dark, moderatly colored Teva Sandals (a modern classic that allways fits in summertime) - but wash your feet and clip those toenails!!!
Summerheat is also the time for an all-out attack from your geek t-shirt collection.

T-Shirt fitting rule: You lean, mean and slender? Tight fit. You a little pudgy (or a fatso?): The looser, the better.

And: T-Shirts only, no sweaters! If it's chilly you get a moderately colored pullover or knittwear jacket. Again: quality pays!

4.)Shoes, not> sneakers (british: trainers). Black. Or other fitting dark color combos. Dockers/Dock Martins will do fine, but better quality shoes that have a more refined style are better. Again, same goes as with shirts: Don't save money in the wrong place. Afer all, you're gonna wear them all day.

The fashion statement:
While this outfit may not be the same as standard ceo-look - your an intelligent programmer after all, no ceo, you can attend any ceo meeting in it with a strait face, and might even get positive attention for your outfit. Add a good blazer (Armani or a not so expensive equivalent maybe) and you can even go to the opera without changing.
And you still won't look overdresed at an emacs developers convent. :-)

Dressing Well

[spring]

Geeks can be complete slobs, lacking even basic hygiene and fashion sense.

Having people dress acceptably for work is a sign of respect. It also weeds out the morons. Save the occasional odd genius (which, if you are reading this, you are not), requiring a clean appearance with matching colors weeds out the multitude of borderline retarded MCSE / Visual Basic developers wandering aimlessly in the world, writing crappy code.

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?).

Re:Dressing Well

[Paladin128]

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.

Re:Dressing Well

[Shanep]

(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.

Re:Dressing Well

[Sj0]

I can't argue with that.

Re:Dressing Well

[Fulcrum of Evil]

How ridiculous. 148.

Now now, it's not polite to brag.

Re:Dressing Well

[Shanep]

Paid by the hour?

Re:Dressing Well

[Shanep]

I was not the specially hired 'expert' though. Some guy flown in especially to design the roll-out was the one who was supposed to do the testing.

I received phones on a Friday afternoon and was told to have it done before Monday.

I should have tested one before starting the lot, I agree. But I was fresh out of NEAX training and I was assured by the expert with many more years of experience than myself, that it would be fine.

The lesson I learned was to never trust the judgement of anyone, regardless of how much more knowledge and experience they have than yourself. I think that is a pretty sad lesson.

You sound like just another seat-of-the-pants cowboy that gives IT a bad name.

Huh? As someone else put it "I fixed someone elses problem". The supposed expert was the cowboy, not me.

My true failing was that I trusted this so called expert.

Re:Dressing Well

[Shanep]

So to summarize:
Without ever testing, he removed everyone's old phone, put in the new phones and tried to program them. This is after the expert "dropped" the new phones on him. He obviously knew that the "expert" had never visited the site, not doing any testing is negligence.

Actually, I did not know that the expert never visited the site until I queried how it could have been bungled so baddly.

This is clearly sloppy and unprofessional work, and I stand by my instinct to walk him out.

Not testing a phone first because I trusted someone who was hired as an expert beyond all experts in my whole country, was my failing.

That doesn't mean that I should be fired. I went to extrordinary lengths to rectify the problem. And lessons were learned.

Obviously I wouldn't trust anyone absolutely ever again and test for myself.

Re:Dressing Well

[Shanep]

If he had done the testing and used his mad skillz to recover, then no problem, shit happens.

The testing was not up to me! Although I should have taken it upon myself to test one unit first and obviously would do that next time.

Have you never learned through failings?

My point was that he didn't do the testing and then thought the was a hero for fixing the problem that he created.

I didn't create the problem, though I was obviously a part of it. I'm glad I could fix it though. I'm not trying to impress you. Merely trying to point out that there are many moments in IT where comfort of staff is more important to productivity than how they look.

Re:Dressing Well

[Shanep]

Did you consider testing on one or two units to make sure it WOULD work before ripping out everyone's old units?

This was not my responsibility though. Trusting someone with many years of experience more than myself was obviously the wrong thing to do. I leanred valuable lessons from it.

You may have saved yourself (and the crew that works for you, if any) a lot of grief and a weekend if you had tested your implementation before implementing it.

Nobody worked under myself. It was NOT MY IMPLEMENTATION. I WISH IT WERE!

Re:Dressing Well

[Shanep]

1. testing the solution

Not my responsibility. Someone was hired for exactly this.

2. running a test environment using the new equipment.

Sure, well just go out and buy a spare PABX that meets exactly all firmware revisions in our production unit, just to test it out.

Your stupidity is astounding, and I feel sorry for your employer, who no doubt had to pay per hour while you did your learning on the job (probably overtime too, hmm?)

I wasn't supposed to be learning undocumented addressing codes. That is the point. I was just supposed to do the much lower level programming and manual labor.

The technical stuff was supposed to be figured out already.

Re:Wow! Communicating with others?!

[Quaryon]

... and there was me thinking that my presentation skills and general understanding of the industry were the key points in communicating with my less technical colleagues.

Obviously I'm wrong, and as soon as I start wearing a suit and tie everyone will understand me much more easily.

Q.

No Dresscode here

[z_gringo]

Actually, my company, which shall remain unnamed, used to have pretty strict dresscodes, in fact the dresscode rules have changed 3 times in the last year.

First they announced that Business casual had been eliminated, and Business dress (suit and tie) was now required for all offices globally. Then just after everyone spent a couple of grand upgrading their wardrobes, they announced that Business casual had returned. Then, just a couple of months ago, dresscodes were eliminated entirely for all European offices.

Depending on which office I am in, I may still wear a suit and tie, but when I don't think it's necessary, I wear whatever I want. I think it's a great arrangement, but I feel sorry for the people who spent a small fortune on new clothes, and weren't really in a position to do so.

Maybe when we get out of bankruptcy, we can go back to Business Dress..

Re:Salary and Wage, Salary and Wage.

[duffbeer703]

If you choose to allow yourself to be systematically exploited, by all means go for it.

