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Body Modifications Still Hinder IT Professionals?
thedeletekey writes "The Detroit News recently ran an article about body modifications in the workplace. This got me thinking; do body modifications such as tattoos and piercings still hinder IT professionals in the workplace? Or is this a thing of the past, as these types of personal changes have become more common in recent years. In my experience, I've found both stringent dress codes requiring business casual attire, and no visible body modifications, to no dress code at all. What has the rest of the IT world found to be common?"
It's never hindered me - I have pierced ears and visible tats.
but I did run into it in the private sector. They didn't like the tattoos. Oh well I'm better off now.
The guy had several high speed fans attached to his body, something about overclocking and caffeine. They proved a real distraction to the other workers...
you insensitive clod!
This is 2005...and if you aren't painfully aware...the dot.com boom has been long over...and if you want to be treated professionally, then you need to act AND look professionally. The do-whatever-you-want-club is almost closed at every location it popped up in.
Here is a simple guide:
* Hide the tats.
* Save the piercings for the goth club.
* Use a natural hair color. (man...I wish I could do green at work...)
I'm sure you can think of other examples.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
The military has no problem with those. There's your new IT opportunity. Of course, it's the military.
Direct away from face when opening.
It's a sign of maturity. Barring religious reasons, one should not wear any form of *visible* modifications outside of those that are generally acceptable (e.g. lobe piercings in women). Anything else shows you're immature and trying to be "different" when really you're just another idiot.
Stand out of the crowd by what you do, not what you look like. Anything else is just juvenile.
Some IT jobs require body modifications like FireWire ports in the base of the skull.
For me, if you want to hold a professional job, you need to look professional. That means not covered in tattoos, have 14 different body piercing through various body parts, etc. If you are insistent that you HAVE to have such body decorations, either cover them up with clothes (tattoos), or remove them (piercing). Ladies can have a pair, maybe two pairs of ear rings. Guys...unless you are gay, leave the ear rings at home. And if you have such desire to put those stupid rings in your ears that increase the size of your ear lobe, don't even bother to apply.
I think it still can. In things like development work and maybe the arts like graphical design, I think it's becoming almost expected. In general Corporate America, yes you see it more but I think you limit yourself with body pearcings and visible tattoos. That's not to say I don't like them, find them interesting and cool, all of that. I'm saying realistically speaking, they are a hinderance.
Generally speaking uglyness of any form is hinderence in society
I have both ears pierced as well as my industrial and labret and I've gone to my interviews this way. Haven't been turned down yet! *knocks on wood*
My secretary had a problem with my Prince Albert, I fired her.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
It always depends on the company. If its a big corporation that has an IT department as a small part of a bigger picture, then there is generally a stricter dress code. I now work at an insurance company that is business casual. My previous job was also at a conservative insurance company that is suit and tie dress code, which ultimately made me look for a new job.
...lots of metallic parts sticking out of you on a job that requires working near live electrical appliances of which some are equipped with high speed moving parts is a bad idea.
Not to mention turning yourself into two minute spot on That's Incredible by way of using your body as a canvas doesn't exactly scream "able to deal with standards and normality" which are good things to be able to convince interviewers of.
I don't even want to get into genital piercings and tattoos inside of lips.
Accepted in IT? More often adopted by geeks who are hoping to convince someone they're tough. I see very few genuine stereotypical tough body modders with any nerd cred. And a snake fighting an eagle taking up your whole chest is a lot more normal on a biker than let's say a penguin bending over and mooning Bill Gates on a support tech wearing coke bottle glasses, but either one doesn't exactly say "mentally stable and totally dependent" to me.
Grouse about superficial judgements all you like. The world doesn't work according to idealism.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Do whatever you will to or for your body, your appearance, but do so at your own risk. Since tattoos are essentially permanent, think about long term goals, ramifications, etc., and what some "permanent" might mean for those goals.
The OP talks about some places being "cool" with tattoos, piercings, etc. That may be true, but that is only a snapshot of today's standards. During the dotcom heyday, with IT "specialists" (most really weren't, n'est-ce pas?) the standard for acceptable appearance was "anything goes". We need you, and we still love you even though your hair is filthy and goes to your waist, and you have tattoos.
But, I worked for a large corporation for 21 years... when I started, the dress code was un-stated, but tacitly enforced... you had to wear dress pants (absolutely no jeans), dress shirt, and at least a sports coat (yes, the tie was optional). Over time, as IT became the place to work and demand for workers was high I saw this dress code disappear and the office soon looked like the stretch pants, khaki cutoff shorts, flip-flops and sandals capital of the United States!
Fast forward to the dotcom crash... new management, and new dress codes, this time actually formally enforced. Yeah, things change.
So, think about it... tattoos go a long way... and regardless of right or wrong, some people react negatively to them, and regardless of whether you like that or not, it's there! (I know of a very close friend who lost out to a med-school... she found out later it was influenced by her tattoos.) (Also, I think this has even passed muster in court of law -- I think Starbucks actually has a dress code and appearance code that was challenged by someone who had a pierced something, and Starbucks prevailed.)
For those who need further prodding and convincing, read John Malloy's Dress for Success. Whether personally you like or don't like people's reactions to how you look at least Malloy will give you some empirical perspective to work with...
from what i've seen, no matter what the policy in a workplace, it tends to be a little more lax in the server room/data center. i don't know if it's the understanding that we tend to work long/late hours and have to crawl under desks or whether they just think geeks can't dress nice. working in edu, it's even more lax. a lot of students thing i'm also a student.
Ear-rings, tattoos, nope, that wouldn't go down well. However, I don't think the boss would argue if you came in with a mechanical exoskeleton.
There's nothing wrong with looking like this guy or even this guy
Did you not get enough attention as a child so that you have to crave people staring at you by self-mutilating?
Boy, you're SOOOO orginal. Just like the other body-mod sheep.
Just like hip-hop wear, you project your IQ and decision making skills even before you open your mouth.
On the other hand, if you want a gig with one of the big banks, then you better be prepared to look like another corporate clone.
You can pretty much extrapolate linearly between those two. Just bear in mind that the jobs aren't distrinuted linearly along the curve.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
It just depends on the company. I've worked IT in a few places that had waaaay different dress codes. One of them didn't care--I walked around barefoot most of the day, and I could get away with it because I never interacted with customers face to face.
One of the other places, however, had people coming in all the time. Doctors and future resellers. Even though I rarely talked with these people, they did see me at my little cubicle, so I had to wear business casual.
If you're good at what you do and you live in a place that isn't utterly lame, it is still (and always will be) exceedingly easy to find exhorbitant salaries in gainful employment.
I make what even in New York City is considered a high salary, and I have tattoos that are impossible to cover.
That said, please don't move to New York City looking for jobs. We don't have any. Nothing to see here. Move along.
that "hinted" at people to make sure the tats were covered, and went so far as to talk (towards women) about not wearing shirts that might reveal hidden tats if they were "reaching up for things" or "bending down for things"....
I don't have tats...but this seemed really strange considering 98% of us never are in a position to where we interact with the outside world....(Since this was a memo to IT and from IT and not sales and marketing or anything).
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
I wear my giant moth suit to work everyday.
I just with people would stop referring to it as a giant bunny suit!
I didnt even know people stretched peircings like the guy in TFA. Ouch!
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
:)
I personally think that what you look / dress like can't possibly affect the way you work. Allowing people to dress more freely makes people feel less like robots.
Happy 2B Hardcore
Earings are fairly common on men now but those big fucking earings on that guy in the article are just stupid looking. I can't understand why he would want to wear the label of "fucking loser" on his head everywhere he goes. In society dressing like a freak puts you at a disatvantage to everyone else because you will be judged by your looks first. You are setting yourself up to be a loser.
And if they ask about the tattooed tears, tell them it was a teambuilding exercise after a troublesome Exchange rollout.
Decorate your mind, not your body.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Hey, it's helped me in the past!
One Friday, I had gotten my tongue pierced, by Monday, my tongue had swelled up so much, I could barely talk.
We were in a meeting that day, I received my assignments for the day with a slight mumble grumble - I guess my boss thought I was overtly stressed or just not happy with what I had to do.
He called me into the conference room and gave me a 150% raise, telling me how good he thought I was to the company and that he was so glad I was with them. I don't think he knew about the tongue ring for weeks...
The next month, I dyed my hair green...
Dada Mail - Program, Art Project or Absurdity?
Well, there was some talk a year or two ago about perhaps requiring that we keep our shoes on in the office.....but most of us thought that was pretty draconian. Definitely no issues with hair/piercing/etc.
It was generally agreed upon that I shouldn't wear the "I read your email" shirt to work, but that's the only restriction I know about.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
I can't believe the number of posts on this site talking about how "unprofessional" even an earring on a male looks. Are we really still that wrapped up in gender identity that even a gold stud on a guy is a threat?
The arguement could be made that clients or managers could have the sort of archaic, narrow-minded ideas which would necessitate very conservative attire at the workplace; however, I don't expect so much of that attitude itself on a site where the majority of the posters are geeks. I thought we were a more open-minded lot than that.
This is the same attitude which used to force men to wear ties and women to wear dresses. It's the same attitude which made people be angry with the "long" bowl-cuts the Beatles sported when they came to the USA.
I'm not saying the attitude doesn't exist, or that you can currently do what you want and get away with it. All I'm saying is that there's no reason smart people like all of us should help it persist.
Just then the floating disembodied head of Colonel Sanders started yelling Everything You Know Is Wrong!-Weird Al
I remember many years ago on Cnet TV a fellow there had blue hair or was it green? Maybe movies like Hackers gave the impression that young counter culture types are the way to go.
Does "body modification" include taking a shower? Because some of the people I've worked with could really stand to have some serious work done.
.com may be dead. IT people walking into a building and writing their own ticket may be too. But if you stand out in ability (not all them pretty letters on paper) and you have the skill set an employer wants they will overlook most appearance items. If your just average IT dude with a devry degree, then no you will no be accepted with the 32 bit color image tattoed over your adams apple.
Sick of stupidity? http://www.patentlystupid.com
Dress code at a company I worked at was "business casual", with no reference to ink at all.
Then one day one of our desk-side techs (who really was a nice guy, by the way), got a complaint reported by a user. It was a little old lady who litterally was scared of the tech because of the ink on his arms. (a guitar, if memory serves) Instantly a new dress code went into place stating no visible tatoos. He was banished to long sleeves for the rest of his time at the company.
The moral: In a consulting company it ain't the boss who sets dress code. The client does.
-MrLogic
I think if they stopped hiring these fat slobs that would help people clean up their acts.
I cannot believe this was even posted here. In a world, where it's cheaper to send your job to India, you want to mess with standing out like a teenager.
There are very few IT jobs that cannot be replaced abroad.
Don't mess around with this.
Ladies can have a pair, maybe two pairs of ear rings. Guys...unless you are gay, leave the ear rings at home.
Discrimination based on sex and sexual orientation.
You can't take the sky from me...
A lot of companies put a lot of stock in image, I can certainly understand this (especially in certain industries, for example, the defense industry)
These sorts of things should definately be taken on a 'as it becomes a problem' basis. Tattoos, not a big deal, ear rings, not a big deal...
There is just an unprofessional feel (IMHO) than other piercings (tongue, nose, eyebrow, the visible ones, whatever is hidden is YOUR business)... in my opinion... it may fit some industries or companies just fine, but in others it will not be taken well.
I, personally, enjoyed dressing up even when I didn't have to. It helped me to feel professional and psychologically helped me perform better, I think.
Once again, just my point of view.
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
Yeah, I've run into the curse of the dress code. Even working in a small office environment with no face-to-face contact with the general public, I was forced to shoehorn myself into suit trousers and a formal shirt.
To all of the idiots pointing out the necessity of appearing 'professional'; these garments are simply cloth wrappings on an ape. Suits are an invention of the last 150 years -- before that, European male fashion was far more interesting, allowing much greater room for self-expression and individuality. The perception that everyone has to dress identically to succeed is a relatively new development, and one that in all probability won't last. In short, I have no desire to pander to the predjudices and expectations of the ignorant in my private or working life, which is why I now pursue those avenues of employment and study that enforce no such strictures.
NB: I'm still employed.
I have found that dress code/body mod. policies are more related to each Industry/Company than to IT professionals. Financial Intitutions and big Consulting Firms are typical examples of industries that still demand stringent dress codes. Even within a particular industry, different companies will have different policies. In most cases, it is not exclusive to IT professional but applies to all departments.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
A wise person once told me that the difference between a good choice and a bad choice is that a good choice gives you more choices.
Considering how many types of (strech) pierchings and tatoos are difficult to reverse, why would someone want to get one? What kind of long term plan/goal does it promote?
I don't know any nerdy people who would want tattoos. Aren't we supposed to be the ones who don't care about body image and/or attention getting?
oh well.
If you don't want someone to copy something, don't give it to anyone.
on my scrotum and nipples have never been an issue.
Get paid to read spam
If you have heavy body modification, you're saying to anyone else that you don't care about yourself, and you certainly won't care about your work. Hiring circus freaks outside of the circus just isn't done.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
As a network security consultant, I'm frequently onsite at large institutions, including telcos, financial organisations, govermental, etc...
/ever/ wear a tie, though I do where dress pants and a "formal" shirt - my formal shirts are never plain white, blue, etc... I wear designer clothes that express myself, but also look good..
But I've ever had any trouble with my tongue ring, and two ear pirecings.. And ner do I
In my country (New Zealand) it doesn't really matter what you're wearing, so long as you look well-dressed and look like you know what you're doing..
Some applies from my experience in Australia, but I can't comment for any other countries..
I work at a government contractor, and I know a bunch of the guys have tats. I had a pierced lip, but I let it close up when I got the job to look professional.
It might be tolerated, but it doesn't mean you should still do it. People might not care, but I'd imagine if you're going to meet with someone important that your boss would rather you not have a ring sticking out of your lip.
The greatest experience we can have is the mysterious.
- Albert Einstein
Just observe any film of late 60's NASA engineers and you have all the style tips you need for success. Buzz cut, white shirt, pocket protector.
Learn it. Know it. Live it.
I've seen some people in weird clothing, with piercings and blue hair and stuff. For as long as you do a good job, no one cares or even notices.
:0)
There still is some rudimentary dress code, though. You can't come to work wearing nothing but underwear for example. There's a legend, and I don't know if it's true or not, that once upon a time there was a guy at MSFT who was too cheap to rent an appartment. So he lived in his office. One Sunday someone caught him in his underwear watching TV in a conference room. The guy got fired. So there you go. Start the party, bash Microsoft for its oppression of nudity in the workplace.
it shocks me how narrow minded people can be. you really think the way someone dresses displays a sense of professionalism and trust? i know a lot of men in suits that'll steal your wife, your job, and your good name before you can say armani.
it's just sad that America is still stuck in that dreadful time where men can only be taken seriously in suits or khakis and women only in dreses or skirts.
oh and you - idiot with the "unless you're gay" line. grow the fuck up. if you still think that only gay men wear earrings you might want to crawl out of your basement, stop coding for a second, and realize that everyone is different and that, my dear friend, makes the world interesting.
so unless you guys and gals want to live in a world where everyone is identical i'd suggest you broaden your horizons and accept people who look, dress, and act a little differently than you.
just because a guy has tipped hair, a tatoo or two, and a piercing doesn't mean he isn't professional - it just means he might, just might, have a personality.
nature loves variety::society hates it get your variety at http://www.monkeypantz.net
A new colleague of mine was offered the job only on the condition that he remove his lip piercing.
To be fair, in general as managed service providers we *are* a service industry, one which costs a lot of money.
It's not unreasonable for us to be asked to be smart and presentable. If your lawyer had piercings, how would you feel?
I changed sex and no one noticed
There are always exceptions, sure some people hold jobs with tattoos, piercings, brandings or whatever. But frankly if you want to be employable the best thing to do is to look as normal as possible. Call me a sell out or say I am wrong, but if you go into an interview looking weird it is a mark against you. Humans are a very visual species and anything that looks different is perceived as different.
As for my experiance, I have worked at companies that required suit and tie (they changed this requirement about 6 years ago) to places that I could go to work in shorts and flip-flops. Reguardless of this when I interview I shave my beard, style my hair and put on a suit and tie. It ALWAYS pays to look good and make a good first impression.
If your opinion is desired, you will be sent a memo from management via flying monkey courier. Until then, STFU and keep your pie-in-the-sky fantasies to yourself. And put a tie on, FFS.
Here's my arm with a twiddler.o nehandedkb.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y295/intelno001/
I'm impressed by the number of posts from people on here decrying tattoos and piercings as some sort of legitimate metric for competency. I'm a Sr. unix admin team lead who has worked at NASA and some pretty amazing institutions with some famous collegues, and I've noticed that the opposite effect is true: the only people who will really judge me for having ink are the incompetent blahbedy-blah managers. Thats the way its always been in my 10 years of experience as a computer scientist.
I keep reading posts frm people who simply say "you need to look professional" but theres no real reason why you have to look like whatever "professional" means at the moment. You just "have" to. I'm guessing you are the people that grab onto corporate jargon that the VP spews out like a starving coyote and can't wait to deliver the news of someone else's project being completed as your own.
My experience has been that when some a@@hat comes in wearing a suit and tie I already know that he's gonna spout about 'synergy' and 'mindshare' and give the blank stare when asked about 'binary trees' and 'cfengine'.
I love my tattoos because they really filter out the brown-nosing corporate whore talk-a-thons like you people.
I've known people who work for MS who were pierced from head to toe and I've always thought that to be unprofessional, distracting and quite honestly a bit repulsive. Clean yourself up and show up to work looking like a decent human being people.
In some cultures of human beings, it's considered indecent if one is not pierced.
is going to tell you that you you didn't get the job because of mods or tats...they just say they found someone more qualified.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
What do you do for a living?
If you want to be taken seriously and treated professionally where you work, unless it's a small company run by other geeks, you need to dress and look clean and professional. It's still a fact that people judge you based on how you look, and if you're in an office environment surrounded by people in slacks and shirts and other professional attire, you'll look very out of place with a bunch of piercings or tatoos. What it says to coworkers is that you don't care enough about the job to even APPEAR professional.
Now, I know some people here are going "Oh for the love of God! What century are we in that we still have to conform to such out-dated societal norms!? We must break free... blah blah blah" To those people I say "Grow up!" Your days as a rebellious member of some imagined counter-culture pretty much end when you're out on your own making your way in the world.
Yes, there are places still where there is no dress code... but they're the exception as opposed to the rule. If you want a professional job, you have to play by the professional rules set out by employers. Body mods, strange haircuts/colors etc. are a risk you may choose to take, but like all risks you have to realize there are consequences. You can't just run around and do whatever you want and expect everyone to be cool with it. When you work for someone else, you play by their rules.
Don't like it? Then I offer a modified stock Slashdot response for anyone who ever complains about a piece of software:
"If you don't like it, start your own company and set the rules how you like them! Otherwise, sit down"
Sure, if someone has every skill you need, lots of experience in the real world, can communicate clearly and professionally... that's a great start. But let's not pretend that the huge tatoos and copious, highly visible piercings are just a simple "style." They are very potent messages, which don't jive too well with the other messages we're talking about, here.
For example (if we translate all of the messages involved into the spoken word): "Hi, I'm a talented, certified Cisco jockey - just what you need. You can trust me with your crucial data, and trust that I will protect you from Starbucks-fueled anarchist semi-punks trying to break through your firewall to deface The Man's web site. Also, whenever I'm in a meeting with management, you'll see that I specifically (and permanently) have chosen to slightly shock and unsettle the average person, and send a not-very-subtle disturbing message of dark counter-culture and pseudo-tribal pop cultism that will completely go against the grain of your company's typical customers, vendors, employees, and management. But despite my doing everything I can to make you stare at me, I insist that you do not, and only consider me just another applicant. All of this stuff I've done to myself means nothing in the context of what I do at work, because who I really am doesn't matter at work, even though I want the salary of a dedicated IT professional for whom the career actually is important. So, let's talk money! And, are you staring at my eyebrow piercings, my mohawk, or my reptile-eye contact lenses? I can't see very well with them in, and I want to be sure that I'm coming across well in this interview."
