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Suit Up Or Ship Out?
ilovestuff wrote to us with a disscussion starter from ZDNet Australia about the changes in dress code at IT jobs. How much is everyone else going through?
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The cats don't seem to mind.
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.
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.
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.
is the dress code at my 'IT job', which is searching for work, and filing for unemployment. on casual fridays, the pajamas are optional.
If there is a dress code, I'll pack up and leave, or not work there in the first place.
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]
Shit better not happen!
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.
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.
Cunning linguists
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?
Once my boss urged me to wear a suit and tie to work. But sadly one of the computers hiccuped and i had to take it to the shop. Needless to say i got dirty like hell from assorted dust under the desk that i had to change my clothes. Since then no more suit for the tech guy ....
... whenever a text is transmitted, variation occurs. This is because human beings are careless, fallible, and occasiona
All of my Leisure suits are out of fashion, and the birthday suit is against new policy.
They can have my jeans, as soon as they pry them off my dead, cold ass.
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...
.sig last updated Jan. 14, 2000
Boy, what an outrage.
Of all the nerve, to expect computer guys to communicate with other people in the business, to work with them, to adopt the same dress code, and generally become good corporate citizens instead of that grumpy guy sitting over in the corner who won't talk to anyone.
I for one am outraged. I should be able to not be a team player, to dress slovenly, and be totally grumpy and non-communicative with my co-workers, just because my skills are with computers, instead of, say, accounting or HR.
Boy, of all the nerve.
- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!
How does a lax dress code cause 'additional expenditure'?? If the current policy states a more lenient dress code, then it seems changing the dress code policy to something more strict would not only require more money spent in HR's time to transmit this statement to the employees, but also more time wasted in the management chain dealing with delinquent employees!
Now I'm not one to be completely for walking into work in jeans and a ripped T-shirt, but I just think this idiot they got for the interview is just... well, an idiot!
Having worked for EDS for 5 years back in the day when it was suit and tie for EVERYONE (couldn't leave your cube without your suitcoat on) I can say first hand that it makes absolutly no differnce in company performance, hell if anything wearing a suit while pulling cable makes a person a worse engineer type, not to mention how much static wool generates. The whole dressing up things goes back to old school upper management who has no concept of the kind of people they want to attract.
All changing the rules does is screw the loyal people a company, since come the next economic boom the company will have to slacken its requirements, offer increases pay to new employees etc etc, leaving the existing hard working loyal types in the preverbal lurch. Oh well those corporate MF's will never learn (too much time binge drinking in college I guess).
I do think a little buissness casual is good, cause if there is no dress code I am coming in wearing my old Metallica t-shirt (metal up your ass), some ripped jeans and combat boots.
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.
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.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
Lets face it, IT is changing, rapidly.
Traditionally, your average IT guy, lived and breathed computers, he was not master of one, he was jack of all trades and (normally) master of one particular area. YOu couldn't just go into uni and be taught everything you needed to know to go out and do computing, you had to live and breath it at a young age.
The times have changed, now every man and his dog does IT degrees and the market is being flooded with well presented, sociable creatures who dont actually understand what they are doing, they don't understand what teh computer is doing, they have not LEARNT the computer, they have LEARNT the program.
The traditional IT workers who can't dress to save there lives and have little social skills are finding it alot harder to compete with these socially adept creatures, and thus the attitude of the workers and the employees has changed
My theory anyway
Microsoft IIS is to webserving as KFC is to healthy eating
Here in Sweden the dresscode has never been too strict, nor is it going to be, in the engineering sector. Of cource I wear a suite and tie when I'm on a customer meeting (but on-one forces me into doing that, I just want to make a good impression), but except from that I go with what ever I feel like. Naturally, one can't look/smell like a bozo, but a t-shirt and jeans (or shorts) is OK.
Started out with EDS, which in those days you couldn't get much stricter in dress code.. the poor sales guys were even told WHERE to buy their clothes..
Then the far opposite, where Dockers and polo shirts were overdress...
I think it really all depends on what industry you work in. You dont wear a 3 piece suit in a automotive plant, but dont forget your tie in an attorneys office..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This would stop most of this nonsense, if enough people left their jobs to do real IT work. Not content with the crass stupidity at paying
salaries at early 90s levels, they want to
also want the workforce to wear suits?