Unless it says otherwise in your employment contract, the statutory full-time workweek is 37.5-40 hours/week.

By donating your time to your employer, you are basically allowing that employer to run understaffed. If work needs to be done into the late hours of the night, you need more staff or automation.

And then

[Konster]

If you are a company representative, then a suit and tie for males and a long skirt (no slit), short heels and pantyhose are mandatory for the women. Hair above the collar for men and nothing wider than your shoulders for women.

Free-wheeling, individualistic types that think freely and look like an animated pile of dirty laundry does nothing for anyone. Anyone that thinks differently either A) owns their own company or, B)wanders around in a daze.

Simple dress and presentation codes exist for reasons that are easily understood by most 5 year-olds.

If you can't understand this, perhaps you are best left in a room where no one can see, smell or talk to you.

Re:And then

[Grishnakh]

Isn't it illegal to discriminate based on gender? How can they say women can have longer hair than men, or that men can't wear skirts and pantyhose?
Sounds like a good lawsuit...

Those that forget history....

[coyote-san]

I've been in this industry long enough to remember when ties (but not jackets) were mandatory....

Something that these managers have forgotten is that everyone, not just techies, adopted a more casual dress code for a reason. It takes more personal time to maintain a suit - something that's not a big deal if you work 40 hours, but *is* a problem if you're putting in a couple extra hours at work every day.

It also limits what you can do during the work day. With casual clothing, if I know I'll be working late I may take a long lunch and hit the health club. I can't do that if I'm in a suit but the nearby health club doesn't have full-height lockers.

I agree that some people, esp. some developers, have gone too far. But it's not hard to specify a reasonable minimal standards, especially if you're flexible. E.g., if you really need to specify khaki slacks because it's what your customers expect, allow "stone" jeans.

More relaxed than ever.

[LoudMusic]

I work at an advertising agency, so my milage will most definitely vary.

When I started, I was semi-expected to wear kaki pants and button up shirt. Though the last two+ years I've been wearing nothing but blue jeans and nice pull over shirts with my Adidas shoes. Somedays I wear sandals, somedays I wear shorts.

But like I say, I'm a sys admin for a creative agency, so we tend to do things a little different.

Re:Wow! Communicating with others?!

[The Wing Lover]

Absolutely not. I can code a whole hell of a lot better than I can do anything else. At the same time, I understand that just because I happen to be a computer guy, shouldn't somehow make me magically exempt from the rules of society.

power and control

[trb]

when people try to enforce rules of appearance, it usually is their way of enforcing their power and control. You can see examples of this in the military, in prisons, and prison camps.

There is a web site with interesting insight about this question as it applies to long hair, but many of the ideas apply to appearance in general.

Formal Friday

[artemis67]

Adweek had a write-up a while back about an ad agency that did a twist on the "Casual Friday" fad... They announced "Formal Fridays"; everyone was required to wear either a tuxedo or an evening gown to work. The accompanying picture showed a woman in a glittering floor-length dress, pearls around her neck, and long, white gloves while standing at the copy machine.

Re:Formal Friday

[radja]

well... no way they could get me to do that... I don't do formal... ever.. and according to my contract I have to look 'representative'. suit and ttie does not represent me.

Re:Wow! Communicating with others?!

[The Wing Lover]

Did you read the damn article? A lot of it dealt with tech workers being dickheads, not just what clothes they were wearing.

dressing for recession

[stinky wizzleteats]

Kind of puts a whole new light on the concept of dressing for success, doesn't it?

Mind Control

[codexus]

They want to tell you how to dress, when to sleep, when to work, when to eat and when to go to the bathroom. They'll make you think like they want you to think.

They want you to fear for your job. They want you to be a slave. And when they'll have succeeded, you won't even realize you are.

Aaaaaahhhh!

[JimPooley]

Are the poor geeks not getting things all their own way? Diddums...

Stop whinging.

Change in employment terms

[Martin S.]

Suit Up Or Ship Out?

This sounds like a change in employment terms to me, and that is always a negotiation not something they can hand down by dictate. I would respond by asking them how much they are prepared to offer in compensation, it unlikely to be enough to get me back in a suit.

Re:Wow! Communicating with others?!

[Arcturax]

No, I'm sure its clipped on correctly.

Re:Wow! Communicating with others?!

[gosand]

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.

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.

wearing suits is easier

[ppetrakis]

Business casual is the biggest pain in the ass. Having to match up stuff that makes an outfit look 'good'. Too much work and too much time in the morning. With a suit I just throw on a shirt and tie and I'm ready to go, Looks sharp too. I know it isnt cheap but it's certainly a worthwhile investment and boy does it make an impression on your employer. As for casual dress? Look, If you're in a business dress or atleast business casual environment, dress the part. Work is not a place to show off your individualality i.e. I only wear blue jeans and evil dead t-shirts. That's what off time is for. I go so far as to bring a change of clothes with me so I end up looking like the ensemble mentioned above :). Finally, if you're in IT; most of you should be able to afford a decent wardrobe.

Peter

Re:Depends on Expected Visibility

[MarkusQ]

How exactly do you people keep changing from casual to smart clothing every time you need to go visit a client? Does your office have a changing room, or something? :-)

Phone booths.

-- MarkusQ

I don't see the problem

[_Spirit]

I like suits, I think they look good. Of course that is a matter of opinion but the disproportionate reaction here amazes me. It's only frigging clothes, its not if they asked you to pierce your ****. I can understand that you would have practical issues, suits get dirty if you drag hardware around all day and that might not be a good idea for a 1000 suit, but if you're behind a desk or in meetings all day, get over it.

What's wrong with wearing clothes that are:
a: clean
b: nice to look at
c: comfortable

For those of you that never heard of c before, if you want/have to wear a suit, nylon and polyester are not the way to go, and there are stores where staff will help you pick the right size clothes.

Re:Wow! Communicating with others?!

[hacker]

"..instead of that grumpy guy sitting over in the corner who won't talk to anyone."