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Before you read a book entitled "Dress For Success", ask yourself if anyone, besides yourself, is in a position to define your "success".
Ask yourself if burying your true nature, your dress, tattoos, piercings, manner of speaking, hugging, dancing, etc. for most of your waking hours, for many decades, in the name of one very narrow notion of "success" is an acceptable compromise or not.
Before you roll down your shirtsleeves for someone else, before you put a bandaid over your eyebrow piercing, before you shave your dreads, and before you change your clothes, ask yourself if how true those features are to you.
It's a sign of maturity. Barring religious reasons, one should not wear any form of *visible* modifications outside of those that are generally acceptable (e.g. lobe piercings in women). Anything else shows you're immature and trying to be "different" when really you're just another idiot.
Stand out of the crowd by what you do, not what you look like. Anything else is just juvenile.
Well said!
One thing I've noticed -- and it's not just that I'm getting older -- is that young adults are a lot less mature than 20 years ago. In many ways they're more sophisticated, have more general knowledge, and may even be smarter, but what they are not is "adult." College age people are much more like teenagers now than young adults. Professors I talk to bitch about this a lot, having witnessed the decline.
Where am I going with this? These days adolescence seems to last until about 35, with all the juvenile behavior that goes with it.
It depends on your job. If you want to be stuck in a back room answering telephones for a living, go ahead and get some highly visible body mods. If you want to work with the straight-laced business world, keep it private.
I manage a group of IT professionals, and every one of them has tats and piercings. But it is all done in a way to keep it out of sight during work. Even the large ear piercings are covered with plugs (or whatever the body-mod crowd cares to call them) while at work.
At Happy Hour, the sleeves and pants get short and the fishing lures go in the ears. Nice work, but NOT something that should be shared with professionals and client reps.
But I NEVER would have considered them if they had interviewed with facial mods. I simply could not allow that kind of presentation to clients.
Oh, and my ear piercing scars were removed when I had those "moles" removed by the doctor.
The strangely fitting thing about piercing is that anyone willing to have metal pierced through their flesh in the name of fashion...
Deserives to have pieces of metal driven through their flesh for being such a fool.
Hey, sometimes the world can be strangely just.
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
Show 'em who's the boss with saran wrap... only saran wrap...
"I'm a philosophy major. That means I can think deep thoughts about being unemployed." -- Bruce Lee
The worst part is that the article submitter seems to frame the question as if he is part of some great repressed minority fighting to gain the right to look like an idiot.
Really, who isn't part of repressed minority now-a-days?
Ever since the 60s, if you can claim to be part of some repressed minority, you get to claim the moral highground in any argument and the facts of the argument are no longer relevant to you. Anyone how disagrees with you (no matter how ridiculous and asinine your position is) is The Man, trying to keep you down.
We live in a time where rudeness is rewarded.
I'm applying for jobs in the Banff (Canada) area now in non customer-face I.T positions that require no visible tatts, no piercings and hair no longer than collar-length.
Yes, it's still a problem. Blame Canada.
One body modification that can occasionally prevent me from getting a job is being "too old". Of course, no company will deliberately admit that they are discrimating on the basis of age. It's sometimes obvious that they want a person of my experience but only want to pay or demand schedules that only a 20-year-old can find acceptable. Being a 20-year-old is almost like 20 years ago for me.
I thought the 90s were over? Stop wearing flannel tshirts, dying your super-short hair blonde, no more Jennifer hair-dos and stop playing the Spice Girls CD already.
Really, it depends on the company, and what they are trying to do, and where the new employee will fit. Think about it. If you are a well established company, hiring someone for a non-super-specialized task, and have your pick of dozens of potential employees, are you going to go for the guy that obviously wants to make sure he sticks out? No, they want someone that conforms, because they need YOU to conform, and to do the job they set forth. However, as you get out into the cutting edge, you get folks that are more interested in people that look at the world a little differently. They want someone to see a new way of doing things, that will hopefully be better. They need vision, not blinders. Since not all IT jobs are alike, expecting the same dresscode concerns from two different mindsets doesn't work. Had my left ear pierced since 1985, days before my 19th bday. Haven't taken it out for anything, other than when I was a volunteer FF, and OSHA heavily frowns on them, and doesn't allow hoop type at all. (It also frowns on rings of any type on the fingers, including wedding/engagement.) It wasn't worth the arguing, or even being prevented from getting on an aparatus, simply to make a statement.
Oh yeah, I'm hindered all the time by my modifications.
A while back I realized I couldn't compete with a lot of the other job applicants, so I decided to up my FSB a little and increase my Volt Core. Then I just smeared some Artic Silver on my head, put on a heatsink, and started working harder and faster than everyone else!
My boss said that although the mod was effective, I just didn't fit in anymore. So now I run cables for LAN parties, and fit right in.
When I see lots of "look at me" tattoos, I think "impulsive 20-something", not necessarily someone I want watching my servers for me.
If you want me to respect your point of view, respect my point of view.
Unless you are looking for a career as a carnival worker, adult bookstore manager, sideshow freak, aura reader, or clown. If IT is your thing, then you had better be very, very funny.
Ask me about my vow of silence!
First I was going to write a reply about how it's irrelevant because The People already associate piercings and tattoos with Great Evil, but then I realized, perhaps the reason they wear these things is because they want to hang out with people open-minded about appearance? I have a no-cubicle rule. Regardless of benefits, hours, payment etc I will NOT take a job if I have to work in a cubicle. Perhaps it's the same thing with piercings, but for them acceptance is more important than environment. I don't mind that.
I have an appearance issue that I'm sure makes me less employable: I walk funny. Not a big deal, just a minor neurological problem. I'm sure people look at me and ask themselves "Is that guy on drugs or what?" I've thought of carrying a cane, even though I don't even know how to use one, just to emphasize that it's a minor medical disability, not an effect of a debauched lifestyle. But I'm sure it'd come off as a pose. So I just live with it. Life is often unfair, and it's not productive to get self-righteous about it.
I have actually had one I.T based job where my lip piercing benefited me. I was told a few months into my job that they were afraid to 'not' give me the job because I could use the lip piercing as grounds for discrimination.
I have since had a few extra piercings which come and go and a tattoo on my arm. Thankfully I have always been employed because of my skills, not because of an outer appearance.
Here's the deal. I run *lots* of big IT projects all over the country. I or my team hire somewhere around 75-100 people every single month. We have a very capable HR / recruiting department that scrubs candidates for technical skills, availability, etc - and then I or one of my team need to sit down with them and see if they are the kind of person we think we can work with to get the work done. If I had the time I'd like to get to know everyone of these people. Many of them are very interesting, some are quirky and a few are just deadly boring. But the deal is pretty simple - I just don't have the time. If you're at either end of the bell curve (green hair and tongue piercings or so deadly boring I want to cry) - you're out. That's it. I just don't have the time. Look reasonably normal. Get in the door and show that you can add value. When you're here and proving yourself we DO have the time to get to know you better and believe me - the toleration for eccentricity goes way up when you're a proven performer. But if your MO is "Prove you accept me before you hire me" then go someplace that's afraid to tell you yo get lost. A state agency, a big insurance company's infrastructure group - someone that's more worried about offending an applicant than they are about getting the job done. Employers have the money. You have the skills. That's the transaction.
I'm just about completely out of the public eye. The most contact I have with the public is talking to 2-3 people a week on the phone. The rest of the time I just support fellow employees, net/sysadmin, hardware/software tech, lay cable, wire jacks...and I still have to dress "professionally". I was actually told to remove one of my earrings. While they allow up to three earrings in each ear, evidently 4 in one and 2 in the other didn't balance out like I thought it should. As soon as I find another job, I'm going in there with blue hair. :)
I got a job in 2002 with a double mohawk (one green and one red) and my nose was pierced
I really didnt need the job, I was already working at a different place, and was just looking for advancement
back in the day we didnt have no old school
I'm quite liberal [1] on most issues, including what I regard as trival things such as hair style, color and dress code, and I wouldn't want to work at a company that got uptight about engineers/developers/sysadmins wearing trainers or comfortable casual footware to the office, or that similarly imposed a needlessly strict dress code.
However, on the subject of tatoo's and piercings I find I'm quite conservative. If I'm being honest I'd find it hard not to feel suspicous of the judgement of anyone in the field who thought it would a good idea to place bits of metal through their face (other than perhaps for non medial purposes), especially if they are over the age of about 25.
I honestly would not feel comfortable with someone who thought it was a smart decision to do this to himself helping design software or network infrastucture and I wouldn't want him in the team I was in. Based on the avalible evidence, I would not trust his capacity for rational judgement (an absolute core requirement for sort of work I do).
With regard to tattoo's I'm of a similar opinion. Having the name of your wife/kids/football team (or something of similar significance) tattooed on your arm, I'd consider quite reasonable and not count that as a sign of poor judgement. The same would be true for things are 'tastefully' decorative (while realisting that term is subjective, I would include things such as celtic crosses, marui tattoo's [2]).
However, this would not be the case for anyone who I observed who had something overtly tasteless like 'Love/Hate' tatoos across their knuckles, or large tatoos of cartoon characters, like Daffy Duck or Tom & Jerry (also equally negative indicators when worn on ties IMO - with some exceptions).[3]
I'd try not to let someone having facial percings or tasteless tattoo's on it's own as something that stand in the way of someone being hired in a job interview, but I conceed that it could count against them in a tie breaker situation. If there was a position for someone in an overly creative area (such as graphic design, or perhaps marketing) I don't think I would consider percings or tattoo's necessarily negative indicators at all.
[1] NB: With a small 'l'.
[2] Not an exhaustive list
[3] I have a deadbeat realtive who incidentally has all of these, and then some.
If you're good enough, you set your own rules.
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
The WASPS have the gold. If you want them to give you some of it, you have to play thier game by their rules.
Does it suck? Yes. Is it fair or right? No. But life comes with no guarantees that it will be fair, right, or not suck.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
For me, if you want to hold a professional job, you need to look professional
Mom? Is that you?! Seriously, open your mind to the possibility that professionals are defined by their skillset and their performance, not their manner of dress.
Any applicant who is able to hit the mark in 1) training and 2) experience and 3) top it off with some authentic personal expression (i.e. acting like a human being instead of a soldier) will get the thumbs up from me. 1) and 2) alone are just fine, but 3) means I'm more likely to hire you, because if I'm spending most of my waking hours with my employees, I'm going to make sure they're interesting people with something to share. Again, assuming 1) and 2) are already in place.
I'm an engineer in my 20's. On a whim one weekend, my girlfriend and I used her hair dye to make my hair the same natural shade of red as hers. Not long after that, one of the senior engineers (a guy who was probably 50 or 55) introduced me to another guy and tried to set me up on a dinner date with him.
It would have been quite embarrassing even if I were gay, and I don't think the other guy was gay either.
It's hard to say which, but the older guy was either terribly clueless or a complete fucking asshole.
In any case, older people others who live sheltered, conservative lives often don't have a clue about things. People who are set in their ways like that can react with extreme hostility when they're confronted with ideas outside their narrow range of experience.
A more enlightened attitude is that it's your body and you should be able to modify it as you see fit. Just be aware that you can and will suffer consequences in the workplace for having a nonstandard appearance.
"The advanced societies of the future will be driven by competing systems of psychopathology." -JG Ballard
roughly from least permanent to most...
High heels (changes shape of leg whilst worn)
Lipstick (and other makeup)
Shaving facial hair
Shaving head hair
Waxing legs / upper lip
Cutting fingernails
Pierced ears
Pierced nose, lip, tongue
Breast enhancement (and other cosmetic surgery)
Tattoo
it's all a matter of where you draw the line.
I've always had very oily hair, and used to have it long (mid way down my back). When I got sick of that and was starting to get a bit thin on to, I went with a number 1 clipper cut. Work never had a problem with either, as long as I wore a shirt and tie (tie is optional these days)
My wife doesn't even have pierced ears, which I find really sexy. When she's naked, she's really naked (except for the wedding ring these days).
Soviet Russia ...
There's a point at which you just have to shrug your shoulders and say tough shit. Yes, personal responsibility hurts sometimes. That's part of being an adult.
Besides, Hot Topic and Burger King are usually hiring, and they generally don't care about tats and whatnot. If you are in the above situation, be thankful that your moment of stupidity didn't result in death(yours or others), suck it up and move on. Don't expect the world(especially employers) to cut you slack for a boneheaded move you made while drunk.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
It's as if God gave you one CD-R for the rest of your life and you choose to burn Windows 3.1 on it.
I admit it -- I cut my hair before my last interview. I had long hair for 14 years, and cut it short the day before the interview. I took out my one piercing (ear), and my hair was my natural color.
I was used to wearing a shirt and tie from my previous job, where they kept changing the dress code on me to make more and more strict (usually, right after I did something that was technically within the dress code, but they didn't have rules against).
Anyway, on my 5th day, the executive assistant for the department came up to me and said, 'if you wear a tie again next week, I'll string you up by it'. Now, mind you, she was my mom's age, and a half foot shorter than me, but I haven't done it since... I even wore in some shirts that I got specifically to annoy my old work, and some people commented positively on them.
I've since grown my hair back out, put back in my earring, and think it's great to work in a place where people care more about the work that you do, rather than your appearance.
But I'd say downplay these things in an interview -- yes, it might show that you're willing to think outside the box, rather than be constrained by normal boundries, but it might also peg you as someone who's trying to rebel against the rules and isn't a team player.
Of course, there's also the question -- would you want to work in the kind of place where you don't get to express who you are? If you don't think you can do it, then make sure they know what they're getting into. (maybe not in the interview -- wait for them to offer you the job, and then inform them)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I mean when I got interviewed for my current job, it was quite clear that a wide range of dress was acceptable. One of the panel was in a suit and tie, one of them was in a t-shirt and shorts with orange hair. Clearly how one dressed wasn't a big deal. However when I worked at a travel agency, delivering tickets, I was expected to look professional. Not suit-and-tie professional, but nice shirt and pants professional, and I was told as much.
You just need to find out what standards are acceptable for that work environment, and then decide if that's where you want to work.
Call me crazy, but I feel a far more comfortable dealing with people dressed as they want to be dressed, with whatever visible body modifications they have. In fact, I feel far more comfortable dealing with people who have piercings and/or visible tattoos, despite having none myself. Why? Because far more often than not, that type of work environment makes the employees comfortable and happy with their job, which is the best way to ensure they do their job well. Most of the employees at the best pizza place in this county (actually rated best by the newspapers, not just IMO) have tattoos, piercings, and non-standard haircuts, and they do their jobs well.
When I worked in customer service myself, I got very relieved whenever I got to deal with people who were visibly off-beat, because contrary to popular belief, they tend to be nice people. They go by their own standards instead of forcing themselves to conform to someone else's standards, which means less stress for them, and get this: most people would rather deal with someone who's actually friendly than someone being forced to fake it. Less stress = more relaxed = generally easier to deal with.
I'm also rather saddened that some would call body modification immature. Though I'm sure some immature people modify themselves, it is by no means an indicator; as implied above, I've found a greater degree of maturity in those who are into it than those against it. It's not usually whoring for attention any more than wearing a shirt because you find it aesthetic. It is an aspect of individuality, and individuality is what drives humanity, like it or not. Entrepeneurs and inventors aren't conformists, and I don't think anyone else needs to be either. We're humans, not robots. Frankly, I'd rather my potential jobs be replaced by machines than have to make myself as machinelike as possible to obtain and keep those jobs.
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
I prefer to think of it as body modifications providing important hiring visual queues for IT managers.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
We tried working with body modifiers. An employee suggested to me that we try some modifications on ourselves as an evaluation. I was skeptical at first but he explained the benefits of doing it for our employee's day-to-day office work. So I decided to let him modify 5 employees to see how the rest of the office got on. Besides, our IT manager had been modifying his body and it seemed to work fine, why not try it on the employees that work with our clients? Once he'd tattooed and pierced the core group we decided let the rest of the office try it out. It all seemed fine to start with: simple tattoos and piercing and the employees could still do their work as normal. Alas it did not stay that way. After a few days, I had lost count of the number of sick days from employees who got infections to or whose modifications interfered with performing tasks they previously could with their as-shipped bodies. The final straw came when one employee lost several hours work when his tongue piercing got stuck in the keyboard and shorted it out, but not before it erased his entire hard drive and infected our network with some weird virus. Needless to say, the store that sold the tongue ring offered no support whatsoever. I made the employees get rid of all their mods and let's just say he's not with us anymore.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Well, I've always assumed that silicon valley in the Bay Area (SF) was more liberal than many other places, especially after having worked at several startups as well as fortune 100 companies (pre .com). But recently I just dropped into another startup and submitted several jobs to Craigs list... I was suprised (maybe not too much) to get literally hundreds of responses for the few jobs I posted in less than 48 hours. My comments here? I initially threw out resumes that I either couldn't read or that had too much in them that my eyes watered after 30 seconds. Once past that I managed to get down to 5-8 people per position to interview.
After thinking of the company I'm with, the investors we have (half from Asia) and what its going to take to get to the next stage, I started mentally sorting the candidates based on experiance as well as appearance and personality.
Sad as it may seem, I really did start worrying about the few people that really stood out. They were just as smart as a couple others (I did get down to a few comparisons) but in most cases lost out slightly due to unprofessional appearance (showing up to an interview in either a TShirt or a shirt with lots of YELLING on it isn't a good start).
What suprised me is that I started leaning to some of the people who were (I think) in their 50's because they came across not only more professional, but seems to really be interested in doing the work.
Just to settle my mind on the "younger/faster" opinion, I gave everyone the same "test" coming in to the office (everyone was told that they get 60 minutes for a 5 question test) just to see how everyone stacked up. I'm typically more interested in people that "think" through a problem than who show how much of a manual they memorized. Everyone had Firefox and google available just like real life...
So everyone was just about equal... with a few who were totally in the buzzword resume but failed in real life.
So what ended up happening? Still went for the more professional people. Easier to explain or introduce to Japanese or Korean investors people that done offend :-)
Sorry! Its the desire to succeed that made me do it...
I don't know, why don't you ask him? http://imat.com/richard/index.html
:)
Seems preety un-worried to me
That's why I'm trying to immerse myself as little as possible for the shortest amount of time I can, and then leave it forever.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
You're right that claiming that you belong to a repressed is a common tactic, no matter how absurd an idea it is that your group is repressed. I'm still wondering about how the 4/5 of Americans who are Christians became an oppressed minority, especially in an age when you have to be Christian to have a chance at most high political offices and increasingly to be a high level civil servant or military officer.
Yes, it would certainly discourge me from hiring someone if THE LOOK LIKE A FREAK! Sorry if I don't want to stare at the chunk of metal hanging out of our face; niether does any client or user.
Tattooes are a little less offensive, although most look like something a sociopath would draw on the walls of his cell.
Using "Common Sense" is being either to arrogant or to ignorant to ask people who know more about something than you.
I have 6 of them covering my arms completely. Including a spider-web on my elbow. I take personal issue with being told I have to wear long sleeves, and routinely refuse to unless asked to wear long sleeves. I've also found that pointing out that you notice they're looking at them by saying something like 'It's a spider-web. Let it go' helps to break the ice immediately.
It's all a moot point when you can't get a job. My current career options after 10 years in Corporate IT are getting a better valet job, or trying to get a job as a waiter.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kerry.