Interestingly enough, I have some questions to employers, and government:
(This is not a comprehensive list btw)
Not kaki pants and a sport jacket, but an actual suit!
Oh my! Heaven forbid!!!
Have you ever had to wear a suit and tie to work everyday? It is one royal pain in the ass, getting stuff presses at the cleaners, scratchy collars, wool suits in the summer. I did it for 5 years at EDS (they were very strict, you couldn't leave their cube without your suit coat on, that and they are based in Texas, can you say 100 degree summers). Suffice to say requireing programmer/engineer types to wear suits is gonna do NOTHING for the good, buissness casual is about the limit. Requiring suits just makes the execs feel better.
Which group of programmers would you hire, a room full of suit wearing 9-5r's or a room full of cheesy-poof eating coffee drinking work around the clock for 3 days straight types (wearing god knows what). Sure you wouldn't want to show the second group to investers, but I bet you would have better code and happier employees (who will stay with you) then the first group.
The first time they entered in my room to tell me about how to dress, I was crawling under my table, connecting cables together...
:)
They actually understood it would be quite uncomfortable to force me to wear a S&T in order to perform such a speleological work
Trolling using another account since 2005.
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.
One time my boss was out sick so they sent me in to represent our department at a large meeting with the customers. I think I was picked because I happened to be wearing slacks and a button-down shirt (even though it wasn't mandatory). The customer was upset because the product was late and was demanding to know why. I told the customer what I thought the real due date for the product would be (about 4 times what he had been told by management). After that I didn't get invited to any more meetings with the customers.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
The bottom line here is that it all depends on how important it is to you. I recently spent a very long time unemployed and searching and at a certain point I had to ask myself how important finding a job that had various perks or rights associated with them. At one point I interviewed with a bank that wanted, not only to make me dress up in a suit, but they wanted to take my piss on a regular basis to make sure I wasn't smoking weed on the weekends. I decided that was too much; that I'd rather be unemployed than have to deal with those two conditions. When a job came along that respected my privacy, I took it, and while I'm kind of disappointed that I have to wear khakis and a polo shirt every day instead of shorts or jeans or whatever, it wasnt worth turning down this job. I'll bet that there are folks out there for whom it would be worth it to turn down a job, because their personal comfort or style is worth more to them than mine is to me. As jobs become increasingly scarce, those who can afford to hold out for jeans and t-shirt workplaces will shrink, but lets not kid ourselves; this is about what that particular aspect of work is worth to you.
Let's just avoid this whole "corporate america is screwing us" rhetoric and remember that you can always quit and look for a job that will let you wear jeans IF its worth that much to you.
This too shall pass.
There is an inverse relationship between the amount spent on clothes, and the amount of bull slung at work. Notice how well lawyers dress...
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.
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 :-)
Stop whiiinnnniiiinng.
I have no sympathy for people that will now have to present a mature appearence and attitude, like most of the rest of the world in the workplace. Asking IT people to wear a tie or to show appropriate communication skills does not bring them in line with a road sweeper. It just makes the ones with an unprofessional attitude adopt a more mature style of behavior and a more professional style of dress.
Personally, in my company, as long as it looks decent, I even allow jeans and sandles (if the jeans are torn or too faded, they're out), but I ALWAYS expect good communication and people skills. I've worked with a few coders who may have been great coders, but their lack of communication skills have made it impossible to get them to listen or produce the product that was necessary. None of them are working for me now. If you want to wear jeans and sandles and listen to Metallica while you code, fine, that's why God invented headphones, but when it comes to interacting with the rest of the staff, I expect these people who claim to be so much more intelligent than the rest of the world to use that intelligence to figure out how to interact. I also expect common courtesy, something I've noticed a significant portion of coders I've dealt with (not a majority, but enough to notice) don't show. There's just no excuse for not knowing how to show common courtesy.
Yeah, sure. Not wearing a suit == being grumpy, noncommunicative and antisocial. I've never understood people that need to force others into uniforms. Your kind of smugness is also completely alien to me: "Ha! Thought you could get away with wearing something else? Well, get in line, and damn well enjoy it like the rest of us!".
We have a great culture going here, many techs are allowed to dress the way they like. Why do you want to take that away from us and conform us to some stupid corporate tradition? Nobody will work harder because they wear a tie.