..that grumpy guy who is writing all the code that makes your business successful, and which generates money so YOU can get paid, and have a wonderful house and a wife and a dog.

Get over it. If you want people to be productive, give them a productive environment. Asking them to wear clothes which don't express their creativity or allow them to feel comfort in the workplace (within certain legal boundaries of course, i.e. nudity or obscenity), then you should expect to get cramped, "head-nodding" engineers who can't write their way out of a paper sack.

Once the PHB-types realize it is about COMFORT that drives productivity, and not LOOKS, that drive success, maybe they'll slacken up a bit and watch their profits rise. Also, when job applicants realize that the workplace is a comfortable, easy-going-but-fast-paced place to work, the line will be out the door, without ever advertising for employees.

If you tell everyone that they have to adhere to a strict dress code ("can't leave your cube without a suitcoat on"), you'll be putting ads in the paper to find applicants.

Besides, for most people, they would gladly accept dressing in business-casual over "Funeral" any day, just ask.

It's a Control Issue

[theduck]

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.

Suit and tie enforces conformity

[MtViewGuy]

I think requiring everyone to wear suit and tie is actually not that great an idea, because all that does is enforce conformity to an extreme, which can really stifle creativity, in my humble opinion. I can understand requring suit and tie for a company dealing in the financial and securities business, but not at an IT firm.

Now, requiring minimum standards for business casual is more acceptable. A good clean shirt or polo-style pullover, slacks and non-sporting casual shoes as a minimum works for me.

Suits can be good

[travail_jgd]

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.

In support of dress codes...

[azadrozny]

I know this will not make me popular, based on some of the comments I have read so far, but I think dress codes are important. Customers base their willingness to buy not just on product quality but also how the team/company presents themselves. A group of people who are clean cut and well dressed are precieved as doing a better job. Companies are now facing a much tougher market and have to do everything to set themselves apart from the competition. I am not advocating going back to the days of blue suits and red power ties, but I think we need to be a step above jeans and a t-shirt.

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.

Humanitarian move

[heikkile]

As the article says, people will have to work harder, in less pleasant environments, doing less interesting work. In short, closer to the kind of life managers and accountants are forced to live. It is an act of kindness to insist on ties for those geeks, for the same reason the rest of the company has to wear them: To reduce the blood flow to the brain, so they will not feel so much of the pain.

We lost casual Friday

[barzok]

And then were given a "business casual fashion show" by a local retailer. Their definition of business casual didn't match our company's, however - they say that any shirt iwth a logo isn't allowed, but I see a couple vendor-logo'd polos every day.

Re:Wow! Communicating with others?!

[R.Caley]

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,

If you think dressing like someone is a prerequisite for communicating with them then I can only hope you never have kids. You'd either end up one of those embarssing people who dress as if they are 14 at age 40, or not communicating with them.

I should be able to not be a team player, to dress slovenly[...]

`Team player' is management speak for `sucker', and anyone whose only options are being told what to wear or dressing slovenly needs to go back to mummy.

My policy is that if they worry more about the clothes than the work, then I'll subcontract to a showroom dummy and stay home collecting the money.

Dressing Nice

[Quill_28]

One time during college I let my hair grow a little long, for me that's past the collar and my beard about an inch long with no trimming. I had some older clothes and went into a computer store(about 10 years ago). No one would give me the time of the day. I learned a quick lesson: right or wrong people will judge you on how you dress. And it's not limited to the yuppies. Goto some hacker convention with a three piece suit and you will also be judged. Just the way it is.

Where I work just about anything is allowed. But it is a very small successful company and the owner is smart enough to let actions speak louder than clothes. But when clients come he expects us to look decent(no shorts and sandals, etc).

What's the big deal?

[Fear the Clam]

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?

Re:What's the big deal?

[krow]

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.

Re:What's the big deal?

[Pig Hogger]

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.

Not always. I know a grandson of some robber baron of the 18th century; the guy is a total geek and dresses the way; add to that his stutter and no one will pay attention to the guy.

So, as it happens, my bank used to be in an office building he happens to own, and one day, I get off my motorcycle dressed like a bum (and unshaven for about a week), and meet him as he came out of the building. So, we chatted for about 15 minutes outside, then we split. As I went in, the security guard opened the door for me and said "good morning, sir"...

noose

[sckeener]

Here's an old quote from a source I do not remember...(damn I should claim it as mine!)

'There is something wrong when you report to work with a noose around your neck.'

Seriously, what it boils down to for me, is the policy should apply to everyone. I remember wearing suits at United Parcel Service. I crawled around in a warehouse under desks in a suit. What annoyed me was seeing all the guys in suits, and the women wearing sensable shoes, kakis, and a polo shirt. (ok, maybe there were other reasons for their attire :) )

Eventually UPS went business casual and I guess my point is if the policy is across the board and is a bad policy, then it'll get corrected. Just wait out this change...heck, I've out lasted 12 managers. I think I can wait out one more to get a new policy.

One of the first things my present boss told me...

[deanthebean]

There are three types of people in business.

1. Those so low down on the ladder no one cares what they wear.

2. People in the middle who wear nice clothes to make themselves appear professional.

3. Those so high up on the ladder no one cares what they wear.

Which one are you? ;)

Re:Creative minds don't wear ties

[teamhasnoi]

The most creative minds wear ties on their johnson.

no new suits

[neilv]

"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

sneakers today

[websensei]

...though I sometimes wear shoes.

the ops crew are still occasionally found barefoot though that's rare.

this is at a 200+ person officepark company that's not really a startup anymore.

individuals can and do affect corporate culture, have some spine and shape your company as you see fit, or don't complain when one you don't like is foisted on you.

Comfortable Suits

[ek_adam]

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!"

Re:Comfortable Suits

[Reziac]

[goes to look] First thing I noticed is that the Tilley site presented me with a low-detail version suitable for my crap bandwidth. Score point.