It doesn't even really matter whether they try to be objective and try to make allowances for personal taste. The effect is still there.
If you think it shouldn't matter, I'll agree with you. Just keep one thing in mind: the law says that you can't base employment, promotion, etc. decisions on color or gender. The statistics say it matters.
Which way do you want to bet?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I was wondering if anyone else works in an environment with what I'd call a "two-tier" dress code... My employer, a major medical software company, doesn't have any sort of dress/appearance code for the usual around-the-office environment. NO rules whatsoever, except for "If there are visitors, wear clothes." (I'm serious, that's the only rule in the employee handbook). I also see quite a sizable number of people with piercings or crazy looking hair around the company... its not very common, but it is tolerated.
The only time a dress code comes into play is when dealing with customers in a training or on-site environment. In those situations were are to dress according to the on-site dress code of our customer, remove any visible piercings if possible, cover up tatoos, etc., just basically look as professional as possible, but the trend seems to be that even our customers' IS/IT departments go by pretty lax dress standards too... often we don't have to dress up beyond the lower end of the "business casual" spectrum (i.e. khakis or even decent looking jeans and a polo shirt).
Our CEO, who established this code way back in the early days of the company, bases it on the idea that people should work in whatever environment they find most comfortable. If sweltering in a suit-and-tie hinders your ability to code, what's the point of demanding that you dress that way?
mod parent up.
funny stuff
IT is filled with dorks who spent high school wishing for a school uniform. The appearance you describe would have most of us running to hide our lunch money.
What, you mean looking like an idiot isn't a great way to get a good paying job? Amazing the things you can learn on slashdot. The worst part is that the article submitter seems to frame the question as if he is part of some great repressed minority fighting to gain the right to look like an idiot.
Excuse me, but since when the Bible salesman look is a sign of maturity or wisdom?
Some people just don't like it. That's why dress codes have to be enforced genius. Because not everybody likes to wear the same stuff.
There's no merit whatsoever in dressing the way your daddy dressed when he was your age. And by the way, some of us think that judging people based solely on their appearence is the ultimate sign of idiocy.
That's weird, most secretaries really seem to dig my penis gourd...
As with many things in life, this is entirely subjective on the part of both you and the people you work for.
While it's true that most places want you to look professional while you are there, they couldn't give a crap what you look like while you are off. Of course, how you look at the office says a lot about your level of professionalism. By dressing in a business manner you're telling the people around you that you are a professional.
By wearing body piercings to work, or failing to cover prominent tatoos in some way, you are taking a risk that whoever you're working for might deem them "innappropriate". This is entirely subjective on their part. Some people might be okay with it, some may not.
While I don't believe that you need to live your entire life by the rules the people you work for set for you, you need to remember that people do indeed judge you by your appearance. If your appearance falls significantly outside of the "norm" then you'd better expect people who may not like that to judge you based on it.
Later, GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
He's an old hippie and he don't know what to do
Should he hang on to the old
Should he grab on to the new
He's an old hippie...his new life is just a bust
He ain't trying to change nobody
He's just trying real hard to adjust
You still have a boss, or if you prefer, a chain of command. While some tattoos will never be acceptable, e.g. those that may suggest racist affiliations, you must remember that those who outrank you can make or break your career, and can make your life miserable. Further, you may find a wall to a higher level security clearance, and to opportunities. I had a potentially identifying mark (not a tattoo) burned off, just in case. I can say from experience that almost any tattoo will create prejudice against the wearer, at least in the military.
KOA
Anchorage, Alaska Will Host National Policy Meeting on Technology
I read this discussion puzzled. what is this "arrested development" compared to what earlier generations thought appropriate for adulthood. Are these just normal differences in observations between generations, or are there real and big changes in development of youngsters nowdays? can anyone link to studies/articles on subject?
(mainly because I recognise myself as unmature adult, and I dont know how should I relate to it)
"I've found both stringent dress codes requiring business casual attire"
I wouldn't call business casual "stringent".
I am not an I.T. professional, so I maybe working under some false presumptions here, but I doubt it.
If your goal is to get a job in the I.T. field you will want to seriously weigh that against a desire to get tattoo's. If you have visible tattoos you are going to have to compete for the jobs that have decent bosses who are:
1. Willing to overlook your tattoo's.
2. Able to overlook your tattoo's because there is no offical or unoffical policy.
This is obviously a subset of the jobs that would be available to an untattooed person.
Secondly according to a Lawyer from Indiana's ACLU branch, discrimination because of tattoo's is completely legal. I found this out after losing my second job due to my facial tattoo. I felt I had a very good case, and kept records of what the Human resources department did to get rid of me. The lawyer that replyed, who I should add was decent enough to reply, stated that they felt there was no way they could win a case as tattoo's were not covered in discrimination statues.(The first job they just found an underhanded way to get me to want to leave.)
Thirdly you are wanting to work in a field where more than likely you will be working for lack of a better word coming to mind, suits. They have to meet many written and unwritten standards of appearance and are unlikely to be very appreciative of your inability to meet the standards they have to accept.
"Looking professional", seems to mean that you are able to fit into the cultural standards of the predominately white middle and upper class. Tattoo's definately detract from your ability to do that.
I weighed all these options before getting my tattoo's and decided to go ahead and do what I wanted. It's much more difficult to find jobs because of it, but I knew that going in. I've found Academia to be more accepting, and willing to consider qualifications versus stereotyping. It can still be difficult there also.
Top Story: Normal People Don't Like Freaks
I fear not the modders.
Small business, the type of business that supposedly makes the US operate, does not willingly accept freaks. They tolerate IT types (people with poor social skills, and perhaps less than ideal grooming habits), but they aren't going to willingly choose to employ people who look like freaks (to them).
It's JobHunting101: All else being equal, the applicant who makes the best impression gets the job. Now if the place you're applying to is full of people with "tats" and noserings, then you're set. But since that hasn't exactly caught on with normal people, your chances of appearing as though you would "fit in" are slim.
If you're a freak, hide it until you get the job (and ideally until you prove that you're invaluable).
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Okay. No more "mouse" - its a pointing device. No more "surfing the web". No more "just fucking google it".
No more "email" - its "electronic mail". No more "viruses", or "trojans" or "phishing scams". No more "patching". No more "RAM", that's just slang ... No more saying "burn a CD".
No more "logging in" - you're "accessing your system/session/terminal/whatever-the-fuck".
Following this particular piece of advice will get you labeled as a pedantic arsehole.I've got two well hidden tats and just a tiny little bit left of one that showed (yay alexandrite laser treatment!). Mostly no one cares, but once I had this job with this real asshat supervisor and it became an issue when it showed, so I had it whacked.
I'm too old for piercings so I'll leave those answers to you gen-Y guys
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
Or have your surgeon show up like that just before you are wheeled into surgery?
I have full sleeves, as well as tattoos on my legs, and i wear t-shirts and shorts all the time to my work... of course, I work for a start-up, so the owner doesn't give a flying fuck one way or the other as long as you get your shit done... but unfortunately a lot of IT places would rather you look good and be completely useless. It all depends on who is running the show dude.
This guy works as a computer programmer. I rest mycase.
you're an adult now
Yep, totally. And the funny thing about being an adult is being able to choose what you want to do, what to wear and where to work. You want a job at IBM? Then you'll have to adjust to the company's codes.
But it's also stupid to think you can't work in a professional environment unless you look a certain way. In fact it's bullshit. It all depends on what your professional company expects from you.
I wear steel tubes in my ears. I have a long goatee and sideburns. I wear tshirts and jeans. I don't have tattoos yet, but I won't be hindered by my job when it comes to deciding what and where they'll be.
Do you know why I can?
Because it's not what I am expected to be like. Because I don't interact with customers. I don't meet with partners. I'm not an executive and don't want to be. I write code. Basically the only time I'm called out of my office is for status meetings.
Most importantly though, I work for a very liberal tech company. Our execs don't judge you by what you look like or what you wear. I've had hallway chats with high-level VPs while wearing WTF? and "Every time you download music god kills a kitten" shirts and it just isn't an issue.
However, if for some reason I had to give a talk or teach a class to people outside out company, I'd of course choose appropriate attire and look professional, but professional doesn't have to mean being anal-retentive, wearing button-up shirts and kaki slacks.
BUT, if I worked for a company I really liked and they changed the dress code to be button ups and a tie, fine. It's my choice to either work there or find new work. I can adapt, I'm not physically attached to my clothing. The earrings would be a little weird because the holes are kind of large, but I'm sure I could find a solution if I had to.
But I don't.
R(k)
Well, for me it has not been a problem. I do network security R&D and I have lots (lots) of tattoos, some that can be seen when I wear t-shirts, which I often wear to work. I have 2 piercings in one ear and had my eyebrow pierced (it gave me headaches, so I took it out). I've had dyed hair. Now I have no hair on top of my head, and a ton of it growing out of my chin. I am also make around $70k, after just a few years at my job. Maybe I'm just lucky.
... don't answer that last one. I'm pretty sure tattoo ink does something to the brain. But that's irrelevent.
...
Look, any idiot can put on a suit and get a $20 haircut. That doesn't mean he or she in any way knows what they are doing. Any company that places more value on its employees' ability to play dress-up than it does on its employees' actual skills is going to have serious problems in the long run. Does wearing a tie make an employee more efficient? Does a pair of slacks make a developer write more code? Does tattoo ink somehow diminsh my abilities? OK
Anyway
To all the people who are arguing that dressing nicely is somehow a sign of maturity or respect, I have to know: is your life really so pathetic that the only way you can feel good about yourself is by putting on a suit and a tie? I simply do not understand this insane notion that just because you reach a certain age that you're supposed to act or look a certain way. And I really fail to see the link between the way I look and whether or not I have any respect for someone. If you worry that someone is dressing a certain way to disrespect you or that my tattoos or piercings have anything at all to do with you, then you think entirely too much of yourself. Here's a little secret: IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU. If people respect you, you'll know it through their actions, not through their socks. Get over yourself -- you'll live longer.
(Sorry about the rant at the end. Didn't want to do it. Felt it was necessary)
I have this advice.
1.) Please show up to every interview in jeans and tennis shoes.
2.) Ties are for squares, don't wear one.
3.) Make sure your hair is a "neon" color or at least one or more tones.
4.) Come to the interview hung over, or even better, drunk.
5.) Please ensure that you do something to show your independence in the interview (IE: Belch, break wind, use curse words, or make a durrogatory comment).
6.) When posed with a serious question, please reflect on any time you may have broken the law.
7.) Ensure that they KNOW who's boss by demanding a salary of 3 times the average for someone with your skills/experience.
8.) NEVER EVER shake their hands.
I emplore you all who are looking for a job to please do each one of the line items mentioned above...
Did I mention I'm looking for a job? (Just doing my part to better my odds ...)
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
See, there are a number of factors playing into this. One of the big ones these days is that most work is team oriented. Screaming tatts and piercings (and grungy clothing I should add) send a signal that you don't care what other people think. Which sends a signal that you don't have the maturity to (at least temporarily) set aside your personal interests and desires for the sake of getting along. Corps generally don't want black sheep; they want people who can work together and follow directions. Big corporations especially care a lot more about smoothly functioning teams making them money than they do about your individual expression.
To some extent it's bullshit, but remember, as a worker you're being paid to do what "they" (your boss, upper management, whatever) require of you. They aren't going to throw away money on someone who bucks authority and wont do their job because they feel their interests are more important. Sure, just because you have a tattoo or you pierced your nose or something it doesn't necessarily follow that you'll be trouble, but that's the message you send.
So as others have said, cover those tatts and take out those weird piercings when you go in for an interview. Ditto once your foot is in the door and you're dealing with people who don't know you (eg, upper management is visiting your facility and this is your chance for a promotion). Save the wild rebellion and screwing "the man" for when it's on your own dime.
The days when companies were scrambling to jump on this new fangled Intarweb thing and would hire virtually anyone are long gone. IT is corporate business as usual these days. Get used to it.
Been castrated, and soon will have the penis and empty sac taken out. But, otherwise, I'm quite conservaitve :) . Not tattoos, no piercings, reasonable "corporate" hair.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
'quite frankly.. body 'modifications' as the article refered to them, are looked at by many others as 'body mutilations'. While I am all for people having the freedom to do whatever they want, this actually means 'being able to do whatever they want so long as they dont infringe on the freedoms of everyone else'. Subjecting others to the display of such mutilation crosses the line. A similar example is if I started refusing to take a shower every day I went to work - my 'right to stink' is overridden by other's 'right to breath fresh air'. Besides if you really analyze it, puncturing your body is fundamentally disturbing - in fact I think that the people that do this, do it just to get this shock value' from this disturbance they give others. They're basically insecure and think it makes them 'cool' - when in fact they've just de-sensitized themselves so much they think they like it. Whatever. There's limits to what you can do in society and be treated respectfully. When you are enourmously fat, you smell bad, or you insist on puncturing your body with little hooks, you're going to get treated differently and that's just the way it is - the majority of people dont want to be subjected to that type of nonsense.
-- NeTMoNGeR
It's kind of sad to see that people can still be so prejudiced about this stuff. For visible mods, I have both arms tattooed up to my wrists, my neck tattooed, 3 facial piercings, stretched ear lobes and a split tongue. I work for a successful development firm in NY which values my skills as a developer over anything else, as it should be. I'm the only one there with any kind of visible body modifications. I don't make an issue about my appearance, I show up and do my job and I expect to be given the same respect as anyone else in my position.
I too am surprised at the overall lack of open-mindedness shown in this thread. Nobody is arguing that a banking job shouldn't require banking attire but many of us work out of visable sight of clients. Dying our hair, or having tasteful tats isn't corporate sin.. or shouldn't be.
I'm a field installer and a road warrior so visible tattoos and piercings are definitely a no-no. The same goes for offensive bumper stickers. Besides, a man is ultimately measured by his actions, not his looks.
You save someone's life and you're a hero. You get pierced from head to toe and you're pincushion.
And there you have it: unstable, unreliable, undedicated.
I.e. don't try to put needles into it, silly!
Now tell me where I found this.
Aw, who cares, read Microserfs by Douglas Coupland
I knew a waitress at a fancy restaurant and she told me if she was wearing a bikini and had her mouth open you could not see any of he piercings and she had 5 piercings. Really nice girl, you would never guess she had made these mods.
H.
Well, speaking as an IT guy, I don't see why IT should get any special exemption from any other field when it comes to this stuff. Dress codes may differ sure.. For example I'm not required to wear a suit and tie, because I may be up in a ceiling pulling network cable or such.. So for us, it's jeans and a company polo type shirt, where as the busines professionals that deal with clients have a higher standard of dress. Basically you as an individual are free to do whatever you want to your body.. That comes with the understanding that if you have your face tatoed and 30 studs in your head, places may not likely want to hire you. You need to weigh how important those things are to you vs what you want to achieve in life and whether or not those choices will hinder you in what you seek to do.
...but kids these days are getting more socially conservative, not less. I'd put your prediction right up there with the folks who said we'd have flying cars by 1980 and moon colonies by 2000.
My personal prediction is that the popularity of tatoos and non-ear piercings (and loud, ugly American motorcycles) will decrease steadily for the next 10-20 years as the kids growing up see just how stupid "the old folks" look with their saggy, faded tats and bodily fishing tackle and Harleys and on and on...
A lot of alternative fashions seem to be only fashions. A look without a concrete statement behind it.
Clothes reflect who a person is - the lives they lead.
If a person works in an office/I.T. job most of their waking hours, shops at super fresh, and goes home to the suburb/condo/townhouse they are not different...even if they have tats, piercings, dance at different clubs etc.
Maybe that is why some people feel oppressed by dress codes. They like to think of themselves as being different, but they know they aren't and taking away the fashion makes them face this.
Having said that, I do think some of the attitudes in this thread are overly hard assed and tight.
I say that and I wore real pants and real shirt even during the dot.com boom.
Okay, I wore ( and still wear ) tennis shoes with all of that, but I don't pretend that is about anything. Shoes just hurt my feet.
Whoa, the comments on this story are just amazingly stupid! I tought people grew up in the last few years but it seems everybody is now under some sort of global surveillance and will accept anything to get a few more points at job and here at slashdot. Holy crap people! What's the point in having someone dress the way you want if his or her job doesn't have anything to do with it? Hell, I understand someone dressing up for a meeting or someone dressing up for installing cables in a sewer. What's with the tatoos? Someone who obviously doesn't care about "having a professional look" will obviously don't care about participating in "professional" work where other people will care about it. Damn, I worked with people so ugly they almost made me vomit everytime I talked to them, but their work was flawless and I wouldn't have exchanged them for anyone else in the world! Oh and I also worked with people so nicely dressed but so useless I just can't believe they still have a job today! To all the people that say "grow up", I respond fuck you. Damn people, _You_ make me sick!
No... No more "Woot! I am leet haxor. I pwn noobs!"
I work with about 50 IS/IT people now and I don't think a single one of them have a tattoo that's normally visible. I'm not aware of anyone having piercings other than the women having the two "normal" ear studs. There's not a single person that dresses much different than "business casual". In fact, the one guy that tends to wear tshirts during the week is ridiculed behind his back, but that's more for his B.O. than the shirt style. Otherwise the most unprofessional is our middle-aged head marketing skank that wears way-too-short skirts.
Or do we all wish that we could get hired on our ability to do the job, instead of our personal appearance?
If someone's a jerk, don't hire them. If someone shows up to the interview half an hour late, don't hire them. But, for fuck's sake, "don't hire them because they have lots of tattoos and a nose ring" is just stupid. Especially considering how many of us tattooed freaks could probably school you on various interesting technical things.
For me it's been a minor issue. The interview was rough because I talked to the director of engineering, the VP, and the lead programmer, all who immediately focused on my lip ring. They were jokingly "offended" and admitted that it might take some getting used to, but were all ultimately fine with it.
I caught a lot of crap about it after getting highered, especially being an "artsy liberal 20-year-old whipper snappering" in a company of "conservative mid-thirties embedded engineers", but the ribbing was not much worse than the day I wore flip-flops to work.
As time has gone on, they've seen the work I've done, and the things I'm capable of and as such have expected me and appreciate the work I do for them.
I gotta say, I'm a big fan of the old cut'n'paste trolls, and this one in particular is nice. Quite literally, LOL. I'm tempted to throw a "my mac sux"-> my tats suck on to the fire, but I guess I'll leave it alone for now.
Well played, oh most cowardly of anonymouses. Definitely a funny c'n'p.
I see quite a few of the folks who enjoy telling other people how to look came out of the brush to yowl about how a professional should dress and appear.
While I agree that good hygiene is polite. What someone has tattooed or pierced is not my concern. I believe what you know and what kind of work ethic you possess are what is important. In my experience most intelligent problem solvers do not do a good job of conforming. (No matter how many tight ass IBM drone wannabe slashbots post about it.)
I have seen several instances when hiring the more attractive or non descript canidate hurt the project. You can't ditch good talent just because they want to wear flip flops.
Whether the dishelved appearance of someone who has trouble dressing himself but can write assembler hardware drivers for unfamiliar hardware in a few days or the pierced and tattooed appearance of network admins who is a routing god bothers you is irrelevant.
What does matter is can they do the job better than little johnny who likes looking just like everyone else.
For all the people who are so cleverly pointing out people with tattoos have a clique with other people who have tattoos (gee never heard that arm chair rationalization before) let me enlighten you.
You, me, everybody hangs out with people who share similar interests including tattoos. No one is making any of those people get tattoos to fit in. Just the opposite. Most people who would have gotten a tattoo before it became trendy are the most accepting and intelectually challenging people I have ever met.
Just like seeing someone with a laptop palm pilot and ipod might mean they are a fellow geek or at least a technophile. Tattoos broadcast something similar even if the message has been dilluted by people hopping on the bandwagon.
