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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.
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?
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.
This one hits it on the head. In our line of work, many of us may have to crawl around on a server room floor, under desks, etc. If you sit at your desk all day and there is no chance you are going to get up from it, then maybe a suit would be appropriate, but, if they want me to crawl around on the ground in a nice suit, they better be paying me enough to afford buying a new suit every week.
Don't Tread on Me
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
I think one of the problems a lot of people have with suits is that they've only worn one or two suits for graduation and interviews. These were probably three times or more expensive than their casual wear even if they bought the cheapest suit available and they didn't even think about buying the next more expensive suit.
You can find more comfortable suits if you are willing to pay a bit more. Suits don't even have to be dry clean only. My Tilley jacket is comfortable, has ten working pockets, and the cleaning instruction tag says "Give it hell!"
Can I expense my clothing bill? How about a tax deduction? (I'm serious -- if the clothing standards are "required" by the company, then there should be some compensation.)
The thing about this and any management-mandate is, if you are not replaceable and management realizes this, (and not being able to replace you means failure of the department, division, or company) then you have virtually unlimited bargaining power.
Otherwise, you need to toe the line. It's that simple.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Let's not beat around the bush, you may pretend you like it, you might think it makes you look sharp, but deep down you know it is only cultural conditioning that makes you think so. You would look just as sharp in a Star Trek costume as in these bland, antiquated, frivolous uniforms, if that is what everybody else wore.
And make no mistake, a suit is a uniform. It may not your name on the collar, but it serves the same purpose. You are indistiguishable, you are part of the team. Your identity does not matter so much as the persona you present. It says to your client "I'm willing to go to great expense to impress you". It says to your boss "I'm willing to go to great effort to kiss your ass".
Every time you go to the dry cleaners, every time you spend a day's pay on the next day's clothes, every time your spill your drink and curse the waste that is forced upon you, you are submitting your will to the superficial whims of those effete do-nothings who nonetheless lord over you in the social hierarchy.
Nothing says "I'm your bitch" like wearing a suit. Remember that.
Yah, I know there are comfortable suits out there... my current suit is lightweight, good quality, and really not a bother to wear at all. I have only that one suit, though, used for weddings and funerals (and other special occaisions). So, if I accept a position where suits are required business attire, I am now in a situation where I can expect to shell out:
This comes to ~$4000 in the first year of employment; ~3000/year afterward (presuming I pick up an extra suit or two to replace worn ones, new styles, new ties, etc.)
This is roughly the same as taking a $6000/year pay cut from the offered salary.
So, really, this is no different from a company saying "Well, if you want to work here, you'll have to make your own parking arrangements - we don't cover that" or "Well, if you want to work here, you'll have to find your own vision care package - we don't cover that." The company is trying to take something that benefits them (not paying for parking, not payiung for vision coverage, presenting a professional image) and shift the cost of that onto the individual employee.
That's why I treat working attire the same way I treat medical coverage, paid parking downtown, and other benefits. Yes, I will consider a job working somewhere where suit and tie is required attire... but working there will cost me money, and I expect my salary to reflect that added expense. Conversely, if I accept a job somewhere else where attire is casual or buisness casual, I can live with a lower salary, because I avoid the bother of having to wear a uniform to work.
In other words... if my wearing professional attire on the job benefits the company, I expect to be compensated for that effort on my part, the same way I am compensated for my other efforts as an employee. If the company is unwilling to pay me for doing something that benefits the company, then they really shouldn't be surprised when I say "No".
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9