Anyway... the first suit it showed me was of a durable cotton/polyester blend identical to what's used in the better T-shirts -- how's that for irony :)

Cheap and Easy Employee Benefit

[antis0c]

Appeal to Employers:

While working at my company during the dot-com bust, I've had plenty of benefits taken away from me. Quarterly 5% bonuses, subsidized vending machines that only cost 25 cents for anything (including Ice Cream), free parties every friday night at a local club, and 20 - 30% off most local stores. One by one those benefits were taken away. I understand why, these things cost money. But requiring your entire staff to wear a suit and tie doesn't cost you anything unless it is a customer facing department. Myself, the lowly programmer that never sees a a customer should be able to wear something casual. At the very least just some nice pants and a nice shirt, like a polo shirt or something similar. It makes me feel comfortable, work more relaxed, doesn't cost you anything, and you can call it a benefit.

Re:Salary and Wage, Salary and Wage.

[jjo]

'Statutory?' In the USA, the relevant wage and hour statute exempts a large number of tech workers, so for them there is no 'statutory full-time workweek'.

The more important point is that you assume that overtime without overtime pay is ipso facto exploitation. Suppose someone offered you a job at $1,000,000/year, but the job would occasionally require 45 hours/week with no overtime pay. Would that be exploitation? If not, then you're just quibbling about whether the salary is high enough.

what dress code?

[MoNsTeR]

I'm wearing an AudioGalaxy t-shirt and a plaid flannel. I call the VP of IT by his first name. OTOH, I make $9.50/hr :(

Direct quote from "Employment Policies"

[papasasha]

"Dress code

1. When there are visitors, you must wear clothes."

Flannel shirts are defined as "business casual".

Investors like to see geeks looking like geeks

[skelter]

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.

At my workplace...

[antdude]

(Symantec), the clothes are not strict. In fact, it feels like a dotcom in a corporation. Management doesn't really care as long as employees and contractors work long hours. :)

Just a random thought....

[Tofu]

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 I expense my clothing bill?

[fishbowl]

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.

Re:Can I expense my clothing bill?

[Reziac]

Some businesses DO give a clothing allowance, just as some pay milage if you live an unreasonable distance away from work. Only way to find out is to ask.

Re:Can I expense my clothing bill?

[FurryFeet]

...if you are not replaceable...

Quick lesson in life:
Everybody is replaceable.
We now return to your scheduled programming.

Re:Can I expense my clothing bill?

[anonymous cupboard]

Maybe with the IRS, but I put some severe cold weather gear through and the German Finanzamt (our IRS) accepted it. I was working out in Russia and -30C isn't unknown even in the big cities. It didn't seem to matter that the gear was also useful in the Alps when skiing.

Always an exception

[Christopher Bibbs]

Frankly, you are the exception to the rule in every sense. Most employees in the tech industry are having to follow rules more closely. At the same time most of them have under 5 years with their current company and under 10 in the industry. Around here [large software company] some folks have to snap in line with the recent changes while other developers whose work is more profitable get away with murder. Well, maybe not murder, but poor dress and borderline sexual harassment.

I call bulls**t on that

[lostboy2]

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!

You want comfort, to "fit the code" and annoy boss

[Carmody]

Learn to tie a bow-tie. It isn't that difficult. A bow-tie is as comfortable as wearing nothing at all, looks cool, AND will annoy your boss, because it is unconventional. But technically it IS still a tie. It also doesn't get in the way when you lean over, and when you start on unpaid overtime you can untie it and let it jauntily drape.

Re:Depends on Expected Visibility

[rnturn]

``Phone booths.''

Heh, heh, heh.

You obviously haven't noticed the trend towards eliminating public phone booths altogether or making them little more then a phone on a pole with a little cover over it that's there merely to keep most of the rain off the phone (the phone company could care less if the user gets wet).

Nowadays, Clark Kent would get arrested for public indecency when it came time to change into his tights. (He'd still have the Supply Room at the Daily Planet, though.)

Re:In this case leave

[Chris Johnson]

OK, now, nice and smooth, put it down... now STEP AWAY from that copy of 'Atlas Shrugged'... ;)

There's something about a suit...

[Triv]

that makes me feel wonderful. Putting a suit on in the morning is a wonderful routine. Shirt. Slacks. Cufflinks (yes. cufflinks.) Tie. Jacket. Handkerchief. Dress shoes. Topcoat. I walk out of the house feeling like a million bucks, and I really think that's the point - people carry themselves differently in REAL dress clothes.

I used to wear a suit on my job hunts. I'd walk into an interview thinking I was the king of the world, and I was never unemployed for more than a month. To me, it's not how you look that's so important, it's the aura of...professionability...you radiate and how it makes you feel.

I mean damnit guys, what did all you naysayers go to interviews in, a speedo? You can only trust your CV for so much, and realistically it's not the first thing the brass sees, YOU are. Yeah yeah, unbiased, best qualified, screw the tie, yadayada. It's not realistic, and if you've gotta wear a suit, then wear the friggin' suit.

Triv

Re:There's something about a suit...

[Triv]

clothes that don't require a noose on our necks.

I LIKE ties, don't feel suffocated by them at all. Maybe that's just me.

Encouraging the status quo by stating that "if you gotta wear a suit, then wear the friggin' suit" will never cause things to change.

Dude. It's just a suit. We're not talking about civil rights abuses or a loose interpretation of the constitution. And actually, if you walk the walk and wear the suit and eventually make it to the top, if you still don't like the suit, change the policy if you can. I doubt you can, but try. See how seriously vendors or competitors take you if everyone comes to work in golf shirt. Changing the status quo at your company is wonderful, but companies survive by networking (in an HR sense) with other companies. It looks bad, plain and simple.

The suit/corporate-vanity is an issue not because of the clothes as much as the clothes are a metaphor about the lack of respect for knowledge and actual skill there is in the corporate world.

Fine. You don't like the suit, get a different job. More power to you. Sometimes you can't be picky. It's just a job. Personally, when I worked in corporate america I wore the suit, I went to work, I did my job, and indulged my grunge-'screw the man'-liberalisms when I got off at 5.