In other words if we as a technical culture a meritocracy if you will cannot disengage from the social norms long enough to look at our resources from a logical point of view then we are no better than the typical John Q. Public.
I for one like to think we are smarter than that.
Panel F, Relay #70
I am one of the juvenile IT people that has been referred to in many of these posts. I have several large tattoos on my arms and large guage piercings in my ears. After I graduated college I worked running clubs and tattoo and piercing studios for several years. Eventually I realized that I would prefer a career more likely to offer me the ability to retire with comfort as well as provide me with health insurance as I got older. I applied myself and worked my way into the IT field. I recognize the hindrance that my history may have on my ability to be accepted by those who have not had my experiences and accept that.
I fully agree that you need to attempt to fit into the industry where you work. You need to be aware of how people perceive you and their biases. It is mature to both understand who you are and how people see you and strike a balance between them. It is also mature to not make your outlook on the world simply rebellion and alienation. And, over all, it is important to be more than just reactionary. There are certain compromises that we all must make to fit in with where you want to be- its just part of life. So, when I began to read this thread, I agreed initially with what people were saying; it is my personal experience. But then it became clear that there are more than just opinions about professional attire being made. I am uncomfortable with agreeing with someone who feels that you should conform "unless you are gay" or of a different religious or cultural background. Believing that it is important to create a serious professional environment where performing to your fullest potential and not distracting or potentially offending (or being offended by) your coworkers is maturity. Objecting solely to personal expression or making lifestyle or cultural assumptions and judgments based upon appearance is not, seems sadly ignorant, and I cannot agree.
I wonder if anyone else has noticed this.
do as the Romans do.. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome#Symbols_and_tri via)
Be professional in everything you do.
I am versitile. I have done and do enjoy working blue collar labor and white collar IT..
Yeah, it sounds weird but it's true. I've gone to sea, done construction, done IT, you name it.
And I've got tats. Some visible, some not, at least with a shirt on.
I quit wearing the ear ring thing when I quit going to sea in the 80's.. I don't think they look right on males, now that I'm older and more mature. I haven't worn one in 20 years now and will never do so again. I don't like them now and wish I had never gotten one.
As for the tats, I have some that you can see when I wear short sleeves, and some that you can only see when I take my shirt off.
The normally visible ones, have never been any real hindrance to my job, other than when I was doing construction, little old ladies would be visibly nervous because of them, so I got to wearing long sleeves and everything was fine.
In IT, no one has ever been put off by them. If they look down on me, they have never indicated so.
Some of my other tats, would get me fired from *anywhere* for being "offensive" but those are always covered, no one ever sees them and they are not even at issue. Besides, I would never take my shirt off on ANY job, blue or white collar, tats or no tats.
I've had people work for me that were "sleeved" (arms fully covered to the wrists with tats) and I've asked them to wear long sleeve shirts to cover them so as to not frighten customers/clients. Not that I disliked their art work, it's that I understand SOME people are not comforatable around people with tats.
I would have more tats, I would sleeve out if I had the money to do so but alas, tattoo's are not cheap and I have better things to spend my hard earned money on, like food, gas, utils, etc...
Tats are a luxury and a treat that I indulge in when I feel the occasional urge.. I WILL always get more. But I know the limits.. I know people that have them on their faces. Uh, that's just not for me. And face tats, you better have a plan because almost no one will hire you then.
Face tats are TOO extreme for me..
Where ever you work, you have to be a team player. If you try to intentionally be the turd in the punch bowl, you'll be treated as such.
If you expect to be treated as a peer, ACT and LOOK like your peers. It's painful sometimes to suck it up and be "one of them" but it MAY advance your career..
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
I'm the boss that has to hired your ass, and I don't want to see your fucking ugly ass piecing and tattoos.
Seriously, you think it's cool now. Wait 10 years and you're just going to look like every stupid old person with tattoos. And that goes double for the girls. Nothing like a 45 year old with a tattoo, yum yum.
And then your grandkids can go, "Why does grandma have a scary red spot on her?" Then you can tell her how that dripping red splotch of ink on your skin used to be a beautiful rose or . And you think it's going to be so meaningful later. Trust me, after a while you're not even going to remember why you got it in the first place. So you'll just keep making new stories up to justify why it's there in the first place.
I don't care that you do it, but as your fucking boss, I really don't want to see it. It looks stupid and you're embarrassing my department, goddamit.
Coolness doesn't last forever shithead. Now go fix the fucking server before I get my ass handed to me by my fucking boss.
Seriously, things are starting to heat up out there. If you're not starving, concentrate on finding the right employer and congenial environment rather than trying to be something that you're not.
On the other hand, if you're hungry cover up and gradually bring your goodies to light. If there's a problem then move on.
Life's too damn short to not strut your stuff.
Personally, I find tats a bit intimidating but very intriguing at the same time. It seems that anyone willing to put something that permanent on their body has quite a set of stones, or isn't thinking about the long term. Still intriguing though.
because I want to look nice. However, i've known others in my field that dressed poorly and when people didn't like it weird things would happen to their computers all the little things those people could do online would for some reason stop working. Computers and networks would slow. Then people would stop worrying about what they dressed like.
Course I would simply find another job.
Affordable Business Web Hosting with a Personal touch.
Is this news for nerds? Is this stuff that matters?
It's been a long time.
Based on your profile information, it looks as if you may work for USC. If that's true, you NOT in the work world. In addition, your saying in one place for a long time has probably insulated you from competition. I wish I was in your place, however, you're advice is contrary to those who DO have to compete for jobs. No one that is interviewing or is disposable or involved in negotiations should follow your advice. Except for one part that I will rephrase: you should look the part. If you want to fit into, Oakley (for example), don't wear a suit. Look like the part of an boarder. If you want to get into Starch Insurance, wear the suit. The stupidity comes when pierced idiots demand to be accepted "for who they are" and their insistance that scarring and putting their holes in their body is "expression" and expect some sort of supreme court protection for their lunacy.
you can recolor dyed hair. you can take out metal. you can cover up ink.
i've been growing my hair out for five years. it's now to my waist. i keep it braided at all times and it never interferes with my work. but i can't do anything like the above to make it acceptable at the more conservative places save hack it off. and if i did that, i'd be thirty before it got this long again.
what really sucks about it is that, were i female, it wouldn't be given a second thought.
if the answer isn't violence, neither is your silence / freedom of expression doesn't make it alright
I'm sure there are probably other mistakes too (including at least one superflous apostrophe).
*sigh*
Free mars bar for the first person to spot 10+.
Well I have 2 tattoos, one on each wrist, and semi-long hair. It doesn't seem to make a shred of difference in my line of work, and I deal with new clients all the time. I think most people really respect what you do in IT and not so much how you look. I treat people with respect and I think I get it back most of the time, if not, I ALWAYS earn it when I walk out of that server room to tell everyone that the problem has been taken care of. If we start judging people because they have tattoos or piercings we might as well go back to judging them by the color of their skin. Just my opinion.
Do what I did and get a job at a company that isn't full of self-rightious douche-bags and quick-to-judge, living-with-their-parents virgins.
Apple Computer... they don't care what you look like
Then again, it could be because he's right. Socrates, was a canary in a coal mine. Those children, disprecting their elders, put him to death. Not long after, the greeks were defeated and ruled by the romans. Maybe it's a sign that the west is ready to be easily taken over.
They are very potent messages, which don't jive too well with the other messages we're talking about, here.
For example (if we translate all of the messages involved into the spoken word):
You mean if you translate these messages. Since I'm not aware of any 'personal appearance->english' dictionary, your translation is a subjective fabrication of what you think someone else is thinking.
I've been a IT consultant for many years. Unfortunately, to many customers, appearance still counts. And a conservative appearance never insulted anyone's frail ego. If looking like Donald Trump will cause the customer to pay the bill ontime, great! I got a mortage to pay and a family to feed.
Dress codes if anything have gotten more stringent in recent years, as the supply of skilled laborers has rocketed up. Businesses can happily pick the 'less odd' of two applicants.
I think it's a complete farce, and would readily hire the guy with the 2 foot mowhawk. He's more likely to fit in with the team.
But as others have said, most places do like a professional appearance since in most lines of work, appearances matter most. My wife is in the process of doing a bunch of interviews now, with her blue hair. She sticks it up into a little poofy bun and puts on business attire. Only one place [out of perhaps a dozen] even commented, let alone cut short the interview.
Oddly enough only one of her previous employers had any problem with it. Starbucks of all places.
I just interviewed with a technology company whose dress code appeared to be jeans and a t-shirt. Each person who interviewed me was dressed down. I wore a full suit. These companies are not dead.
If you will not be interfacing with the customer, or if the company prides itself on a relaxed kind of work environment, body modifications will work fine. If the customers would be critical of your body modifications (as many customers and large companies will be), you will not be an acceptable person to represent the company. Likewise, if the company must use you as part of a presentation, you will probably need to look clean and dress up.
Sales Engineers are a good example of a group of technical people who would not be hired with body modifications.
It is not about whether the company likes it or not, it is about whether you are more or less useful to the company with your presentation. The IBM's of the world will probably err on the side of tradition just to avoid problems down the road.
I recently decided to move back into a full time position from IT consulting. My most important customer needed a part-time IT guy to replace me. Despite the fact that the technical requirements weren't high, I had a bit of trouble finding a person who I trusted to replace me -- presentation was a big deal. I settled on a guy whose presentation was better, and whose technical skills were good enough. I would have chosen him over a person whose presentation was worse and whose IT skills were better. I was concerned about my customer's relationship with his IT guy, not just whether the job got done.
You represent the people who stand behind you, whether it is your friends, your family, or your employer. Those who take a hardline individualist approach to their presentation shouldn't be surprised when others don't want them in their group. They don't want to be represented by these hardline individuals, and they don't expect much cooperation from them.
Tatoos and body modifications are supposed to be a active form of expressing who you are. If an employer decides to pass you up because of your tatoos, you were probably just not expressing the qualities he was looking for.
While some types slang may be jargon, jargon is not slang. Slang is the informal, faddish and ephemeral phrases and terms of your peer group. Jargon is the nearly universally accepted terminology of a given trade or discipline.
I couldn't feel any more disgusted by all the posts I read... 99% of them were advices from stupid conservative people. I can't say I'm disappointed, I've realized a long time ago there are a lot of ignorant persons in the world. Don't you know that being so narrow minded promotes conservative ideologies like racism and most forms of discrimination? Seems not... And why does everyone feels that should give advices? Poeople will never stop amazing me. I've read in one post something like: "you shouldn't care about how you look, but about how you work" (trying to say that body mods are stupid). Don't you realize that you're contradicting yourself? Correct, you SHOULD care about how you work, and noone should care about how you look... not event employers. In my case, I have 4 piercings and I wouldn't ever consider taking them out just to get a job. At most I would take them out if I really need the job or if I consider it necessary. I would really like to answer every damn post this story got, but I really don't want to waste my time on other meaningless people's thoughts. You all are a bunch of ignorant conservative right-minded bush-lovers...
But not THIS CULTURE.
Watch it. There are IT professionals in non-western cultures. Some might be reading this.
I mean, Lizardman? What kind of example is that? Do you vote Republican? You argue like they do.
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
nuff said
A heart with MOM on your bicep, or the ubiquitous butterfly on the ankle is one thing, but when I see some of the intentional self-disfigurement all too common I think, damn there's a person with some serious self-esteem issues. What would posses you to mutilate your own face with a bunch of metal implants and grafitti? It's really sad.
Probably you kids can get a job quicker with a headful of hardware than I can with the mods that 50 years on earth have done to my body.
Seems like nothing is less in demand these days than a clean-cut white guy with years of experience.
-Anonymous Phil
I worked at a startup company where we had a stunningly beautiful intern who wore tight knit tops, no bra and no need for one though she was quite well endowed, and had a variety of nipple piercing jewelry (changed daily.)
It really lowered the productivity of some of my coworkers and most of them could not look her in the eye when they talked to her.
It was no problem for me; I've been hanging around with pierced S&M folks since the early 80s! Been there. Done that.
Dog is my co-pilot.
yeah, he's not getting hired.
Haven't had any since I was in my early 30's. Now tatoos but had earings at one point. It didn't impede me in my IT career.
The office I work in now is business casual, to jeans, to suits depending on what happens to be going on that day.
We're judged on our capabilities, not our appearances. The highest compliment that can be paid to us is telling one of us how geeky we can be. Nirvana!
First of all, lets drop the PC bullshit. It's not "body modification". Either you're a modern primative - and proud of it - or you're just a pierced freak who wants to add holes to your head (and elsewhere) because it's the in thing to do.
And accepting that, you ought to realize that its growing less acceptable as IT becomes more and more a part of the corporate environment. Whereas eccentricities such as long hair, unkempt beards, and poor dress (if not outright violations of corporate dresscodes) were tolerated in order to get the talent, the geek chique no longer carries the credibility it used to. Corporate executives are looking for a more professional breed of IT managers and specialists who are more buttoned down and presentable.
Is it a hindrance? Well that depends on where your interests lie. If you're a corporate survivor looking to climb the ladder (or at least cling desperately to your rung), you're going to have to accept that that piercing in your septum which is getting green around the hole is going to factor in when you're up for review. However, if you're in IT as a lifestyle, because you love the soft flicker of hard drive access LED's, and are soothed by the gentle hum of RAID arrays accented by the mellow chatter of heads seeking to the right track, then you'll also pass off the pay and respect for a nice stuffy backroom where you'll languish at the bottom of IT payscales for eternity. Or, go and work for a more open company that is more concerned with the capabilities of its people than with how well they'd fare in a police line-up of tattood purse-snatching thugs.
Search google. There are some poeple who are so wacked out and self-loathing that they actually chop off digits.
I had a frontal lobotomy so I could work in an all-Windows company. Luckily my long sleeves cover up any traces.
To you youngsters, I would suggest listening to some mid-90's Jello Biafra. He discusses dressing like a punk for his first showing on Oprah (just shut up and keep reading). That first time, nobody listened to him, and he was rarely asked for an opinion.
The next time he wore a suit (the "clown suit" as he called it). As expected, even Hillary Clinton listened to him.
The point is: sometimes you have to wear the clown suit.
That said, I personally have no issues with ink, etc. Typically there are so many other valid reasons to mistrust someone's judgment.
did you win a free ipod? build a case for it here
no more than any other method of looking like an idiot
Let me preface this by saying I have no tattoos or peircings, I'm deathly afraid of needles. My personal experience has taught me that a persons skill, knowledge, and experience matter more than their personal appearance and that just because some bums have tattoos and some CEOs don't doesn't mean there is a casual relationship there. You can be a clean cut skill-less idiot or a tattooed up expert who knows a lot about whatever it is you do. The outside does not necessarily reflect the inside.
Bungo!
I am the CTO of a relatively small company and I couldn't care less. I look for people that think they are so good they can do anything and get away with it. I have visibly pierced ears and have never had any issue with any of our clients (probably because I'm very very good).
Maybe Starbucks has some ill-defined policies against facial piercings, but at least in San Francisco they didn't seem to apply, and at most of the other coffee shops, heavily metallized faces were pretty prevalent for most of the IT boom and the few years after (except for the place nearest my office, which is run by an older Polish couple who listen to jazz instead of post-alternative.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
As a professional that interviews and hires IT professionals, all other things being equal (skills, etc.) I will ALWAYS give preference to candidates with the cleaner appearance because it provides a more professional image to my company.
In my opinion, body modification is the candidates way of stating: "In a competitive industry, how can I make myself even more unemployable." No matter how you slice it, it cannot work out well for you, the question is; how much is it going to hurt you.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
Hey, call me old-fashioned, but I liked the purple best :-) Purples and blues seem to be especially popular for older women who are getting gray and don't want to do the pretend-you're-not-old conformist dying it aolid blond bit, but I've also had younger friends who looked really good in blue.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I thought we'd be over it by now. I think diversity ought to be something to be encouraged rather than discouraged so I'm dismayed when a corperation talks diversity but means race.
Shaving your facial hair isn't a matter of maturity it's a matter of culture. Many cultures (Amish, Sikhs, and more) have rules dictating this. I fail to see how the body mod scene fails to qualify as a distinct culture, yet people enjoy discriminating against them and calling them names despite having met maybe 2 of said people and making a judgement call in the first 5 minutes of having met them. Personally, I have no tattoos or piercings but I don't have any disrespect for those who do.
Business is about making money, not wearing long pants and a tie.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
San Francisco's actually a sensible place to wear a suit - it gets cold and wet here in the winter. I tend to do the tweed jacket thing instead, but being older and heavier that works better on me. The last time I wore a tie to a non-Japanese non-upper-management customer in the Bay Area was probably a decade ago - the customer's comment was "extra points because it's a Jerry Garcia tie, but you don't need to wear them when you visit us." But I'm the technical specialist that the sales people bring with them to talk technical, so they're expected to wear the "I'm the sales person" target drag, and I'm expected to have the "beard and sandals" look, which is in fact what I prefer.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
"One thing I've noticed -- and it's not just that I'm getting older -- is that young adults are a lot less mature than 20 years ago....Professors I talk to bitch about this a lot, having witnessed the decline."
:)
You are suffering from geriatric myopia, (ie: it IS because you are getting older). Kids today are just as "mature" as when you were amoungst them. Since you have mentioned this observation came from some acedemic friends, is it possible you don't know any kids personally?
When I was 18 I told a prospective employer at a petrol station "no thanks" because he wanted to me to cut my hair and loose my dope leaf earing. Today I have short hair, (actually a bald spot with salt-n-pepper trim), I sit next to a 50-ish man with a receding hairline, neat ponnytail and a gold sleeper, go figure?
The only reason to follow a dress code and look neat at an interview is to show respect to your employer by "playing the part". In other words you are trying to "fit in" by looking like they do in an effort get/keep a job. You would not dress up in an expensive suit to get a labouring job since the employer would probably think you don't want to get your hands dirty.
Like it or not most of the "grown-ups" on the planet are not "mature" enough to overcome thier primative fear and loathing of people who look "different" and will equate the "difference" to immaturity, idiocy, disrespect, incompetence, etc, so that they themselves can feel superior (or at least normal). Ask yourself, if the situation were reversed and all your bosses and rivals had a corporate tattoo on thier forehead, would you do it?
Disclaimer: I am a 46yo proffesional and have two grown kids (20 & 25). Speaking of maturity, have you been through your "mid life crisis" yet, I have and it was just as much fun and heartache as my "teenage crisis".
BTW: I agree wholeheartedly with part of the quote from the GP: "Stand out of the crowd by what you do, not what you look like." - The probability of that realisation occuring to a particular person increases with age but it can and does occur to people at any age above puberty. Having said that it does not automatically follow that the GP is "mature", it just means they have learnt one particular lesson. There are good reasons to have dress codes (eg: friend and foe situations, group identity) but there are also good reasons for dressing "wierd", eg: to draw attention towards/away from something/someone, unmasks zenophobes, diagonse geriatric myopia...
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
At most places I've been or heard about lately, if you can look professional, and act professional, nobody cares much if you have a few visible tats or odd piercings.
On the other hand, if even in the most business-like attire you can muster, you still look like a street tramp with way too many tattoos and peircings, and act like one too, you're not getting the job, even if you do have skills.
11*43+456^2
The dress codes for (respectable) women in the US 100 years ago were similar to conservative Islamic countries today. What does it say about a society when it moves to more (or less) restrictive dress codes?
Who is driving the trend to strict codes of dress and behavior? Do customers really want to be served by people who dress and act in ways obviously dictated by employers?
I've noticed a trend for store clerks, etc. to call me "Sir". Are they trained to do that or is it just because I'm getting older? Either way, I don't appreciate it.