... at least where I work (IBM).
Over the last decade IBM has shifted from a serious suit-and-tie kind of place to pretty much anything goes, except in front of customers, of course. After the last couple of rounds of layoffs, however, I've noticed a distinct shift in dress among the survivors, and it's not because of anything management has said.
IBM still dresses casually but I've noticed in my part of the company that dockers have largely replaced jeans and button-down shirts or turtlenecks have pretty much eradicated t-shirts. Sports coats and nice shoes are even seen on the upwardly mobile.
Management hasn't said anything, and there are very few employees around from "the old days", so it isn't that people are reverting back. I'm convinced that it's just basic caution; after seeing a bunch of others tossed on the street, everyone wants to go the extra mile in looking and acting like a professional, a valuable employee who must be retained -- just in case layoffs strike again.
My theory is that we'll see dress shift subtly up and down the scale in inverse proportion to the stock price.
Stock up == times good == dress irrelevant.
Stock down == times bad == better look good in every way you can.
Of course, for me, like many IBMers, this only matters when we actually go into the office. Large portions of IBM work from home these days, an experiment prompted by dot-boom but retained because it works well and saves on real estate costs. Again, though, when the stock is down face time with your boss becomes important...
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
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
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
Instead of marketing and PHB dressing down to regular clothes they need the entire staff to clone up to their level? If i see an IT in suit i cant take him serious, ill assume point'n'click level.
HTTP/1.1 400
Y'know, you can be a team player, and communicate effectively with other people in the business, and be a good "corporate citizen" (whatever that's supposed to mean) without wearing a suit.
At the start of the year, I had to go to a client site for a meeting. I had been advised that they had a dress code, so I wore shoes, suit trousers and a shirt and tied my hair back (it was long then), rather than my normal boots, jeans and T-shirt.
The meeting went fine, everyone seemed happy, until I got back to the office. A few hours later, the project manager approached me rather apologetically, and told me that there had been a complaint about the dress standard of those of us who went to the meeting. Basically, they objected to us not wearing ties.
Funnily enough, my not wearing a tie didn't seem to affect my ability to get their project done on time, despite both the timescale and the budget being woefully under-estimated. Of course, I'm sure that they'd still rather it went over time and budget, but that we all looked the part.
Bottom line is, it's not the clothes that are doing the programming, it's me. If you want it done right, there are a few things I need, and one of them is to be relaxed and happy. Force me into uncomfortable clothes, and I'll be distracted, and so make more mistakes and take longer over my work.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
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.
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?).
No, I'm sure its clipped on correctly.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
Here is a question for you, and answer it seriously in your own mind: If you work with someone, does their fashion make a difference in your *professional* opinion of them? If you say yes, then you are probably in some type of managment/sales/marketing role. Those people work off of image, technical people work off of knowledge. That is the way it works. If you are telling me that I have to dress up to make the marketing folks happy, then you are full of crap and need to think about your priorities. Now if you are saying that I need to dress up because I will be working with customers directly, then you may have a point. And I find it pretty naive of you to think that all technical people are slovenly, grumpy, and non-communicative. Hey, I know, let's make them dress uncomfortably, that will improve their demeanor! Maybe we need another mission statement, or Hawaiian shirt day! Quick, someone think of a catchy acronym that outlines our business paridigm initiative.
These are precisely why technical people snicker at the business folks.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
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've got to answer this one.
...
The photos you see are the photos that NASA management of the time wanted you to see. Said management, of course, were 1950's and 1940's aerospace engineers who had climbed the management ladder, and they were indeed buzzcut-tie-cigarette types. But they weren't the ones doing the real engineering work any more. The ones who actually sent men to the moon, the ones who were crunching the numbers and getting the rockets off the ground, were hippies. Long hair, joint, and tattered work shirt were their uniform. And there were ferocious culture clashes between them and the older guys, but they got the job done.
How do I know this? Because my Dad was one of those hippie engineers
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
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?
"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
I think one of the problems a lot of people have with suits is that they've only worn one or two suits for graduation and interviews. These were probably three times or more expensive than their casual wear even if they bought the cheapest suit available and they didn't even think about buying the next more expensive suit.