I say again: it's just a job. More power to ya if you change the importance of 'da suits' in american society. I'm all for revolt, but sometimes you've gotta toe the line. If I were you I'd save my time and energy for the important fights. Just my opinion. :)

Triv

Re:There's something about a suit...

[Triv]

So, putting good dress into practice is largely a matter of function.

Absolutely. You were changing toner, I was crawling around a dusty file room. I wore a suit for the first three days of one particular corporate job, after which my boss said, "Y'know, you're going to ruin those clothes in that room. Be presentable, but no one's going to pick on you for not wearing a suit." However. There's a difference between a desk job and a dirty job. If you're running cable or working tech maintenance a suit would be ridiculous. But if you're coding, and just coding...I'd say suck it up and deal with it, or find another way to pay the bills.

I work so I can finance my life. What do you do?

Sounds familiar. :)

Triv

Re:There's something about a suit...

[Gudlyf]

I used to have to wear a tie. Then one day, after pulling a few late-night shifts as a SysAdmin, I was working on the innards of a printer and, while the gears were churning away, my tie slipped into the printer. It nearly strangled me, plus I lost a good tie.

The next day I came to work sans tie. I slung the tattered tie over the wall of my cubicle with a note, "this is why I don't wear ties here anymore". I've never worn once to work since, and that tie is all the explanation I need.

Re:TFH

[spectecjr]

suits are uncomfortable, infact in a sit on you ass all day job, there too fucking hot!!!!! Ok if I worked outside, i might consider waring somthing designed to keep the heat in like a tie, but in an office there highly un-practical, spread pungent smells of sweety armpits, take far too long to shop for and get fitted properly.
An I hear to work or look pritty?

Spoken like someone who's never worn a school uniform. :-)

Simon

ps. Friends occasionally wonder at why I look... well, frankly, *comfortable* wearing a suit. Then I ask them what kind of school they went to, and the lightbulb clicks on.

RTFA

[intermodal]

it doesnt have to do with just the clothing. This is an article about the entire culture that they want to squash. If you had read the article, you would know that it's not just about visibility. The article talks about wanting to force more work out of fewer people. This is nothing new...businesses are always after more work at the expense of your sanity, ignoring any effect that will have on the quality of the work being done.

Re:Salary and Wage, Salary and Wage.

[duffbeer703]

They are placed in the "exempt" category because they are "professionals".

Working without overtime pay, if required, should be specifically addressed in a written contract. If a non-management employee needs to work over the agreed-upon workweek, they should be paid overtime.

I'm not arguing that working alot is evil. The often-times decieving way that companies extract more work out of employees is wrong. If an employee is going to be working long hours, on a pager, etc this needs to be worked out in writing ahead of time.

Re:Depends on the environment...

[e2d2]

Good point. Unfortunately people do judge you on your appearance. I think we would all love it to come to work in our most comfortable clothes but sometimes the situation dictates otherwise. Even in blue collar work it applies - I once worked as an electrician and my foreman would always say "Dress where you want to be, not where you are". This is a pretty small sacrifice for the reward.

Besides, sometimes it feels good to slip on some nice dress clothes and wow the higher ups. They tend to think that all of us "slackers" can't shine ourselves up. It's great to disappoint those types. Especially when they are writing big checks.

Re:Wow! Communicating with others?!

[rnturn]

``You wouldn't expect someone who works on a flight line to wear a suit and tie, just because the HR people in the same company do, would you?''

At one time, infantrymen wore neckties into battle (or so I'm told; I'm not that old). I imagine that the folks that insist on everyone wearing ties to work either learned their management skills during WWII or were mentored by someone who did. Times change. Too bad the managers who insist on this dress code haven't.

Nail! Hammer! Bang!

[Interrobang]

Congratulations, sir! I think you just hit it! The two key issues here are loyalty and trust. An employer who gives you the leeway to be comfortable at work (right now I'm wearing jeans, a turtleneck, and a zip-up sweatshirt-jacket, and my usual nice Doc Martens), and gives you the leeway to take a few minutes off and read Slashdot (or whatever) is an employer you're more likely to stay with out of loyalty. Likewise, a workplace where employees don't feel that Big Brother is breathing down their necks every minute of every day is a good workplace to be in.

Employers who bitch about employees' not trusting them or lacking loyalty to the company have to realize it works both ways, and one of the best ways to put loyalty and trust (which is also tied up in that antiquated concept respect) into practice is to act on it, instead of just talking about it.

Business casual is my line in the sand!

[c13v3rm0nk3y]

I've sold my soul for this job. I've given up my rock 'n roll lifestyle (mostly), cut my hair (well, I was sick of long hair anyway) and made myself go to company functions (they aren't so bad). I've let corporate culture chisel away at my time and values, and in return I take an ever-increasing pile of filthy lucre, and zero job security.

But even I have my limits.

I draw the line at business casual. I will not wear golf shirts with company logos on them. I will not wear khakis. I will not wear a shirt and tie when a big customer is visiting the R&D department.

On hallowe'en, I will wear "business drag" (full suit and tie) for fun. Every year I will argue with someone that it is a costume and, as such, counts toward the money we raise for the food bank (for anyone who dresses up, the company donates money to a cause).

Biziz casual is my last bastion of free will, my line in the sand. I've sold my soul, but it will not be wearing a polo shirt. I don't have much self-respect left, but what little I have left, I guard jealously.

Re:TFH

[oliverthered]

I'm Alergic to Wool any many other things sheepish, so not only would I be hot, I'd be hot and itchy.

Any-how, why should I spend loads of money on cloths, just turn the heating down, wear T-shirts (or jumpers if you cold), open the windows and get a bit of fresh air around the place.

(BTW I wear cotton shirts and break a sweat if it gets above 22Deg C (or about 70F)

work is anoying enough [I'd rather have no money and provide everything I do gratis], but being forced into a brainwashed conformity that's just taking the piss

Wishful thinking

[sulli]

by the menswear industry, which is fucked because people have figured out that they don't need to spend $500 on a suit to look professional. At least here in California dresscodes are dead, dead, dead.