I went from bleach blonde, to red, to bald in a month
Now that would look awesome under time-lapse photography. It would look like your head had gone into critical meltdown.
I've worked in frat-house style IT shops (more focused on creativity and design innovations), and I've worked in up-tight shirt/tie type places.
I don't care for uptight stiff necked environments, but that's just me.
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
About a month ago, I started a new job with a dress code. Reading this in the employment packet, I was surprised. The last time I had a dress code at work, it involved wearing 14 pieces of flair. I asked about it, and was informed that the dress code was for corporate HQ and I didn't need to worry about it. Now that I'm on the job, the rule, as best as I can tell, is use your head. Ergo, I don't wear this shirt at work...yet. Admittedly, I work in IT in California, but the rule seems to be that if you don't work directly with the customer, who cares? If someone knows how to configure a router, who cares if they've got dreadlocks? As for tattoos, 90% of your body is covered during work hours, so who's gonna see 'em? Suppose your tattoo is visible. As long as it doesn't say "Dude, don't say Pigfucker in front of Jesus", who cares?
Interociter
-=What do I want? I'm an American. I want more.
Getting one of those lower back tatoos seemed like a good idea at the time. However, when I crouched down the other day to pick up a server and my plumbers crack was exposed...Well, one of my co-workers mentioned "Back Off!" may not be a good choice for one of those tatoos.
But Hot Topic will discriminate against you if you're *not* covered in tats & metal.
Dig around Fark.. some girls did some study recently about how they were treated when they applied for jobs at Hot Topic and Abercrombie & Fitch.
The results were not scientific, but interesting anyway.
The only discrimination that is illegal is the type of discrimination that has been held illegal -- usually based on a protected attribute. It is legal to discriminate on someone with green hair, or drives a F.O.R.D. or who wore Calvin Klein jeans on a Tuesday.
Fight Spammers!
I'm really, really brilliant. No, I don't think you understand, I'm a friggin' genius. Take how smart you are, move it up to how smart you think you are, multiply it by ten, and then if you were that smart I would have a conversation with you, though I would belittle you in this conversation and make fun of you in ways you wouldn't understand until hours later.
That being said, I also have a tattoo (of pi!) and two piercings. Any company not willing to hire someone as amazing as me is really only hurting themselves.
Not that it matters, I'm more for startup culture than large corporations anyway, where we of the younger generation don't have the homophobically-rooted prejudices of those old folks who just won't die yet.
when I find myself you'll be the first to know.
Alright, I'll bite.
Keep in mind that this is coming from a very experienced 17 year-old developer that's just now starting to work in an office, who is also fairly heavily pierced.
First, I believe that being professional has more to do with your actions and your association with your co-workers and the higher-ups. That said, there's a time and a place for everything. I agree that in certain situations, modifications simply aren't appropriate. If you deal with customers who are, for the most part, against modifications, then yes you should take them out. I also believe that you have absolutely no right to a job, and that if you don't agree with the dress code, you shouldn't be there.
Second, you seem to have a very limited view on why people are modified. As I said, I'm fairly heavily pierced, and I also have a number of pieces of scarificiation. Most of the piercings are done due to liking the feeling or the look. Most of the scars are done to indicate something in my life (the death of a family member, getting a new job, etc). I can't say I completely understand the reasons why many people get modified, but I try and keep an open mind to them.
Third, why is it sad? You seem to think that anything that is considered to be a deviation from the norm is a bad thing. Sure, many people do it for the purposes of "rebelling" and in doing so conform to yet another group, but many of us simply do it for ourselves. We enjoy being modified, and we enjoy getting modified.
I liken the body modification community to that of the opensource community. There are many people working on all sorts of different things, for a variety of reasons. Any attempt to group everyone together will fail. The same can be said of the body modification community.
Please, at least attempt to see the point of vew of others before you make sweeping generalizations, if you must make them at all. If you'd like to educate yourself more on the issues at hand, http://www.bmezine.com/ is a great resource.
Disconnect and self-destruct, one bullet at a time.
You can cover them up. They don't show when you need to be professional in a professional environment.
That's the same as not having them at all.
I have no issues with Tatoos. Or piercings. Or whatever a branding is. But if you expect to be treated the same way as someone without such things in an interview..
If you watch TV and see who else has lots of tatoos and stuff, you see these rocker types, drug addicts, over-the-top gothers, and every other type of "weirdo." While I wouldn't think anything less of someone with a big tatoo or think you're a drug addict, what will the hardass hiring manager at somecompany think?
We're human. As much as it may be against the law to descriminate against people because of physical appearance, it happens. It happens all the time.
You know the saying.. when in Rome..
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I have NO piercings and NO tats. But I'm a long haired white guy.
I've had job issues based on my hair alone. The most recent was when the little cocksucker (sorry, I don't have enough middle fingers for my former employer.) that became my boss who started calling me "Jesus" and having one of his lackeys follow suit. Yes, because I wasn't showing up to work with polo shirts & boat shoes, I became the one to poke fun at. (These people were all hired well after I was.)
So if you're worried about piercings causing you problems, the answer is "yes, they'll cause problems. So will the tattoos."
on if he or she is a really good lawyer. It reminds me of a Dennis Leary joke regarding airline pilots and cocaine. "would you want your pilot doing cocaine?" "I wouldn't mind as long as he can land a plane well high on coke" Same goes for anyone. I don't care what they look like, as long as they can pull their own weight and do the job they are paid for. Ken Lay didn't have any obvious tattoos or piercings but he sure got paid alot to make sure some people got screwed. Allegedly anyway.
"Ford Motor Co., for example, doesn't have a specific policy regarding body art but does prohibit midriff-baring outfits."
Aw, that's a bummer. Back when I worked at AT&T, the policy was basically "please wear clothes." It was distracting to work there because of all the hot chicks that were dressed up like they were going to the dance clubs after work. Tight clothes, bare midriffs, thongs showing.. holy cow, I never thought that life at the phone company could be so wonderful.
That job would have been great if it wasn't for the fucking customers.
To nitpick, dog is specifically a male canine, and bitch is specifically a female one.
So, you wouldn't have female-canined.
And I agree with your overpoint completely: "decent human being" implicitly assumes that Western values apply at all places and times. Your response (to show that the here and now isn't universally applicable) was wholly correct.
It's sort of sad that there were so many contrarians to put assumptions on your words (noteably, that you were deprecating western values, which you weren't).
People keep saying "It's good that people look different, blahblahblah".
Well, smearing shit all over your face would certainly make you different, but it's still stupid.
Same goes for tattoos, etc. You're not 20 anymore. Grow the FUCK up.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
I know a lot of people want to think it won't have an effect on their salary, promotions, or treatment, but the fact is 99 out of 100 times it will. Yes there is a lot more of that going around now than there used to be.
However, the people who sign your paychecks very rarely have tat's, peircings, or any bizzarre hair cuts. They think you're a freak, and they're going to treat you like that. Really bizzarre (and visible) body modifications show that you have a lack of common sense, or just don't live in the real world. Do you think people with money are going to trust you with a decision? Of course not, your mods are a walking advertisement to just how lacking in sense you are.
Like it or not, that's how they think, so don't flame me for these comments. I've been dealing with it for decades and have learned to keep my private life -private- and out of their sight.
The guy coming off the plane in a suit, or the guy in a tee shirt and shorts? It's all about context. I'm assuming your flights weren't to say, Columbia. In some locales you may be respected for the wrong reasons by the way you dress. Some people are projecting an image that they want you to believe in. I'm sure there are plenty of con men who dress up and look the part of "responsible person". And there are those of us who try to fly below the radar, for our own reasons. Suckers judge books by their covers.
I would certainly take a job for $30,000 less a year than I make if they allowed me to dye my hair whatever color I want, and have visible piercings and tattoos.
For me, I think a suit is necessary for gentlemen in an office at all times. Beyond a suit, what an employee wears is none of the employers business so long as they're not vulgar. (Obviously a tattoo on the forehead that says, "Fuck off!" would not be work appropriate.)
For some people, tattoos and piercings are just a phase. But for many, many more, it's a reconnection with the divine. It's a rite of passage. It's a sacred, spiritual experience.
To deny that right to people is not only discriminatory, it's morally wrong. Work really is "just a job". You're there 40 hours a week.
Why should your employer own your body, especially when when you aren't even working 128 hours each week?
The statistics say it all:
A 2002 Mayo Clinic survey of university undergraduate students found more than half had some type of body piercing, and 23 percent had one to three tattoos.
With nearly one in four having a tattoo, I don't think that the current trend of discrimination will last through my lifetime. Thank God. It's about time the Victorian-era concepts of an employer owning your ass end, for all eternity.
I'd rather die, than be a slave.
I work in a tie required enviroment, I also do the hiring for IT. When a person comes in with with tatoos or body piercings I think boring, fashion victim, so 20th century,.......... NEXT APPLICANT!
Do breast implants correlate with income in men as well as women?
If you are going to hire someone for a position in which presentation and looks are important (face-to-face sales, professional media -- e.g. TV news, etc) then I don't have a problem with you hiring on looks, dress, and so on -- because *that's what you're hiring*.
But when you hire someone that is going to sit hidden from the world in a cubicle all day, what is the point? Hire me for *what I can do*, not my appearance. Hire me for my technical skills, not how well I can "sell" myself, which is basically what the whole moronic resume and interview process is about.
I am not a salesman. Do not expect me to become one to get a job at your company.
This is a sig. Deal with it.
Sounds like it's time for you to move out of your parent's basement and get a job.
Last week, we had a very interesting lecture by one of the heads of company's Client Service Group on client meetings/presentations.
At one point, she said something quite wise about appearances, that is a perfect answer to the article's question:
"When a client leaves a meeting with you, the client should remember WHAT YOU SAID, and NOT how you looked".
As a background, I work for a software development company that sells to large financial companies; many of us "geeks" get to meet clients so the lecture was very popular.
To add to that, my own view is "If you need to distinguish yourself from other people by what you look like, there's a big chance you have no other beneficial qualities to dinstinguish yourself with". There are exceptions to this, but not many in my experience.
-DVK
--
"Can't act. Can't sing. Balding. Can dance a little."
- Human Resources Department judgment on Fred Astaire's Hollywood screen test in the early 1930s.
"The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it"-R.A.Heinlein
tRe:Slang should be avoided? WTF
N o... No more "Woot! I am leet haxor. I pwn noobs!"
Re:Slang should be avoided? WTF (Score:2)
by Dwonis (52652) * on Sunday June 12, @10:44PM (#12799391)
(http://www.dlitz.net/go/contact/)
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I work in a really big tech/communications company (35,000 employees). A certain director has recently hired a couple of people who come to work looking like they've just left a rave. I'm not sure why either, they're button pushers and those are so plentiful, they're a dime a dozen -- so why not hire one that'll not make you look bad?? That said I know this is reflecting poorly on the hiring person from the people above and that there have been complaints. We have a corporate policy: wear slacks, dress shirt. Even on really hot days no shorts. So yes, clearly, depending on where you work it makes a difference. Some of the craziest wild people I know look fairly respectable when they get to work. It's not that hard, so why dress like a complete dork? Hell, you may even score that administrative assistant who thinks you're creepy. That said, I'm pissed at my companies "no jeans" policy. I can see no jeans with big holes and patches, with the underage chick you banged the night before's name written in lipstick with a heart around it, all while you're wearing BLACK FINGERNAIL POLISH. But jeans and a dress shirt? Come on, if it's good enough for our president to wear to an international summit, it should be just fine by my employer.
Perhaps its time christians took a hard look in the mirror and asked themselves why they're so offensive to so many people.
Yeah right, that won't happen. They're "forgiven", remember? They can do whatever they want now, because they're forgiven, so doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, isn't a requirement for them. They said the magic prayer, now they have a license to be jackasses.
BTW, I'm a Christian, but seldom admit that in public because of the type of Christian you're talking about. I remain convinced they are a vocal minority, but there are enough of them around that I'm embarassed to even be identified as a Christian as I don't want to be associated with them.
Sad isn't it, I'm not embarassed to say I believe what Jesus taught, or that I consider him the messiah, but I am embarassed to be associated with the clowns like the GP.
BRAVO. Rip them new ones. Jesus ripped the pharisees(the true spiritual ancestors of people like the gp) new ones constantly. GREAT POST!
How do you mod down an entire thread?
I'm in conservative Boise, Idaho and landed an awesome job days after I died my hair blue. My employer never brought it up. I generally dress like a cheap punk and occasionally weary a kilt when I want to look nice. My attire is never an issue, the important thing is that I deliver on what's expected. Of course it depends on how much you need a job, buy I believe if an employer won't hire you because of your appearance you won't really want that job anyway.
Take that straw man down!
Would I have a leg to stand on in court? Who knows, they didn't have a problem with it. However, this has me thinking. While it's definitely NOT the same as being discriminatory because of religion, sex, sexual orientation or whatever, it IS akin to being picked on/fired because you're overweight. Replace the word piercing with overweight and I promise you, the comments here would be quite different. Yes, it's a choice. But in some respects so is being overweight, that is, I don't have to be fat. Nor do I have to have a piercing.
And for those of you lie down and say "grow up and get over it" and "a suit and tie is the only acceptable dress": Thank god you weren't fighting in world war 2.
Linux sucks. And you're fat. Take a shower hippy.
If you want to stay in that level of programming for your career, then that's no problem. But those managers that say nothing about your dress are probably also remembering that you're the guy with the piercings. They're remembering that you won't meet the partners, and that you won't be meeting with the customers.
You get ten years down the road, and you'll probably be pretty pissed about how you can't advance in the company. You might have to try for work somewhere else that doesn't know of your body mods. You'll be starting over somewhere else, potentially with a spouse, kids, mortgage, etc.
Don't think that they don't notice just because they don't say anything.
...a career-limiting move.
Your call on that, though.
To see a quote from "The Art of Unix Programming" validly used in the context of piercings - hard to say who should get more kudos, you or ESR.
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
If genital piercings are keeping you from getting a job, you're showing up for interviews WAY underdressed.
Or possibly it means you should stop wearing spandex.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm hoping this is the case in other parts of the games industry too because I've been toying with the idea of getting some more body modifications :) (Right now I just have my ears and navel pierced. Quite boring, I'm afraid.)
Also, on the same topic, I've also been considering getting my breasts enlarged but I'm not sure whether that kind of thing would be held against me (or count in my favour in a way that I might not like). Any idea how that kind of modification is viewed in the industry? If an employer noticed/found out, would he/she be likely to think "Wow, what a brainless slut. Why the hell should we hire her as a programmer?", or is it the kind of thing that's just accepted and ignored?
It used to be everyone wore a shirt and tie where I work. Now my boss will only wear a tie when he goes to a meeting with the company president and the restr of the time, he looks like use and here's what we wear:
Men - Polos and Kahki's. Well groomed hair. Occasional five o clock shadow after a bad night is permissible. When we have big meeting, we will someitmes wear a tie. NO Suits and NO sport coats.....ever.
Women: The same really.....you may see a woman wear a slightly lowcut, but not tasteless blouse and almost never do I see skirts. In other areas, it's more lax. In one area, a hot chic wears tight hip huggers every day (thank god).
Fridays are different...we usually wear jeans and the occasional t-shirt. If our "Friday" falls on a week day other then friday, we wear jeans then.
There's no reason for us techies to dress up because noone else does anymore either. Besides, 90 percent of the time our contact is via phone or e-mail even with customers so it's no big deal if we aren't dressed in Armani.
Gorkman
Well, I don't mind. I'm certainly not going to be favorable towards you for piercings, but if you're qualified, that's all that matters.\
My boss would. She's got a teenage son that came home with tatoos cause the druggies next door bribed him into getting one.
My boss's boss would. He's went to church for over 40 years, recites from scripture in meetings, and would rather keep women to full length dresses well below the knees.
My boss's boss's boss wouldn't mind either. He's got a 30 year old son that has tatoos and his mailman has an earring, so he's "hip" to all the new kid stuff.
Keep in mind, you just cut your chances of getting the job by %50 by deciding to get something "non-conformist" that only shows you conform to the standards of your peers. Imagine if you could look at someone and immediately know if they've done drugs in the past, would that increase or decrease their possibility of getting a job? While tatoos won't necessarily *hurt* your chances, they certainly don't help. You could use the fact they rejected you because of them as an indicator that you'd probably hate the job anyway, though.
Good luck.
Option A: Become successful enough to set policy for a corporation. Go further, and become successful and influential enough to set policy requirements for anyone wishing to do business with your corporation. (Why do all complaints of this nature come from people who work for someone else? Why is everyone so smart and insightful, yet that superiority hasn't been a path to power and influence?)
Option B: Elect members of Congress who are sensitive to the issues of the counterculture. Persuade them to pass laws protecting your interests. Have Congress and/or the Supreme Court rule this a First Amendment concern, rights which must be expressly protected.
Option C: Get enough momentum in the counterculture movement to actually bring a (peaceful or otherwise) revolution. Then you can be The Culture instead of merely the counterculture.
I'm on your side. I really am. But I don't understand why the old culture still prevails, and I'm holding you responsible for that.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I'm late to this discussion, but I'll make my statement.
Businesses should be allowed to set whatever dress code they want. Don't like it? Don't work there. Given that I believe that businesses in general shouldn't have to hire anyone they don't want for any reason, I suppose I'm in a minority.
Seriously, be prepared to accept the consequences of your actions. It's that simple. I don't think anyone out there that gets a piercing or a tatoo or whatever doesn't know that a lot of people, right or wrong, have issues with that.
I have my ear pierced and while it's really no big deal nowadays, there are some places that it's an issue. You know what? I have no desire to deal with or work with a company that's that hung up on an earring. They're tight ass pricks. That's their right. It's my right not to want to deal with them and work elsewhere.
The biggest problem I have with the "different" or "extreme" crowd is that some of them think it's *their* right to do whatever they want and that everyone around them should just deal with it. Yeah? Fuck you guys. Do what you want. I'm all for it. However, quit telling *other* people who they should feel and think. Do what you but be willing to accept the fucking consequences.
Businesses exist, for the most part, to make money. If your cute little lip ring or tatoo impedes that, why should they hire you? Even if you're skilled, it's likely there's someone else who is just as skilled who isn't outside that business's comfort zone. And again, if someone is going to get that caught up over a lip ring, do you really *want* to work there? I wouldn't.
If your response is, "Well I *need* X job." Take your piercings out. If you've got tats it's likely you know the possible consequnces when you got them. If you didn't, you're probably not bright enough to be qualified for any place with a dress code. Beggars can't be choosers. Come on people, this is real life. I'm not telling anyone to give up their "individuality" or personal "expression." I'm not telling anyone to "grow up" because I personally have almost no issues with tats or piercings. (Although there is a point of excess that even bothers me. Deal with it.) Hell, I'm the kind of person who would lose clients before firing or not hiring someone based on appearance. However, that's *my* choice and it's not my place to other people hiring how they need to run *their* business.
Wow.. After reading that post, I feel as though I've lost brain cells. Your arguments are weak, and your prejudice is shallow. You are offensive of Pagans, Christians, and Masochists. You have no idea of what morals truly are. Some of the most trustworthy people I've known have had piercings.
Also makes you look callow and jejune.
"Jejune" ?! Who the hell uses words like jejune? I find your usage of such pretentious language to be banal and trite. Two-dollar words for a one-dollar asshole.
The cat man is in IT. see?
why do you hate America? These are the guys that catch the terraists. How dare you try to impugn our heroes!
YMMV, but I used to work in a similar environment where my tats and piercings didn't matter. Like the grandparent, I would dress properly and remove the piercings during client meetings. They liked me, they gave me a promotion, and then the parent company wanted to hire me and made a deal with the company I was working for at the time.