You can find more comfortable suits if you are willing to pay a bit more. Suits don't even have to be dry clean only. My Tilley jacket is comfortable, has ten working pockets, and the cleaning instruction tag says "Give it hell!"
Can I expense my clothing bill? How about a tax deduction? (I'm serious -- if the clothing standards are "required" by the company, then there should be some compensation.)
The thing about this and any management-mandate is, if you are not replaceable and management realizes this, (and not being able to replace you means failure of the department, division, or company) then you have virtually unlimited bargaining power.
Otherwise, you need to toe the line. It's that simple.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
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!
OK, now, nice and smooth, put it down... now STEP AWAY from that copy of 'Atlas Shrugged'... ;)
Let's not beat around the bush, you may pretend you like it, you might think it makes you look sharp, but deep down you know it is only cultural conditioning that makes you think so. You would look just as sharp in a Star Trek costume as in these bland, antiquated, frivolous uniforms, if that is what everybody else wore.
And make no mistake, a suit is a uniform. It may not your name on the collar, but it serves the same purpose. You are indistiguishable, you are part of the team. Your identity does not matter so much as the persona you present. It says to your client "I'm willing to go to great expense to impress you". It says to your boss "I'm willing to go to great effort to kiss your ass".
Every time you go to the dry cleaners, every time you spend a day's pay on the next day's clothes, every time your spill your drink and curse the waste that is forced upon you, you are submitting your will to the superficial whims of those effete do-nothings who nonetheless lord over you in the social hierarchy.
Nothing says "I'm your bitch" like wearing a suit. Remember that.
Sigh. It's the same old story. When a company is controlled by people who actually do the work, or at least understand it, crap that doesn't matter doesn't matter. When the company is controlled by bean counters and hall monitors, crap that doesn't matter matters.
Yah, I know there are comfortable suits out there... my current suit is lightweight, good quality, and really not a bother to wear at all. I have only that one suit, though, used for weddings and funerals (and other special occaisions). So, if I accept a position where suits are required business attire, I am now in a situation where I can expect to shell out:
This comes to ~$4000 in the first year of employment; ~3000/year afterward (presuming I pick up an extra suit or two to replace worn ones, new styles, new ties, etc.)
This is roughly the same as taking a $6000/year pay cut from the offered salary.
So, really, this is no different from a company saying "Well, if you want to work here, you'll have to make your own parking arrangements - we don't cover that" or "Well, if you want to work here, you'll have to find your own vision care package - we don't cover that." The company is trying to take something that benefits them (not paying for parking, not payiung for vision coverage, presenting a professional image) and shift the cost of that onto the individual employee.
That's why I treat working attire the same way I treat medical coverage, paid parking downtown, and other benefits. Yes, I will consider a job working somewhere where suit and tie is required attire... but working there will cost me money, and I expect my salary to reflect that added expense. Conversely, if I accept a job somewhere else where attire is casual or buisness casual, I can live with a lower salary, because I avoid the bother of having to wear a uniform to work.
In other words... if my wearing professional attire on the job benefits the company, I expect to be compensated for that effort on my part, the same way I am compensated for my other efforts as an employee. If the company is unwilling to pay me for doing something that benefits the company, then they really shouldn't be surprised when I say "No".
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
They can be, and they can be PhD+ whizzkids wearing $1000 dollar suits. They can also be the same whizzkids in jeans and a T-shirt, or spoilt brat rich kids in a snazzy suit that daddy bought who have yet to discover the word "shower". I'm not sure there's any great corrollation between what they wear and what they can do.
And what if their idea of style is different to yours, and vice versa?
I'm lucky enough to have recently moved to a new job in a very nice office. The company is doing better than most in the current climate, and the staff know their stuff. We have an informal dress code (and, wherever possible, a pretty informal policy on everything else, too). I have a postgraduate qualification, and I'm among the least academically qualified people there; everyone else on my immediate team has at least a PhD from a respected university. This is not an office full of morons... And yet, most people wear smart cas or jeans+T to work. The only person who regularly wears a tie is our MD, and since he owns the place, that's obviously his choice.