Wearing a suit is an act of submission

[0xdeadbeef]

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.

Re:one way or another... their gonna get get ya

[rnturn]

``...stock 2-3 articles of clothing in varying sizes and surpassing ugliness, and request that Mr. or Ms Forgetful put it on.''

``''

These are apples and oranges. One situation (forgetting one's hardhat) could get you killed. Forgetting a tie is nothing like that. Why I'll even bet that forgetting your tie won't even cause you to write bad code.

And making the forgetful employee wear the ugly tie would work about as well as it did for some bars that used to insist on ``no T-shirts'' and then provide some butt-ugly disco shirt for the ``forgetful'' patron. It eventually became something of a badge of honor to be wearing the ugly shirt. A while back I asked the owner of a hardware store ``who the heck's buying these hideous hats with the pink flowers on 'em?'' His answer was that local trades workers had a sort of competition to see who could wear the ugliest hat to the job. So much for the pink hard hat being an embarassment, eh? And would you want to see what happens first hand (or would that be ``first fist''?) when Mr. Burly Ironworker gets ribbed about the pink hardhat?

Re:Wow! Communicating with others?!

[TheWanderingHermit]

Fitting the clothes to the job is a good point. I overlooked it because I tend to work only with coders. If there's servers to move around, it's generally me who has to do it.

I think my biggest frustration is all the IT people that somehow think they're better than everyone else or above others and should get special treatment because they're so fscking intelligent. If they truly were that fscking smart, they'd realize they're providing a service, like everyone else, including the road cleaners and gas pump attendants. True, it takes more training than those jobs, but the bottom line is they are a service provider, even as an employee. If they're that much better than others that they can flaunt rules, then I'm sure they're so smart they don't need a job because they can just go out and start their own company and make millions.

Personally, I've never had trouble finding a new provider for ANY service when I needed to change.

Bean Counters and Hall Monitors

[serutan]

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.

So who foots the bill?

[Samrobb]

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:

• ~$1500 for clothes (5 good suits, shoes, shirts, etc.)
• ~$200 a month for dry cleaning
• Extra time spent dressing, running back & forth to the dry cleaners, etc.

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".

What purpose does a TIE serve ?

[Archfeld]

beside being a nice noose for some spinning fan to grab, a handle for some annoying rugrat to yank, or a leash for some even more annoying grabby BIATCH. I wear casual clothes appropriate to the variety of tasks I have to do, NONE of which involve dealing with the public, ALL of which involve keeping whining developers and managers hardware working. F%#%#%^% em, when I go on vacation half of them do too, the ones that don't end up with stuff piled on my desk for fixing when I get back. If they want to let me go for not wearing a tie so be it. I can find another job, it is the half baked code monkies that are in a crush anyways. There are LOTS of jobs for certified hardware techs with broad experience backgrounds.

Sorry to feed the troll, but...

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Geeks can be complete slobs, lacking even basic hygiene and fashion sense.

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.

Having people dress acceptably for work is a sign of respect. [...] 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?)

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.

Re:Wow! Communicating with others?!

[RealAlaskan]

... If you work with someone, does their fashion make a difference in your *professional* opinion of them?

In general, no. In particular, it can. If you want people to treat you like a grownup, it's a bright idea not to wear clothing that makes you look like the fat kid's little brother in hand-me-downs.

When you are making a first impression, remember that appearance is the ONLY thing that people can SEE. Before they hear your voice, before they find out what you know, they see what you look like. If you are the janitor, no-one will care if your teeshirt is smudged. If you aren't the janitor, do you want strangers to think you are? Will it increase their confidence in you? Wear clothing which is appropriate to the time and place.

Someone else pointed out that people at the top and bottom get to wear whatever they like. The ones at the top set the dress code, the ones at the bottom no-one cares about. The ones in the middle must follow the dress code. Ross Perot (owner of EDS, I think) could wear what the janitor wears, if he thought it was more comfortable than his suit. He doesn't, and that should tell you something about comfort.

Folks here keep saying that suits are uncomfortable. Mine aren't, and I've gotten most of them from the second hand stores, so we can't give the tailor any credit. You can buy them cheaper than you can buy denim, and the suits are generally in better condition than the jeans. You will be comfortable in whatever you are accustomed to. If you have chosen to be accustomed to clothing that makes you look rebellious, unreliable and immature, you haven't chosen wisely. Unless, of course, you are rebellious, unreliable and immature, in which case you are wiser than you knew, and the rest of us can continue to rely on appearances.

there must be a lot of recent IT employees on /.

[geekoid]

10 years ago, wearing a suit was very common for programmers, espcially in the corporate enviroment. there where pretty much 2 exceptions.
Microsoft, and the UNIX guy in the basement that was the only person who knew how to keep the system running.

then a few year go by, and suddenlt companies had to go out of there way to find developers.
enter Casual Dress Code. one of the many perks that where reasonably easy to implement, with low cost over head.

now things are getting tough for IT people, so the corporations are trying to call all the shots again.
The question most people are asking is "How does dress code make me a better programmer?" well, it doesn't, but it is not just about you.

Having an exact dress code lower liability for corporations. Less chance of somebody wearing something offensive. Less aribtrary on who is wearing something in appropriate. More professional look.

If wearing a suit makes you less of a programmer you either need a proper fitting suit, or your not quite the programmer you think you are, and need to act the part of a geek stereotype for self satisfaction.

I said this shortly after the bust, and I'll say it agian, "Be prepared to by a suit if you work for a large corporatin that doesn't make it's bread and butter from selling software. We all know every industry programmer are in would fall apart with out programmers, so perhaps we should start a union?

My experience...

[Junta]

In 2000, I was working without a dress code, for a decent amount of money, not spectacular, but decent.

Then they close up shop, and I get a job within a week (lucky, at the time of hundreds of area IT workers getting laid off), but it involved a huge commute, less than half the pay, and to start, I have to spend two weeks pay to get clothes so they won't fire me. They refused to pay me on the level of others with these requirements but made great demands anyway. Within three months I found a new place and quit, and the new place now pays me nearly 4 times as much and has no dress code, except on days when customer's visit (maybe once every couple of months)....