There was one hitch, and it was that I would need to wear a suit, and remove the non-standard piercings. They knew about them, they were cool, and I was never judged by appearance and only by my performance. I am also fine with wearing a suit if it's required, and like it when people are up-front about these requirements, as I find most people actually are.
And no, I don't work in the tech sector, so it's not a "geek" thing. I work at a very large ad agency. And yes, I'm a manager.
Since when is dyeing one's hair dressing like a teenager?
Brown is a very boring, common colour. I'd much rather that people had bright, interesting hair colours. It was quite enjoyable having blue hair, and I look forward to doing it again this summer. There are reasons other than parental rebellion for things. Try it sometime.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
The way you dress, the shape you keep your body in, and your personal hygiegne all send out messages about who you are. Deliberately or indeliberately.
Piecings and tatoos more so. Unlike the first group of messages, which can be accidental, the only reason to get a visible piercing or tatoo is that you want to tell other people about who you are.
This is neither "professional" nor "unprofessional", these labels should be reserved for how you do your job, not how you look.
However, these non-verbal messages are as important as your verbal messages, especially in a job interview situation.
Wear a tie, and you signal submission. Wear a tatoo, and you signal rebellion (in most cases). Which is best depend on the culture and clients of the workplace.
Probably most bosses of America prefer submissive workers. But maybe the only workplaces you would enjoy are those who cultivate rebels.
... I got this Apple Dekstop Bus port in place of one of my hands (you guess which one), and now I'm working on crummy x86 boxes (what? Oh, nevermind then...).
Anyway, it's all USB now and my bionic ADB is useless. I'm back on that godawful actual-physical-touching-a-keyboard method so yeah, my body modification hinders me (at least, all the look-at-that-freak looks but none of the benefits)...
Dang.
"Good news, everyone!"
In nerd style, paying homage to penny arcade, i am going to get Pac Man on my arm.
If a tatoo is meant to represent an aspect of my life i cant think of a better metaphor.
OK, my office is about 6-8 blocks from that part of Folsom, but around Halloween it's still fun to watch the pedestrians...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It's just ridculous. I mean, who the hell ever started the "trend" or "accepted" way of dressing in a business setting? Who the hell ever thought it was "nice" or whatnot, to require a long sleeve shirt, or a tie? Personally when I wear a tie I feel like I've got a god damn noose around my neck. Yes, yes, naysayers will chime in "but you can loosen it and not wear it so tight" yea well I know it's still there, I still feel it there, and I still don't like having rope-like objects around my neck.
Same for long button shirts and dress pants. I love how companies, at least most here locally where I live, require you to dress in both of these, when it's 100 degrees outside. Yes, again naysayers will say "but inside it's not like that" yea, it is. Not every business chips in to keep the air conditioning at an acceptable level inside. So more often or not I'm there sitting in the cubicle, in some stuffy ass pair of dress slacks or khakis with a tie and dress shirt, about to burn to death cause I'm so hot. And no, for naysayers that will ask, I'm not excessively overweight or tall, I'm an average size medium height. When a 140 pound male that's 5'11 is sweating in a dress shirt, tie, and dress pants, then it's either too damn hot inside or they need to allow you to dress more comfortably.
And don't even get me started on "ironing". I'll never in my life understand how a simple wrinke, a god damn "crease" in fabric is something socially unacceptable. Fabric is made to bend and move and stretch and whatnot when you wear it or move in it or overall just use it. I wash my clothes regularly like any other person, but I don't often like to cook with grease or such things cause I don't like taking the risk of burning myself. Same thing with a god damn iron, ever had an iron tip over onto your hand or arm and let it sit there a second by accident so you get a nice burn? Yea that shit doesn't feel to nice. I'm not going to purposely use some hot surfaced appliance that I don't have too, simply to make a shirt or pants leg "straightened"
As for tats or whatnot, my god can we as Americans do anything else to eliminate individuals? America preaches tolerance and acceptance of almost all things. Yet you're only allowed basic hair colors in most jobs; black brown blonde, and some shades of red. If you didn't know better you'd think the spectrum of colors ended there. I don't care some people think it looks bad, or whatever. If I want my hair neon-fucking-green, I'll dye it neon-fucking-green. Naysayers will say "but that hurts a business." or "well then dont work for that business", and I don't. I also don't have my hair dyed some different color, but if I did dye it something off suit you can damn well bet I'd quit a job before switching it to something "acceptable".
I could see all this being plausable if say, You're the President of the United States who has to meet with the other leaders of the world ya know. But if you're just Average Joe working down at the local Kinkos fixing the copiers, my god don't make the man dress up like it's a god damn funeral or wedding.
Oh and a little rant bit to throw in, if a job is going to require a tie, don't fucking bitch at us for what tie we choose. If I wanna wear a Spiderman tie, fuck you I'm wearing it. You never specified what kind of tie we had to wear, you just said a tie. And fuck you also if I can't wear a clip on, it's a little hard to see how to tie something right under your damn neck, my eyeballs don't reach that far and it's a little rough trying to do it backwards infront of a mirror.
Aw Frell this
A decade ago, about when I hit 40, I was wondering about getting an earring. My wife's comment was "Wouldn't work - you'd look like [friend of ours of similar age]." "Oh. You're probably right. Guess not then :-)".
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
the issue of hair styles, body modifications, and one's general-appearance is a huge thing for any professional. i started as a freshman at purdue university in 2002, majoring in computer technology - telecommunications and networking. i got my left ear pierced in the lobe 3 weeks into school. i'm growing my hair out, i like wearing either Chaco Flips sandals everywhere or even going around barefoot. i wear cut off corduroy pants as shorts with Rusted Root, Phish, or any t-shirt I find at Goodwill that tickles my fancy. i have a goatee and my hair is starting to form some dreads. i switched my major to english a year and a half into my schooling. i knew i couldn't live a life i wanted to in the IT field, and i didn't want to be confined to a cubicle for all of it. i still, however, work as a network administrator at Elliott Hall of Music on campus, and i have never had anyone give me beef for walking around barefoot. some people call me the 'gypsie' or the 'hippie', and i am fine with that. moral of the story: choose a career or life that gives you the most satisfaction, then hopefully these silly issues of little worth will not hinder you from anything!
First let me explain my 'modifications' slightly to give you an idea of the depth of them. I have the words 'uid 0' and 'gid 0' tattoo'd in binary around my wrists and then full tribal sleeves that 'fade into' a printed circuit board pattern as they get to my shoulders, then my initials on my neck and various other non-visible tattoo's. Additionally I've had my nose, tongue, eyebrow and ears pierced.
I am also fairly good at what I do with about 5 years of experience in the industry, as a high school and college drop out I make slightly less than 100k/yr working as an intrusion analyst for the government, in addition to various free lance contracts.
Now that I have given you a picture of me, here is basically what I have experienced:
for the most part it doesn't matter, however this is not universally true. I've had jobs require me to wear long sleeves even though the only people I ever saw were other engineers, I've had companies that generally do not care what I wear/look like, however everytime I've found that 'we dont care' is the stated rule, I've found out that 'higher ups' did in fact care and that generally it's been to my advantage to just dress in a professional manner that covers up everything that is visible.
Generally speaking I've found that while most people don't care, those who sign the paychecks generally do-- and even if nothing is said, you are constantly having to double your efforts to reach the same 'status' as your non-modified co-workers, but this perhaps could be because my career has mostly focused on security and it's a bit different than 'the rest' of the IT arena. It could also be a result of my background, CISSP's and the likes seem to get slightly uncomfortable around people who are entirely self-taught in the security arena.
My final two points are simply that:
1) I did a little contract work in western europe and I did not feel that I had the same negative stigma when I dealt with people, even elementary school teachers-- which greatly surprised me.
2) All of my piercings are 'ex-piercings' as I've had to take them out each time for various jobs.
So to summarize, yes and no, but mostly yes.
Would they be complaining if it was a boob job?
There are a few big cities where I have seen people working in professional positions with all sorts of body modifications... Portland, OR. I know that this exception does not (probably) have anything to do with the rest of the US, but it does show that not everywhere is like that. Bruce
Rings in the eyebrows are still useful for squicking your mom, I suppose, but it's Been Done, and while some people feel the need to go get mass quantities of metal in their face to maintain their radicalness, most people get over that because it takes a lot of effort.
The mid-80s boys' style that I was susprised didn't stick around was the heavy hair on top in a big ponytail with very short hair on the sides, which says "Hey, dad, I've got lots of hair on top and you're going bald and can't do this nyahh nyahh", but it disappeared also.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I work in the Thames Valley area in the UK as a Senior Software Developer. I have a few ball-closures in my ears as well as a barbell through one of my ears. As long as I am in the office there is no dress code at all.
I do however, need to wear a suit and a tie and take out all visible piercings when I see customers or partners out of the office.
Racism is a problem also, not just having a tattoo or piercing but having the wrong color skin can prevent you from being hired, even having the wrong gender or sexual preference.
Sexual orientation, maybe. There's no such thing as sexual preferences, unless you're talking about the way you prefer your girlfriend to tie you up with rope instead of handcuffs.
Even so, I doubt those are relevant to your job, unless of course you work in Las Vegas...
Look, if you're in IT, then settling for something as cheezy and superficial as some dumb tattoos and piercings, just makes you look like you're a wanna-be. I mean, there have been how many science fiction books describing cybernetic enhancements and gene splicing wonders, and you call something as lame as a tattoo, "body modification?" Give me a fucking break. When your skin can convert sunlight into sugar, when your cybereye can see in the IR spectrum and shoot death rays at your enemies, when your kevlar-laminated titanium claw can crush diamonds, then tell us about your body modification.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
If you want to join our management, you have to have had your brains removed. Does this count as a required body modification?
Earrings for guys, or moderate numbers of them for women, are old territory in most of the country; maybe the Southeast hasn't caught up.
Hiking boots were pretty standard engineer footgear when I was younger. Some of the change is probably fashion, some was probably just that I lived in the Northeast after college, and it was what most of us had worn in school, when we were walking 20 miles through the snow uphill both ways to get to the keypunches and punchcard readers, and here in California lots of people haven't dealt with snow.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I've had a couple of major banks as customers, and their IT and telecomm departments all went business casual a decade ago. (This is San Francisco Bay Area - your mileage may vary.) I'd still wear a jacket and tie for a first visit to anybody management level, but for a non-Asian bank out here I wouldn't expect to leave the jacket on. For an Asian bank I'd guess on dressing more formally for the first visit.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Actually, if you were female, it would be given a second thought, depending on your age and part of the country. Some places long hair isn't the style, some places it is, some places it's only the style for younger women.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Ignore this advice at the risk of bouncing paychecks! If a businessman is looking for tattoos and ties, he's probably not looking for profits. Such a company can last a long time, but are you willing to bet your mortgage payments on it?
Professionalism is all about money. Money is the only thing that matters. If tattoos and ties matter to the customers, then tattoos and ties are a money issue. If tattooes and ties are just arbitrary dress code, then money isn't on your manager's mind. That's a warning sign.
I don't live in the USA! Over here in conservative Blighty I've never been turned down for a job because I have long hair (I'm early 30's and part of a team responsible for testing the software behind the largest retail network in Europe). I have one visible (ear) and one non-visible piercing. I have no tat's because I have never been able to suitably draw the image I would like to have and as it's an expression of me and not a fashion statement that is very important. It worries me that people are so insecure in themselves that they find an individual who choses to change their appearance threatening. In the end, no matter what these people say about it being offensive or improper it boils down to the fact that they feel threatened. Their feel that their way of existance is threatend by people who do something that they do not. It is the same for those who oppose gay marriage or civil union. The fear that somehow what someone else choses to do affects and diminishes what they chose to do. We live in a world driven by fear and mistrust rather than compassion, love and understanding and sadly those who promote fear and hate are those who claim to have follow the teachings of someone who promoted the very opposite.
In Soviet Russia you own your cat
I have two earrings in my left ear, a tattoo on my left shoulder and another (the Hindu word 'maya') on my right forearm, just below the crook of my elbow. I've never had a problem at any job with any of them.
Then again, I probably don't want to work at a place where they'd be a problem, because that suggests a certain conformist thinking that I don't interface with particularly well. It's not about my tats or earrings -- people hire me because I'm an original thinker, not because I'm a replaceable monkey.
Then again, I'm a web designer/developer, not an admin, so maybe different rules apply. People don't hire admins to be creative. They hire them to be precise. (That's not a slight, by the way.)
Dunno about him, but personally I don't mind that. I have no piercings or tattoos, but I still do tell my employer that no, I don't ever want a promotion to management. Been there, done that, decided that management is not something I like to do.
Yes, I can occasionally talk to a customer, or draw a flowchart on a whiteboard in front of an audience. But the keyword is: occasionally. I'd very much sit at a computer than spend every day in meetings, corporate power games, or trying to make Wally finally actually do _some_ work, _any_ work. I very much like it when he's not really my problem.
Or to put it otherwise: if I wanted to do either management or marketting, I'd have went to a business college. I chose computers for a reason: that's what I like to do.
So other people will get promoted instead. Good. That I like.
So I've had people I've recruited end up my boss. I'm ok with that. They probably deserved it too, with the amount of show-business they put up for the boss instead of actually working or actually learning programming. But anyway, it still means that I do the job I like.
Some people seem to assume an uni-dimensional rat race and that money is the only thing that matters. They'd do _anything_ for money, or for some stupid social acceptance goal like "promotions are good". They just have to chase some stupid goal that will actually make their life _worse_, much like dogs chase a car: never stopping to think what they'd do if they actually caught one.
At one point it's not even a promotion any more, it's just really switching carreer tracks to a completely new line of work. A new work which doesn't even resemble the old one, and you're not even prepared for, and you're probably incompetent for or don't have the right personality type for. (E.g., an introvert won't really enjoy a life where 8 hours a day are spent talking to everyone, from making sure what the team is doing, to meetings with clients, to meetings with higher level management, etc.)
It's called "Peter's Principle".
Is it worth it? Is it what you _really_ want to do with your life? Would you switch jobs to _anything_, including driving a garbage truck or shovelling manure, if it paid better and was fashionably disguised as a promotion?
Well, if you can honestly answer "yes" to that, yeah, you're in the right rat race. Keep up, brown nose, backstab, and don't let the Joneses get a promotion before you do.
If not, well, then you understand why some of us have "quality of life" as the _goal_, and money and promotions are just _means_ to that end. If the trade-off involved in getting those means actually move you farther from the goal, is actually a bad trade-off. One to be avoided.
(Just as examples of such trade-offs: you get more money but at the expense of getting a stress-related ulcer, or doing so much overtime that you don't actually have the time to enjoy that money, or whatever. Was it worth it? Did it really improve your life?)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
But it's okay if you're a woman and you just pierce your ears. Because that's totally different.
One of the fringe benefits of having a nose piercing and some earrings is that it's a decent way to weed out the idiots that are petty enough to care about them. If you're in a job interview for something that doesn't involve customer interaction and your interviewers are overly concerned about your piercings or look at you funny, you know you're going to be working with people who value irrational, emotional, societal prejudices over open-minded logic. They probably won't be able to think for themselves when designing or reviewing software either, and you'll probably be happier not working for them anyway.
That said, when times get tight, you might want to work with those idiots anyway. They have an uncanny ability to hold down tedious jobs, which have an interesting ability to remain in periods of lowered prosperity.
Also, if you're looking for a position with a lot of customer interaction, depending on the field, you might want to keep visibile body-mods to a minimum. It is a business reality that some customers will be idiots and unless your company is wildly successful, it will want to make money from idiots as well.
Really folks, not much interesting would happen if everyone worried about social acceptability all the time. Think about it.
a conservative company won't hire you. Just common sense. Then again, if you want a job running a body-mod shop, don't show up in a 3 piece suit. The same bit of common sense.
a very experienced 17 year-old developer
Ah, there it is.
Man, you don't actually mean that do you? Even if you started at 9, that's only eight years experience. I have fingernails with more experience than that.
I am a true rebel, I have done the complete opposite of everybody else......shocker ....... I have NO tattoos.
Just kiddin, I have nothin against tattoos, just have a probelm of changing my mind too much on designs to get one.
Had to think about it.
When Truman Capote wrote In Cold Blood he came away with an observation. The psycho-criminals he met were invariably heavily tatooed and that led him to speculations about the craziness trying to come out. So I think an interviewee with a lot of modification would have his stability looked at suspiciously or be considered a bit socially retarded for falling for a fashion emulating psycho-criminals. Would you come into an interview for a professional or managerial job in biker leathers and chains?
Personally, I always had a bit of bemusement. The guys with two-feet of hair in the late seventies had an easy fashion fix. But scrubbing those tats, oh -- around this decade, was going to hurt -- the pocketbook if nothing else.
Boycott Sony
The last time we were interviewing for programmers, one candidate came in wearing a "black sheep" tie. It was full of white sheep facing one way, with a single black sheep facing the other way.
Several of the interviewers noticed this and mentioned it afterwards as a "warning sign" that the candidate might have problems fitting in.
If he had been clearly superior to the other candidates, we would have disregarded the tie, but he wasn't clearly superior, and the tie may have been the "straw that broke the camel's back", causing him not to get a job offer.
It may not be "fair" but anyone who goes out of their way to set themselves apart from the crowd has no business complaining when the crowd doesn't appreciate it.
... try getting a job at seaworld with a fricking laser on your head.....
this is the most offensive thing i've ever heard. i'm comfortable in my with my body mods. if i worked somewhere that didn't allow them, i'd just feel weird. actually, i wouldn't ever agree to work there in the first place. seriously, how in the HELL would body mods affect work performance in any way? oh noes my lip has a hole in it, and i forgot how to code!!!!!!11
Well, I cannot apply to a company that likes Microsoft because of my tattoo. I tattooed tux the penguin on my arm and the BSD-devil on the other ;-)
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
your translation is a subjective fabrication of what you think someone else is thinking.
... medical reasons?), they have to know that hanging a hardware store off of their face is going to suggest a certain need for attention, and willingness to present an atmosphere of discomfort in order to get that attention.
But that's exactly my point. Unless you come right out and say what the 1-inch hole in your earlobe and the four studs in your forehead do mean, you're leaving it up to the average person to guess. And most people are going to assume that whatever it "means" to the person who did it, the highly visible nature of it, especially on the face, is so that it will be seen. The vast majority of the things we all do to our appearance are done to project some facet of a larger image, to convey alignment with a particular way of life or attitude. Even if that's not true for a particular person (say, they have to have six eyebrow rings for
But it still doesn't matter - it's in the eye of the beholder, and when you staple your lips, you're going to be subject to whatever the average person thinks about what you're trying to say. And if you aren't going to continually start all of your business conversations with an explanation of "it's not really what you think" or "don't worry, it only looks like it hurts" or "people have been piercing faces for thousands of years, get over it" before you talk about buying and implementing that new load balancing router pair, well... then you have to put up with me, and everyone else, jumping to contextual conclusions about what you are trying to say. People in an environment where they can afford to pay real career-type IT salaries to quality nerds (which is what this whole thread is all about) don't usually have time sort through all of that, and aren't going to want to wonder if every staffer, vendor, or customer that Mr. Pierced is going to be in front of is going to want to take the time either.
The shorthand interpretation of the look in question is registered pretty solidly on the wider culture. Never mind the irony of people trying so hard to be "unique" that they look just like half a million other Goths or whatever, the issue is that most people have at least some notion that the heavily pierced, tatooed person is hoping that all that decoration will be seen (especially when it's in places, like on the face, where it can't be missed). And the desire for it to be seen equates to an expectation that the underlying message is either obvious, or is suitable for speculation. And to the 40-year-old who manages the department (and the budget that would pay the tatooed IT person wanting that stable paycheck and health benefits) is going to make some snap decisions based on that first impression that Mr. Pierce is forcing her to digest. It doesn't matter what his reason is for the body art, any more than it matters what Mark Rothko was thinking when he painted: the audience will draw its own conclusions unless you provide a running commentary, and you can't spend your day at work providing one and still expect that time to be as valuable (and well paid) as someone who spends that same time, say, writing code or tuning servers.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Silly, you can't get piercings or tattoos while drunk, you'll bleed all over the place. Alcohol thins the blood.