Personally, I'm sometimes more comfortable wearing a shirt and tie to work. I find it helps me to put my "professional" face on, and I like to look reasonably smart when I'm working. I also find that changing back when I get home helps me to let go of that "professional" face and go back to my regular persona. OTOH, I have no problem with the office "dress code" at my new place, and I certainly don't judge my colleagues by their ability to tie their tie in five different ways. I'm far more impressed by the quality of the products they produce.
I'd draw the line at poor personal hygiene, but personally, I'd see an office that let its staff dress comfortably (whatever that means to them) as the one showing respect. There are obviously times when a "professional" image is in order -- visiting client sites, sales people, etc. -- but as a general rule, I fail to see why it's necessary, or what companies hope to gain by taking away what is essentially a free perk.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I think the buff guy from UPS who spends his time loading and unloading trucks has a much better chance at picking up chicks compared to the fat assed programmer.
You can't grep a dead tree.
I have been through this.
:-) It was one of those things after 6 years, I knew they couldn't do the job required to bring the business to the next level. (They were control freaks to so they would get all defensive about things if I tried to get even the basic business information....).
:-)
My X business partners were a real problem in this sense. During the boomb time and the cray hours I was working to collapse the business technology into something manageable by one person, at times I put in 14 hours. Sometimes 20 hours.
What my X business partners would then say, " XXXX you know you should try and come into work a little bit more presentable."
I would of course smile, and say, " Sure **** I will try and do that."
Problem is, these two not only worked from 7-5PM, thier "contributions" to the business at the time STOPPED after 5PM.
As a business partner and technology guy, my SECOND JOB started after 5PM.
So, what I smiled and said was quite different from what I was thinking...I was thinking something like: "You MORON, I just got done refitting the customer systems ALL NIGHT LONG, what the F*** do you think YOU would look like if you did the same thing?"
This fell on deaf EARS of course, because the two guys I was business partners with not only had ZERO sense of any business, but they never really got the fact that I had far more responsibility than they did, and as a systems guy, contributed to the business far into the night while they had thier asses tucked away for a nice 8 hour sleep binge.
If I could have had the same kinds of responsibilities my X business partners had, I could look damn daper too in the morning, comming in all nicely dressed shaved and smellin like a rose.
In short my X business partners were idiots. However, they were nice people.
But, what I think I am trying to say is that now that I own my own business, I REALIZE that my network guy, has two jobs. He has to be around during the day to help with systems, but I realize he has to maintain systems, and sometimes that means he has to take networks or groups of machines offline. You can't do that during the day, so he has to work at night as well.
So I always say: "I don't care when you come, or what your hours are, but I expect things to be working and keep working 80-90% of the time. If I have to get involved because you don't address peoples complaints, then you are going to have problems with THE BIG CHEESE. So don't make me get all Limburger over your ass....
I find this arrangement works nice. I have had a couple of people ask me why *** gets all the hours flexibility in his job and we as programmers, or sales people do not. I simple reply "Well, first of all *** works day AND nights, has two jobs, and well, if his systems don't work, that paper you push on your desktop don't mean shit. You guys have 9-5pm responsibilities and *** has 24 hours 7 days a week responsibilities."
Most people back off right away, those that don't I train as IT department network guru's and once they see the responsibility requirements, most quit after 3 weeks.
So, management (which now includes me....) should think about network operations or IT operations as a 24x7 job requirement and as such, employees working under such high stress positions, get special favors. (No standard hours, no dress code (within reason of course but no suits or ties, but no Ripped clothing either sandals)......etc.)
They do at my company because the CEO has been there and done that and I KNOW it SUCKS.
Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
There are two sorts of highly moderated response here.
The first boils down to the canonical hacker-coder "Omigawd! Not me! I'll starve first, respect me for what I do not what I look like!" idea.
The second looks more like "You losers, come back and join the rest of the world. People care what people look like and if you can't figure that out you're not as smart as you think you are."
I have got to wonder: How high a correlation is there between people who posted the latter and people who got stuck wearing suits or ties to be employed after the dot-bomb collapse?
-JDF (I like shirts with collars... and blue jeans, dammit.)
The best description is here. It provides a good, concise description of CMM levels 1-5. Highly recommended as the best 1/3 page summary of CMM there is.
It also provides in much more detail a description of levels 0 to -3, the Capability Im-Maturity Model, and that part's hilarious.
Zoe Brain - Rocket Scientist