My Private Humble Personal Experience....

[hackus]

I have been through this.

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. :-) 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....).

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

I gotta wonder.

[foxtrot]

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.)

Re:Wow! Communicating with others?!

[gosand]

In general, no. In particular, it can. If you want people to treat you like a grownup, it's a bright idea not to wear clothing that makes you look like the fat kid's little brother in hand-me-downs.

I find it odd that there is no middle ground for you between suits, and torn-up, dirty clothes.

When you are making a first impression, remember that appearance is the ONLY thing that people can SEE. Before they hear your voice, before they find out what you know, they see what you look like. If you are the janitor, no-one will care if your teeshirt is smudged. If you aren't the janitor, do you want strangers to think you are? Will it increase their confidence in you? Wear clothing which is appropriate to the time and place.

You know how many strangers I meet at work? Zero. What first impression are you talking about? Read what I wrote - if you interface with customers, or the public, there should be some kind of dress code. In most software companies, that is not the engineering department. Again, I find it odd that to you there is no middle ground between business casual and dirty, stained clothes.

Someone else pointed out that people at the top and bottom get to wear whatever they like. The ones at the top set the dress code, the ones at the bottom no-one cares about. The ones in the middle must follow the dress code. Ross Perot (owner of EDS, I think) could wear what the janitor wears, if he thought it was more comfortable than his suit. He doesn't, and that should tell you something about comfort.

Ross Perot - now there is someone to look up to.

Folks here keep saying that suits are uncomfortable. Mine aren't, and I've gotten most of them from the second hand stores, so we can't give the tailor any credit. You can buy them cheaper than you can buy denim, and the suits are generally in better condition than the jeans.

I have a couple of suits that are very comfortable. One cost $900. If I wear a suit, I wear a suit. So you want to look "professional" in your second-hand suit? What happened to that all-important first impression you are raving about? Do you want to look like a bum, or some 80 year old man? Wait a minute, in your first paragraph, hand-me-downs were bad. I am confused.

You will be comfortable in whatever you are accustomed to. If you have chosen to be accustomed to clothing that makes you look rebellious, unreliable and immature, you haven't chosen wisely. Unless, of course, you are rebellious, unreliable and immature, in which case you are wiser than you knew, and the rest of us can continue to rely on appearances.

If you rely on appearances, you are a fool. And for the third time, you assume that casual clothing means rebellious, unreliable, and immature. Ask me about some of the best software people I have ever worked with, and I'll tell you what they know, not what they wear. What about Open Source Software? I wonder what Linus wears. Or Alan Cox. I'll bet they look all unreliable and rebellious, so they must be. You sound like the classic middle management type. Good thing you are expendable, cause someone else will come along who thinks EXACTLY like you to replace you. Maybe they will dress a little nicer, therefore they must be better than you.

Sclatter's Law

[sclatter]

If I ever wear a skirt to work, there is a 100% chance that at some point during the day I will be required to crawl under someone's desk.

Nice clothes and sysadmining don't mix. :-)

Sarah

I used to have to wear a tie...

[Gudlyf]

Then one day, after pulling a few late-night shifts as a SysAdmin, I was working on the innards of a printer and, while the gears were churning away, my tie slipped into the printer. It nearly strangled me, plus I lost a good tie.

The next day I came to work sans tie. I slung the tattered tie over the wall of my cubicle with a note, "this is why I don't wear ties here anymore". I've never worn once to work since, and that tie is all the explanation I need.

Another way

[K-Man]

A woman in my ex-girlfriend's office used to wear the same clothes to work every day. In fact I don't remember her name, because she was referred to as "the woman who wears the same clothes to work every day". They were completely appropriate business attire, and I think she cleaned them somehow every night, but she always wore the same clothes. It drove them crazy.

Capability Maturity Model

[CausticPuppy]

CMM = "Capability Maturity Model." It's a certification like ISO9000 but it's geared toward software development.

Here is a PDF file containing CMM level descriptions and probably more than you needed to know. If you don't like PDF then just search google for "capability maturity model".

The vast majority of software companies aren't even at CMM level 2. My company (a consulting firm) has been puruing CMM level 3 for a year now, and there is a LOT involved, we've had to change a lot of processes-- among them is having a formal QA process. U.S. government generally doesn't consider anybody below CMM level 3 when looking to outsource software... at least for high profile projects.

Consistent Dress

[marko123]

Does wearing the same t-shirt and underwear for a week get the same kudos from management as wearing a suit every day of the week?

Re:You want comfort, to "fit the code" and annoy b

[rnturn]

``A bow-tie is as comfortable as wearing nothing at all, looks cool, AND will annoy your boss, because it is unconventional. But technically it IS still a tie.''

You could also go for the string tie. They also tend to annoy people. Just let your boss think that you're originally from Texas and this was what you wore there. Just watch out for rotating machinery and shredders. (If those are in your workplace, the bowtie might be the better choice.)

Biggest problem with ties

[totallygeek]

I work at a bank, and therefore have to wear ties most of the time. The biggest problem I have is when I am not at the bank, people think I work at whatever store [or whatever] I am visiting. I get asked where the condoms are, how many exposures are on this roll of film, and when does this store close. At Chick-Fil-A the other day I was asked by a woman if her son could get a toy without purchasing the kid's meal!

I think it is doubly assinine here that we have casual Fridays and summer months are casual as well. Do the customers feel they get less service on Fridays or in the summer? Do the managers see a drop in performance in the summer? No, but these are the reasonings offered for why we don't have business casual year-round. It is just a draconian system and we must wait for those people to retire or die.

Re:CMM Description

[aebrain]

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.

Hmmm.

[Pig Hogger]

I've shown-up more than once off my bike in bright spandex, and no one minded.

Casual or not...

[Pig Hogger]

A few times, I had to show up at work wearing flashy spandex. Nobody ever said anything at all.