Having done about everything and been on both sides of this fence, I would say that the "stringent" dress codes mentioned are part of nearly any - and generally in IT - business. As a former business-owner, why subject myself to unecessary lawsuits and loss of customers by inappropriate employee behavior (calling dress part of behavior)? And, yes, I had been sent home from other businesses for my dress so can empathize. Business is business: employees are paid for their time. If dress costs the employer money or risk, then that needs to be factored into retaining the employee.
If you've ever had a pierced tongue caress your naughty bits, it's a pretty fine sensation. And if you've never had a partner play nicely with their tongue in sensitive body pearcings, especially with gentle use of ice, you've missed out on a real treat.
Like a man who wears ties with subtle political meanings, or a woman wearing underwear that shows no panty lines, subtlety is the key.
No, I think if you take a representative sample most prospective employers would probably agree here.
Ah, how refreshing. A whole message based on fallacies pulled out of the ass. Starting with something which could be a good case of "affirming the consequent" with just a subtle touch of "appeal to popularity".
No, sorry, that implication goes the other way around: _if_ you want to be judged by that appearance, _then_ you'll spend time adjusting it to what you wish to be judged like. What you do is turning that implication around and building a whole poor-man's psychanalyst troll out of it. Which might make for an interesting read, but it's still a fallacy.
No matter how you slice it, "p => q" does _not_ convert in any form or shape to "q => p".
Combined with a whole non-sequitur that somehow it actually show's something about someone's character, and isn't just a mask they put on to game the system.
No, get this, the mask you wear says _nothing_ about who you _are_. Wearing a Jedi costume doesn't make you a Jedi. Wearing a Superman spandex outfit doesn't make you Superman. Wearing a leather jacket with a huge Harley-Davidson logo on the back doesn't mean you can actually ride a motorcycle or actually own a Harley-Davidson. And where I'm getting at: sure as heck wearing a business suit doesn't make you a business professional.
In practice, precisely because implications can't be turned around that easily, it says _nothing_. Maybe someone just genuinely likes a suit. Maybe they're just wearing it as a "pls hire me, I'm that desperate" sign. (Yep, I can see how an employer would love _that_ message.) Or maybe they think you're stupid enough to judge them by their costume instead of their ability. Etc.
Also, I dunno about your company, but in most other places on Earth, something wonderful was invented: work specialization. Only a few thousand years ago too.
The idea is that one person doesn't have to do everything, from mining the ore, to making a bronze plough, to ploughing the field with it, to baking their own bricks and pottery. Society as a whole is more efficient if each person does one job and does it well.
That's why commerce and eventually the currency have appeared.
That's also why a normal company, or at least the non-IT part of it, works in a specialized fashion. If it's a construction company, it has some very clear job separation between the people laying the bricks, the people qualified to operate a crane, the people doing the accounting, and the people selling the contract to a customer. That's what management is about: figuring out what mix of _different_ roles are needed for the job. Noone sane would say "nah, we'll get a bunch of people who can do _all_ the jobs, from brick laying to interior decoration to accounting to doing lunch with prospective customers."
Noone except an IT manager, that is. Here it's ok to be too too incompetent to figure out how many people one needs need for coding, how many for design, and how many to "do lunch" with the customers. Let's hire everyone as if it were a marketting position, and hope they can work interchangeably as a programmer too.
Does _every_ single IT guy in that company need to personally deal with the clients? Because that's the cornerstone of all this "noo, hire only people in suits, 'cause the others would put off the clients" bullshit argument. Do you need 100% of the hired personnel doing lunch with the clients at any given time? Then who the heck is writing the code or managing the servers?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I work in IT at the city-level. It's been interesting to watch the dress-code battles. Personally, I have bright-blue laces on my steel-toed combat boots. I don't have any peircings or tats visible though...but others around me do. There was a girl with some purple streaks in her hair that got slapped down a bit and was made to wear a uniform when she went out into the feild, but I'm in the midwest bible-belt so it's not too suprising.
As long as it's not overtly offensive, no one really gives a damn. If I had something on my head or upper neck someone might say something, but I know that and wouldn't dothat anyway. I would really like to re-do my industrials, but that is going to have to wait until I'm a full-time contractor again I think.
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
As you are well aware, there are people who go to extremes when it comes to this stuff. It's one thing to have one or two, but when it starts to make you stand out, that's when it becomes an issue.
The best way to think about it is if others may think of you as a freak because of it. One on your arm generally won't cause any problems for most conservatives(I'm far from being a conservative but I understand how they think), but facial piercings, nose rings and facial tatoos are generally frowned on. For that matter, while there are SOME technical jobs that may tolorate these things, you will probably find that career advancement will be halted at a certain point due to them. It's why managers generally don't have the facial tattoos and body piercings. If you need to talk face to face with customers or investors, it's best to avoid giving them any reason not to be comfortable.
News flash, when you have metal shit poking out of you, tattoos all over, and those huge-ass ear lobe stretchers, you don't look very corporate! Now for some that would be a positive, but for the rest of us that actually have goals in life and someone besides oneself to support, that might actually be important.
I see a bit of a contradiction in your post, Business rights:
"Businesses should be allowed to set whatever dress code they want."
vs. human rights (lets call them):
"The biggest problem I have with the "different" or "extreme" crowd is that some of them think it's *their* right to do whatever they want and that everyone around them should just deal with it."
Why is it OK for the business to do whatever it wants but not OK for a person? A "business" is not even a real thing, it's a mental construct. The people in the business are the ones making the choices. Should they be allowed to make discriminations _based soley on appearances_? Discrimination is one of those things that goes largely unnoticed when it's in fasion.
Kind Regards
"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us w
I would argue that "the guy who dresses like a Bible Salesman" is most likely to be a menace to society.
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
Basically nothing good comes from it and she got it so long ago it isn't important to her anymore. The problems or fears it causes include:
Well this is just my take, I have nothing personal against tattoos or piercings (well on girls tattoos are sexy to me but I feel less professionally interested in pierced people.. and my eyes are always going to the piercing instead of their eyes so it hinders my communication with them I think). If you think you might work in a conservative national or corporate culture one day it probably is better to go with a small tattoo than a piercing is my guess, but if you can make it without either until you are out of school you'll probably be happier later on I'd guess. Whatever!
You're kidding, right?
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Tatoos and Piercings aren't the only body modifications I can think of!
I would think that some people in an IT office might think that male and female enhancements could be a bit of a distraction as well. Especially when a fellow worker ends up spending more time looking at said enhancement instead of looking at the speaker in a meeting, projector display for an important meeting, or a some other meeting that is crucial to meeting a customer's deadline!
I have a bumber sticker in my cubicle that says
Your story illustrates how fully body mods have shifted in our culture from rebellious to conformist. People now get piercing and tattoos because their peers have them, rather than to stand out from their peers. Sorry, but it has become hard for me to look at a marked-up 16-year old and not roll my eyes. The very fact they they succumbed to peer pressure makes me view them as the opposite of the rebel they are trying to portray. It's like wearing an "I AM COOL(TM)" T-shirt. The fact that you think wearing that shirt makes you cool indicates how uncool you really are. Man, there goes my karma.
Get the book 'dress for success' Amazon.com Used & new from: $2.45 . Read the studies about the difference it makes just by dressing correctly. In most professional jobs you're expected to be reliable, personable, and articulate as well as good at your job. Body mods and poor dress trigger the stereotypes that you're none of the above. You want the big bucks you gotta tow the line.
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
There are some jobs where the gear is expected. I tell my daughter the men with long hair, bandanas, and earrings that we pass on the street are pirates home on shore leave. Harrrr!
Have misread this they way I did: "No, my exoskeleton doesn't hinder me in the workplace at all! I had to take that 'Deth Rulz' decal off, but after that, everything was fine..."
Guys, to this crowd, a "body mod" means a Borg arm!
6.2
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Random Signature #1
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"If god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" --Voltaire
Office wear should not be casual.
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
It's practically a tautology. Because the motivations behind the cutting edge of the body modification movement is grounded in shock value. Although most of us would now agree that tattoos and earrings are legitimate forms of personal expression, the front lines of BM are grounded in confrontationalism.
No doubt many people will object to this and suggest that implanted horns or split tongues are really self-expression dying to get out. They'll claim that that guy with the tiger tattoos and implanted whiskers was tragically born a tiger in a man's body. They'll claim that these idiots are clever artists, not just shock-value peddlers couching their wares in banal observation and bad music (yes, I've seen them live).
I respectfully disagree with those people. Sure, they serve their purpose, and perhaps split tongues will become so popular that 12th grade girls the world over will make rational decisions about whether the procedure expresses something they wish to convey about themselves. If that happens I'm sure popular opinion will shift against discriminating against those with split tongues.
But in the meantime at least part of the forefront of BM is about shocking and making people upset. There'll be discrimination against it; frankly, I suspect that its adherents would be upset if there weren't.
I've found that my body modifications being a hinder in my persuit of a career in the IT business. It's surprisingly common for people to be prejudical regarding my body modifications. It's actually been suggested that I might not be able to do my job as a programmer because of my body modifcations.
I have had surgical amputation from the neck up.
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
Put a religious symbol in your tattoo somewhere. I've never had anything but compliments from my bosses and coworokers. Suddenly descriminating against a tattooed freak becomes discriminating against a religion. Of course, both are equally wrong, but it's more obvious to the weak-minded when it's religion.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
I see a number of people have called the author on "stringent" dress codes (I, personally, haven't had to wear a tie since 1988, moron.)
BM - earrings are no biggie. Tattoos, which are probably covered by office casual clothes (except maybe on a bicep), yeah.
BM: I agree, this is confrontational. A few years back, at a Worldcon, this one table in the dealers' room had some *beautiful* t-shirts... but I couldn't stand there long enough to buy one - the folks behind the table were too pierced for me to be comfortable with. They can do it to themselves... but they lost a sale. Sort of counterproductive?
Sorry, I, personally, couldn't work with someone like that. Hey, there's a *reason* I didn't go into medicine: my stomach wouldn't take it.
But then, I usually figure that most folks have edges that sharp worn down by the world by the time they're 24. Some people, though, live in protected little worlds; the rest of us have to deal with the mundanes, all 99% of the world of 'em.
mark
I'm sorry, but the earrings-on-guys-means-you're-gay thing is twenty years out of date
Don't tell me, tell mr. "I don't hire straight guys with earrings".
You can't take the sky from me...
Personally, I don't care how you act, what you wear, or how you present yourself. But you need to realize that people are judging you by your appearance. It's human nature.
If you want to walk into a business meeting looking like an oversized pin cushion, be my guest. But you should be aware that there are consequences, and you should be prepared to accept them.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Wow, another company that doesn't know how to hire effectively. Big surprise.
You're not getting the causality. Just because someone dresses up doesn't mean they're mature and/or self-disciplined. It only means that they can somehow get clothes on their body (either by themselves, or with assistance). They might even have someone else buy their clothes/get them cleaned/hang them up.
Let me offer you an alternate way of determining maturity and self-discipline for each employee before they even set foot in the job interview: require applicants to complete a (very) small work-related project in order to get an interview. You know how some employers do their sniff test by doing phone interviews before they bring a candidate in? Imagine a way to smoke out the immature/unmotivated lUsers from the people who really want to work for you.
In this mini-project a system admin (for instance) would be required to submit a bash script that would setup iptables from scratch, only allowing specific traffic (say, https, http, ssh and ldap), but block all others. The candidate wouldn't even get an interview without submitting their script first, and the interviewer would use that script as part of the interview process. How many undisciplined, immature people would bother? Answer: none.
Sure, it takes time to set up the mini-projects, but it takes way more time (and money) to interview a buncha lUsers, hire the wrong one and eventually get rid of him (or her).
Yeah, right.
Put a religious symbol in the tattoo. Suddenly descriminating against the "freak" becomes discriminating against religion, and while i think both are equally wrong, it's more obvious to the weak minded (read: conservative) in the second case.
If religious symbols aren't your thing then you'll have to take the harder route. Lesson: don't fucking ink it unless you're willing to accept the social consequences and stand up for it. Taz is cute, but ask yourself if you're ready to go to the wall for him before they get the needle out.
My turn in the bowl, I have read many of the posts and the responses here and it continues to amaze me the level that people will self delude so as to blame their life on any available external source. Do I care if you choose to express yourself with ink and metal, no I do not but if the position requires meeting with my customer base then the answer changes. My interest in a customer is that they pay in full on time so that I can write pay checks to the other 10 oddballs (as good tech's tend to be) that helped to make that deal happen as well as to pay myself, the guy who has put his future in debt to build the company that makes the opportunity. When I evaluate an overly unique person no matter how bright I have to a ask if the upside they may bring is worth the interpersonal issues the free spirit can often cause (been there done that). Most often the answer is no. I can move to the less flamboyant person, not have to deal with the attitude, and alow all the staff to be overall more productive. Good people are worth their weight in gold once found and I will go to great lengths to retain them, but small companies and departments are not in the social justice business and tend to be very conservitive by nature, I have an hour or two to make a decision and am not a sociologist. If you give me any indication that you may be difficult then you will be deamed unworthy of the disruption you may cause. My concerns move from myself to my family, to the people that currently rely on my decisions for their livelyhood, to the rest of the world, Not fair but the way my world works.
What, exactly, is a "squarehead"?
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I've always found that it is less a matter of static elements in one's appearance (ie tattoos, being obese, long hair, piercings, whatever) and more a matter of presentation and the manner in which one handles oneself. I have seen many people who, upon first viewing, appear quite odd, but they behave in a manner that is professional and therefore are treated the same way. There are plenty of normal looking people who are entirely unable to do this.
Back to the original post: Are their difficulties with appearing different? Sure. You have to prove that you are going to work well in that environment. Sometimes that can not be accomplished. That being said there are plenty of places (especially tech shops) who are results oriented and will take you on if you can hack it.
"It is sad to see a family torn apart by something as simple as a pack of wild dogs."
I've skimmed all the posts (level 4) and haven't seen a mention of locs/dreadlocks yet. Are they considered body modification? Or just an alternative hairstyle?
I'm a server wench who started locking about a year ago. I'd seen an aquaintence's locs and liked them, but honestly I desperately needed a hairstyle would allow me to get ready and out the door in ten minutes or less, and locs definitely allow me to do that.
I work in a bank...and the locs didn't seem to cause much of a problem. Then again, they are small in diameter and I keep them fairly well groomed. It probably also helps that they are long enough now to throw back in a bun.
Any thoughts?
If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.
Man, and here I thought they just looked cool.
Well, now. I certainly been told.
Question---are you claiming that the Ainu and other cultures that practice decorative tattooing for a large portion of their populace are slave cultures? How exactly does that work out?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I'm seeing a lot of "circumcision is body modification!" in this thread. But folks generally get piercings and tattoos of their own volition, while the "to circumcise or not to circumcise?" decision is made by one's parents. Or, I suppose, in some cases, hospital staff.
Point is, you can't really blame people for being circumcised, not the same way you can blame them for being pierced or tattooed. Now, you can blame them for having their kids circumcised, but that's different.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Businesses aren't even a "mental construct", as you put it. A business is a piece of paper. Nothing more. That piece of paper gives people the right to act in the name of that piece of paper. Real people.
People (like me) who own businesses should be able to set whatever dress code we want. You are free to work for whichever company you want to or even start your own company. My right to set a dress code does not impede your right to modify your body in any way you see fit. But realize if you walk into my office looking for a job with a bunch of metal spikes embedded in your head, you're not going to get very far.
Also, what the parent poster was saying about "human rights" was that the body-mod crowd is trying to tell everybody else how to think and we object to it. You have no right to tell me what to think.
Also, you have no idea what discrimination is. Discrimination is a legal concept that says for certain "protected classes" of people, the fact that they are a protected class member cannot be considered in hiring/firing/promotion/etc. decisions. I could not have a policy in my business that says "we do not hire black people". The reason for this is "race" is a protected class. Does that mean I have to hire every black person who applies? No, it just means that I cannot consider race at all in hiring decisions.
I can tell you for a fact that "people with 6 pounds of metal embedded in their face for non-medical reasons" are NOT a protected class, and I can (and would) discriminate against such a person legally.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Although I understand the underlying point...
A goal is a dream with a deadline
they can believe in what they want as long as they don't try to push their beliefs onto me.
Perhaps you didn't see the note in the Female Genital Mutilation brochure, but the procedure isn't voluntary.
I suppose it's okay, though, as it is not you they're doing it to.
I hire people for my business. I want talented people. On the other hand, I want the clients in my conservative, right-wing community to feel comfortable when they come to my office. I want a professional atmosphere.
I was raised ever so slightly before tatoos and (to a lesser extent) piercings became a big deal. My opinion is that tattoos are for hookers and sailors.
On the other hand, I don't want to exclude people with tattoos and odd piercings from my labor force if it hurts my business.
All things being equal, I will take the non-tattooed, non-pierced person over his/her body modded competitor for a job at my office. Talent will rule, however, to some extent.
I view tattoos/mods (that my clients can see and may be offended/unnerved by) as being a "cost" of hiring the employee. If the cost exceeds the expected benefit, they won't get hired.
Another interesting issue comes up as well -- what to do with Plain Jane who comes into my office unmodded who hits 30 years old and wants to have a lifestyle change to shake things up? She goes out and gets a Mike Tyson tiger tattoo on part of her face. She is in a face-to-face customer relations position. What do I do? My answer is that she'd be canned.
Am I a right-wing fascist dickhead? Nope. I'm simply making an economic decision that results in putting more food on my table. I have no duty or obligation to carry the costs of an employee's body mod. To the extent that prejudice against body mods remains in my community which prejudice can cost me business, I am not allowing my employees to transfer the payment of that cost so that it comes out of my wallet. It's your decision to body mod, you should pay all the costs.
Until body modded people have protected status under nondiscrimination statutes, I have the right to fire (so long as I have a written policy, etc.), and I will. Not because I hate boddy modding, but because I don't want it to hurt my business.
If you smoke, you choose to pay the costs of smoking, and hyour employer shouldn't have to subsidize you. Likewise, if you body mod, your employer has no obligation to subsidize your lifestyle choice.
If you're gay, black, hispanic, disabled, etc., you cannot be discriminated against unreasonably because it is not a choice. I certainly won't discriminate on any of those grounds. On the other hand, body modders are not "forced" to do anything, and businesses are certainly free to discriminate. They get to make a choice as to whether forgoing that portion of the labor pool is good or bad for business. Based on my experiences, I think people will make similar business decisions as I would -- people with body-mods (obvious ones) will pay a penalty in the workforce as a result.
In today's employment market, I would be loathe (as an employee) to hurt my career prospects by body modding in a way that forces me into a competitive disadvantage. If your choices are based on non-monetary concerns, by all means mod away, but don't cry about it if it hurts your job prospects. If you do, you're being either whiny or naive, and neither of those characteristics are things I look for in my employees.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
I'd be a lot more spooked if my surgeon had fifteen little bits of tissue paper stuck to the fifteen facial cuts he gave himself shaving.
Actually seen it happen. I wasn't the one getting surgery, but it's a little unnerving.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Why jump to conclusions? If you are confused, threatened, or just curious why not simple ask? It only takes a few minutes and you'll get a much better idea of what they are trying to say, if anything. I understand that people with mods have to deal with others preconceptions, but that isn't an excuse for intelligent people to promote those ideas.