Nevertheless, I dress cleanly as a mark of respect for them.

Re:Wow! Communicating with others?!

[Pig Hogger]

Once the PHB-types realize it is about COMFORT that drives productivity, and not LOOKS, that drive success, maybe they'll slacken up a bit and watch their profits rise. Also, when job applicants realize that the workplace is a comfortable, easy-going-but-fast-paced place to work, the line will be out the door, without ever advertising for employees.

It used to be that yankees used to think like that, and that made their industry superior to what was coming out of stiff-necked europeans. But it seems that the superficial bullshit has caught on with the yankees, and they are hard-pressed to crank-out any product worthy of the name...

Re:there must be a lot of recent IT employees on /

[Pig Hogger]

Having an exact dress code lower liability for corporations. Less chance of somebody wearing something offensive. Less aribtrary on who is wearing something in appropriate. More professional look.

Reminds me of many years ago, a new young librarian appeared in the public library. However young she was, she already had the prototypical pinched appearance of the generic librarian, including the pointed glasses with a neckband. For months, I went by her jokeless/smileless ways, and one day, she was there, with her pointy glasses, and a tee-shirt with that (french) cartoon character on it!!!!

I'm still flabberghasted when I think about it.

Dress Code == Bad Company

[herbierobinson]

Companies that have dress codes should be avoided simply because they are wasting time and resources on things that don't get the job done.

The reality is that any employee should be able to figure out how to dress to get their job done (other than freshouts, maybe).

And of course, it DOES matter what you wear and it depends on the organization (many examples have already been given). First impressions are very important. IMO, it's more the quality of the way someone dresses than what they are wearing. A frumpy generic white shirt combined with a tie that has been (accidentally) dipped in coffee once a day for the last 3 months is not going to fool anybody... Frankly, somebody in a good quality T-shirt and jeans will look better than that!

Yerrrs

[Rogerborg]

Because as we all know, fastidious dress codes and absolute compliance with corporate etiquette really helped the Japanese economy not take a massive nose dive over the past couple of years.

Corporate fashion is the same as any other. The people that control it just need to keep changing it to justify their existance, so that it looks like they're doing something. Then, if they get lucky and some venture capitalist's greed overtakes their fear, profits go up and Mr Middle Managers claim it's all because of they forced their peons to wear ties. And if profits go down, they blame it on an adverse world market - which gets us back to Japan...

Anyone read the full article?

[Chanc_Gorkon]

I don't think the whole article is entirely just about dress code. I think that it's about the whole extravagant lifestyle like things that some of these dot coms did which is falling out of favor. Sure, dress code plays a part in that, but I think it's more of an issue with people being able to take breaks when they want to go play DOOM in the company game room and the whole company going to see the Phantom Menace together and fully stocked gourmet kitchens and stuff. Personally, I have no idea WHY these folks were allowed to push business casual to the limit by wearing t-shirts and shorts. First off, the best road to pick is a middle ground on this issue. If your not meeting execs and customers on a daily basis and your just a cube monkey admining a server or programming for a living, then why should you be forced to wear a suit? What's wrong with Khakis and a Polo? Personally I would like to see more company issued Polo's as a incentive to dress appropriately. Only day we really wear jeans around here is Fridays, but we can wear them anytime so long as they are not tattered with holes and stains. We do dress up when meeting with the President, but even our VP's wear casual clothes when they aren't in meetings. If it's a matter of control, then they should just buy everyone a nice, comfortable uniform. Face it, the days of coming in to work in sweat pants is gone and personally should have had no place in the work place from the beginning. The days of High Schoolers getting IT jobs may be gone as well. When the workload is inhumanly possible, sometimes taking someone who knows a little is all you can do to keep trying to crank stuff out. But now that things are back to semi normal, we have the time to do things right. The Dot Com boom was alot of hot air and buggy websites that barely worked. Ever seen a site barely work now? Sure, there are some, but you not every site has a bug now and there's a great amount of sites that have no bugs now at all or no show stoppers. Dot com type stuff has matured and the real money making ideas will work now and not ideas like ordering your grocerys to come via UPS and stuff like that. A industry maturing has a way of making it less interesting as they realize that they can't afford to be paying for Mountain Dew and Penguin mints for the whole office and buying that new UNIX server they need. This also makes everyone realize that they need to look good to attract the kind of employees they really want which are responsible, realistic folks and not these ones who can claim they can crank out a new website in 8 hours.

OFFTOPIC: Your sig.

[FurryFeet]

Well, I just have to know what that is about...
BTW: I'm not whoever it is you are talking about, since I have never posted anonymously. Just a curious party...

Re:Sure...

[Anarchofascist]

What do you prefer: a highly skilled guy that hates ties or a sub-skilled comformist sheeple that dresses impecably?

That was the choice ten years ago, but in today's market, you can find highly skill people sweeping the streets.

The question should be "What do you prefer: a highly skilled guy who refuses the simplest piece of discipline, or a highly skilled guy who's response is to shrug shoulders and say 'Yeah sure, man, whatever makes you feel comfortable.'"

[Are people still reading this ancient thread??]

Not true.

[swillden]

When layoffs come, upper management just look at spreadsheets with numbers, they very often have never seen the people they are making jobless. The people that get the sack have no job, no dignity and the money they would have saved is wasted in those very expensive suits and dry cleaning bills.

Upper management just looks at spreadsheets and decides how many have to go, not which ones. That task they delegate to middle management, who passes it down the line. Finally, it ends up down with line managers who are told "You have to pick two people from your team."

Given equal job performance, who are they going to pick? The less "professional", obviously, which incorporates a lot of factors, including dress.

When times are tough and layoffs are imminent, it's wise to take every advantage you can. A little money spent on nice clothing may be the best investment you can make.

Re:Discipline!

[Anarchofascist]

I normaly hire the "rebel' in case you wanted to know.

"Jimbo, have you finished that Perl script yet?"

"Screw you, man."

Yeah, I can see how that can work out.