We have no problem hiring people where I work who have any sort of piercings, tatoos or whatnot. The only thing we really look for is that you look "put together" If your tatoos or esp your piercings tend to be placed acording to impluse, we probably won't hire you. If the koolaid in your hair looks like a small child did it, we won't hire you. But if it looks like OCD was involved, we probably will. We are looking for oraginzed people who take well though out risks. If that tatoo or RGB hair look well done, it's not a problem. I might have issues with a bone through the nose and a disk in the lip (unless it's cultural (sill be a trip though)). I've seen well put togerther freaks who look clean, and I've seen freaks who look like they got real drunk one night and then shot up, and then went on a piercing rampage. Translation, don't look like a junkie.
I only can speak about the effects of exposed tattoos in the corporate workplace.
After graduating college, I got a job as a systems analyst at a well known company.
After receiving my first paycheck I immediately began my dream of getting a japanese body suit.
My mods:
I've two full half sleeves, chest peices, and a back peice that runs from the top of my shoulders to the backs of my legs; this is still being worked on, it was started in 2003.
When I first got the half sleeves a couple of years ago, I remember being immediately struck with the difference it made on "first impressions"
My sleeves go down right above my elbows, so most short sleeve button down shirts only reveal a 1-2" band of tattooed skin below the sleeve bottom.
This small amount of exposed tattoo was enough to get negative reactions from 50% of the people who I see on a daily basis.
Working in a diverse environment, many belief systems and cultures are in play.
I found that I was able to get a larger percentage of positive reactions when meeting people if I covered up by wearing long sleeves.
On one offsite, my organization went to the lake and yours truly decided to let go and remove my shirt.
This exposed a large group of diverse people to my back peice.
Things were very quiet, people appeared to be doing their best to ignore me altogether.
Conclusion:
It is generally not acceptable in a large coporate environment, so know your limitations at work. You WILL get negative reactions from people.
You may feel compelled to go out of your way to make new people feel comfortable around you, in order to overcompensate for their first impression of you.
I have found that for the sake of my own career advancement, covering up my arms is MUCH easier than educating every Tom, Dick, and Harry on my choice to permanently alter my skin's appearance (that is exhausting).
I want co-workers/clients to feel comfortable all the time, if that means covering up then it's a small price to pay for the paycheck.
Some will probably not agree with hiding the modifications, for those highly empathetic people like myself, covering up is easy and it works.
I do research in the chemical industry for a living. I have five earrings, two of them stretched. My nose, tongue, and back of my neck are also pierced, and I have a tattoo that completely covers my right calf.
I keep my appearance at work strictly professional. I'm not here to make a statement by my personal appearance; I'm here to do a job. The only piercings you can see when I'm at work are my ears - everything else is either covered up or has concealing jewelry in it. I wear business casual to work, just like everyone else. None of the managers in my direct line all the way up to the VP of my division have any problem with how I look, nor have I taken flak from any of the managers here on site.
To me, being allowed to wear earrings to work shows that my employer respects me as an individual. It's a courtesy that costs the company nothing, but it improves my morale immensely. It also builds loyalty. My piercings are not just a fashion statement, they *mean* something to me. I would turn down a $10k raise to work at another company, if I had to take my plugs out and let my lobes close back up to do it. You may think I'm foolish, that's your perogative, but we all have our priorities in life, and this is mine.
I've interviewed a number of potential new hires to the company, and they've all been favorably impressed by the fact that my large earrings are allowed. It conveys the message that here, individuality is respected. Your technical competence and accomplishments matter far more than anything else. This is the kind of culture a lot of young people, myself included, are looking for.
Yes, us pierced people are well aware that some people are going to discriminate against us because of how we look. That just means we have to work harder and perform better than the rest. If I were an employer, that's the kind of attitude I'd be looking for in an employee.
notice how this was posted by an anonymous coward too?
Hmmm, inflammatory AC comment... around here we call those a troll. However I must post AC myself or risk undoing moderation elsewhere in this article...
I agree that the parent needs to remove the stick from his/her back end... but one could also consider those that go out of their way to look "different" (or simply be noticed) and then bitch when it's recognised. For example, girls (IE, guys are guilty too) who dress in revealing clothing, and then lodge a complaint that "Bob from Accounting" is staring at them because they were really trying to attract handsome "Stu from maintenance."
How about the dudes that have 1.5' high spiked hair, 150 piercings, and when you're checking them out on the bus or whatever because they stand out they give you the "WTF are you staring at man, want to start something" angle.
In short, people have a right to dress how they want, but if they want equal treatment they should expect that
a) Dressing to be noticed gets you noticed, and not just by those you want
b) It isn't a perfect world, and companies have to think on their reputation with clients. Even though your potential future boss might not mind your tongue,nose,eyebrow,etc rings... he has to consider that the overseas client with a $1,000,000 contract might.
I personally have an earring (rather low-key nowadays, yes) and am considering a tattoo once I find something "me" enough... but I do take it out for interviews. I've talked to some very respectable people with rather unusually "looks", but also been accosted by others. My personal favorites are women with plunging necklines and necklaces with shiney baubles who get offended when your eyes get glued to their chest area... you can't put something glittery right between the peaks and not expect somebody with an "Ooooh Shiney" complex to end up staring.
I have facial hair. And when I was looking for a new IT job, I went to like 5-6 interviews without a bite. Then I remembered something we were told in high school once by a comedian on a career day. He said that facial hair makes people seem more dark, mysterious, like they're hiding something. And for a comedian to be more accepted well by an audience, they need to be clean shavin. So, I applied this idea to a job interview and shaved off the goatee. The very next interview I had turned to a job offer. And then I just grew the goat back after I was comfortable with my job security. You are judged by looks people. Take out the nose rings, shave off the beard, cut the hair, cover up the tats and look professional. You will notice a difference in how people treat you.
There's no place like ~/
Except if you're not trying to distinguish yourself. How other people look is basically irrelevant to me, so I try to return the favor. People need to grow up, seriously. Does the little chat you receive mean women with nice breasts can't be in business? Because men are likely to spend more time looking than listening?
Humanity is diverse; a little engineered difference hardly compares to that which already permeates the world already. There really are other things you could spend your time worrying about than how someone looks.
Read: Rabbit Rue - Free serial nove
Wow. You have a degree in the soft sciences ('cultural anthropology') and you're well-paid? That is impressive.
Wait, do you deal weed? Because while it's well-paying, I don't know if that counts as societal acceptance in the form of cash money.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Most people seem to be focusing on the impact of body mods on just getting a job. But what about advancement, especially in the direction of management? I can easily see rank-n-file techies being hired with piercings, etc. (although we don't really have any here --probably an East Coast thing). As someone once said: for engineers, the weirder you look, the smarter people assume you are!
However, when you are promoted to any sort of management role, there's a whole other level of "professionalism" that's expected. And while it's easy enough to go buy a new business-class wardrobe, those tats and large piercings are harder to change. As soon as you start dealing with suits, body modifications are gong to be a hinderance.
sex, race, and religion
:-)
Sometimes even these are stretched though. How many people have their finger on the hair-trigger of the "race" button ready to claim discrimination. How about agencies (and I know some in gov't here) which have actual policy to try and hire X visible minority employees to avoid the look of discrimination. I know many non-whites who are just as good or better workers than whites, in truth you're discriminating against them by assuming they otherwise lack the skill to acquire a job of their own merits.
Gender... how many have found this situation. Solitary member of gender Y makes offhand comments about gender X. Forwards "funny" emails bashing gender X to similar co-workers of gender Y. Yet gets offended and hits HR when member of gender X makes a comment or has a picture of scantily-clad gender-Y member pasted in the lid of a lunchkit...
Religion... well I think that in many ways religion can dictate how one conducts oneself. However, while your potential employer shouldn't ask questions on religion during an interview, neither should you urge their conversion during an interview or constantly to your co-workers during breaks
I'm sitting on the train, on my way work. In front of me sit a guy and a girl, the guy is complaining about how the job market sucks. He just can't find a job doing anything other than cleaning toilets. He's "got skills that no one seems to care about" and he's "really wasting his talents" swinging a mop.
Now, I'm not sure what his talents and skills are. What I do know is he's got 6 piercings in his face and about 8 in his ears. He has a tattoo on his neck that appears to be a gangsta with a pistol. Underneath the cartoon thug it says, "4-LIFE".
Wow. I am absolutely stunned that this type of discrimination is going on! I have no problem whatsoever with someone like this serving my fries, cutting my lawn or picking up my garbage.
This is outrageous that this fine young man can't make a go in this world!
Folks. Sometimes you can't make your own rules. I know you are smarter than the rest of the world. I know your personal sense of style and individuality is what everyone should embrace and hearld. But we don't. You look like a fucking jackass. Is it a coincidence that the prison yard is a ocean of inked skin? Is it?
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
im heavily tatted and a few piercings, i have to cover them up and take them out, which i hate, but i like my job so i do it....but what im gettin at is this is no new delimna, and it spans way past the scope of tats and piercings.....watch easyrider, when they run across the small town in lousiana and everyone freaks out....this is a free country, but when you express those freedoms it makes people scared....people are scared of true freedom.
> There really are other things you could spend your time worrying about than how someone looks.
The question wasn't "How should you evaluate other people" - i'm not exactly sure who you're preaching at or for what purpose.
The question was "Will Body Modifications Hinder IT Professionals?" - and if you are a professional, it means you work for a client (be they internal or external), and anything that hinders your selling of your product to your client hinders you as a professional, whether the reason for taht is fair or not, logical or not.
YOU need your clients (if you are a professional), not the other way around.
-DVK
"The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it"-R.A.Heinlein
I find the amount of general irresponsibility within those I know aged 20-30 rather astounding. Not that I'm a saint mind, but frankly I find that a good number of my peers lack in judgement, respect, and general tolerance.
No, I'm not religious or fanatical, but the number of people I know that are very uncareful about "protection," drink/smoke themselves comatose, street-race or otherwise drive in a retarded manner, drink and drive, etc etc is just disturbing. Perhaps it's also that nowadays there are more ways to win a Darwin than people realize. 200 years ago we didn't have great speeding engines of death, if you got pissed at the barn dance you walked home. There were less complex machines capable of frying/gouging/dismembering you in the workplace, etc. We didn't know about the dangers of smoking, etc
Partially I must blame the current financial-social system though. When it often takes two working peoples to make a decent life... the upper/middle-class citizens are less able to reproduce, and the "lower" class (wage-class) often have less ability to support children on their own or offer continuing education, etc.
Yes, but to be realistic the "little old lady" client will be much easier to work with initially if you have a nice short and pants than if you have ragged cut-offs, a skull+dagger tattoo, and quadrupal pierced ears. Yes, you might impress her on the end, but only after you've done a lot more to overcome initial impressions than "Joe Normal" from the next cubicle over did...
Since being dumped out of the bottom of the recession and tech crash, I have decided to get body mods and am specifically retraining in a non IT career that will favor them being acceptable. origionally I thought: healthcare is booming, how bout radiology? took a few classes then realized its just another conservative corporate like atmosphere. now automotive and auto body work sounds good. nice pay 17 bucks an hour and I have a feeling tattoos and piercings may be almost expected on a grease monkey, gearhead or that person sanding down and repainting your car after some idiot pulled out in front of you.. heh. think my idea of choosing a career that fits your lifestyle choices will work / is a good idea? (tm) please comment!
I categorically deny that.
Basically, he outlined a lot of details about how he handles his business, and his opinions on tats in general. As he pointed out, he himself (and his significant other) have plenty of tats, but...
a) None over a certain size
b) None on the face, or generally in areas that are so visible as to stand out when you are in formal-wear
For some people, tattoos are about being rebellious. For others, they are an artform. I've seen some beautiful tattoos, and must say I much more greatly respect an "artistic" tattoo than a skull-and-dagger on the arm (this includes some very "cultish" tattoos which, while frightening for some I'm sure, still look very interesting and artistic).
Everyone has some form individuality whether it may be facial hair or tatoos. When I was younger, I used to shave my goatee and then grow it back once I was hired. As an adult, I do not touch it since it is who I am. It seems to be a career move since a lot of the hire management have breads. As for body mods, I believe it is now a good idea at all to have them at all. I am not going to preach why it isn't. I do see a lot of teens and young adults who have them and think, man, what are they going to do in an interview in a coporate environment. Grant it, the corp is hiring your mind now your body but it looks bad when you have clients. Tatoos are okay since you can wear a long sleeve shirt and no knows it is there but piercings are different and vulgar.
can a white guy shave his head now and be percieved as normal? No, not balding too bad, just got a very small bald spot - I just like being shaved bald? I also have ear piercings but I can take those out any comments? my guess is that its not too far from normal although there may be *some* who wonder why you don't want to grow hair.
Since I can't judge you by your appearance over the internet I'll judge you by what you write instead. And... I wouldn't want to hire you.
I have large 5/8 inch gauges in my ears but when I take them out they shrink to well formed, healed, circular holes about the diameter of a no. 2 pencil I was under the impression that I could simply take them out for an interview and if someone asked about the holes I could just explain that I took my rings out out of respect for the interview and also mentioned that I can take or leave wearing them depending on what was allowed. my other logic was, (and I would not actually say this in an interview) it is just a rationale I have and it is thus: hey, Im not wearing my earrings? noone ever said anything about forbidding large holes in your ears - and no I am not going to stretch them till they hang - where they are are fine. rephrased : hey I took my earrings out for the job, am I not complying? another issue I wonder about is that since I am only mildly balding, can my razor shaved head still be a detractor? Can a white guy do this yet and not be frowned upon? my guess is yes, moreso than piercings.
I agree with the employer.
Its not about you. Its about your boss and your customers view of the company. We are all whores for the $$$.
If my boss does not like your hair or you are in a special industry (I work in tourism) then you must conform or get out. We are adults and there are other jobs.
Not to sound like a jerk, but where I work I have been sent home and written up for forgetting to shave one day and developing a 5-oclock shadow.
Also I have seen black guys sent home for putting dreads in their hair and women wearing earings.
Mainly because we talk to tens of thousands of guests daily who will go to a competitor if we offend any of them or appear unprofessional.
This may also be due to the fact we are paid absolutely shit so of course we look like people who do not want to be there.... shrugs shoulders.
But if you worked for a company who had big contracts with a bank for example you would need to wear a white shirt and a tie for the days you went on site. Otherwise a competitor might be viewed as more compatible with the company.
http://saveie6.com/
My word. What an impressive display of conservative asshattery.
Both jobs I've had so far have had no real dress code. The old one kind of expected us to deal with clients occasionally, and had a no-jeans-when-you're-talking-to-clients rule, but it seems that unfaded black jeans don't count as jeans, because they never had any issues with me.
I wear black most of the time. Not lacy victorian goth attire with raccoon makeup, mind you, just relatively plain black pants and black shirts (especially now, in winter). This has invited curious comment from co-workers precisely once at each job (why nobody ever notices when people wear an unusually large amount of pink, I don't know), but nobody cares. I haven't noticed if anyone has any tattoos or piercings, but if anyone did, I doubt anyone would care either.
Anal dress code rules are an indication that other stupid rules may also be in force, and stupid rules are symptomatic of a) an unpleasant and oppressive working environment and b) a company too bogged down by micromanagement by self-important, clueless bureaucrats to get anything interesting done. Show me a company which has a strict suit-and-tie policy but is otherwise an absolutely lovely and relaxed place to work, and I'll be very surprised.
This may be repeating an obvious point which has already been made, but - if you're not desparate, then keep looking until you find a nice place to work. Life is too short to be miserable for eight hours out of every working day unless you really have no choice. Companies without retarded policies do exist; they may just be tricky to find. If you have the time, try.
Tattoos were traditionally a indication of some insecurity in the past (financial, physical, emotional, geographical, family, chemical, etc, etc). I know, as my tattoos date from the 80's & I did a survey once of everyone I knew that had tattoos & they all suffered from insecurity in the past (broken homes, abuse, jail, the insecurity of drug dependence, the need to be in a gang, the ongoing insecurities of a criminal lifestyle, etc, etc).
These days tattoos seem to be the fashion. Just look at all the trendy women living in trendy innercity suburbs/neihbourhoods & trendy beachside ares that have lower back tattoos. & the trendy blokes who obviouly spend a fortune on fresh streetwise hairstyles 'n clothing, that make a commitment to regularly workout & be tanned, that have profeshionally done tats that look like streetwise tatts. It's like the way trendies ride Harleys now.
I winder how these people will react when the fashions end up changing, as they always do. Such people habitually dump fine clothing on a whim, simply because it's no longer hip, but what will they do when their tatts are no longer hip?
I bet tattoo removal will be a boom industry in about a decade.
Meanwhile blokes like me who got their tatts 20 years ago will still be content wearing flannalette shirts, basic jeans & Blundie work boots as they were 20 years ago & will still be driving things like old slant-6 or Hemi-6 Valients, HR Holdens & weird stuff like Austin 1800s.....well if there are any left.
I'm completely covered with tats and have many piercings. I also am the most professional looking of my co-workers. While they are trying to get away with tshirts and shorts (and looking like slobs), I dress a notch above our supposedly mandatory business casual code. Which is not a bad idea, and frankly makes dressing for work easier. I don't care if it makes me look like a bore - I'm not out to impress coworkers with my individualistic appearance. I want them to judge me by my ideas.
This is a complete non-issue. You can be professional *or* unprofessional appearing regardless of body mods. Sure, tattoing your face or hands isn't a swell idea for most people, and even with in body art circles these are recognized as the extremes. But if you make smart choices in your business attire and in your body mods, you can have a career and have a life outside of work that is your own.
Now I have a friend who has a state-job in Family Services. The rule in his office states that you may have no more than three pictures in your cubicle.
Free MacMini
Never seen any discrimination based on body modification. However, I was subject to extreme derision from fellow Unix nerds for occaisionally wearing a suit to work, and was actually turned down for a job at the old SCO because I showed up for the interview in a three piece suit. Amazing how all these people that insist they have a right to show up for work in jeans and t-shirt and shouldn't be judged by their appearance can't accept the fact that others might want to dress differently from them. And if you really want to be given shit from your coworkers, try showing up for work in full Scottish formal attire, i.e. a kilt!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
You're absolutely right- if I wanted to move up through the ranks there of course would be a time where how I want to look would be superceded by who they think i should look, and I'm ok with that. When the day comes that I want to lead more than a small team of developers, I'll consider my options.
10 years down the road I hope to be running my own company, but if that's not the case, like I said in the original, I can adapt. Supporting my family is always the overriding factor. If I were asked to change something, I probably would if I wasn't the only one (like if it became policy) rather than try to make a futile point and have to get a job making pizza or working at McDonalds.
I think what's important to note is that employers who pay you decent wages and still don't care what you look like are putting the value in the right place- you.
R(k)
nt
"The only difference between tattooed people and non-tattooed people is that tattooed people are much cooler and can kick your ass"
I like my women like my coffee... pale and bitter.
Nobody would ever ask "Do body modifications help promote IT professionals?", because we all know the answer.
Therefore, I conclude that they definitely don't help, might hurt, and thus should be avoided.
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
Is this guy for real?
I'm surprised no one has realized this, but... if a job is going to be anal about piercings/tattoos, then chances are it's a place you won't be happy with anyway... unless, you are also anal about piercings/tattoos.
If a place doesn't wanna hire me and utilize my many years of programming experience because of my tattoos and piercings, then that's their loss.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
One can exploit them better
I couldnt agree more with you about this guy (your parent post i guess), he is totally wrong. BUT! i cant belive you are such a naive (or whatever you call it) person:
"I find it pleasant to work in a homogeneous environment where everyone looks the same." Did you skip that all those classes in elemtenary school where they teach tolerance, what prejudice is, that its bad, and about diversity. Perhaps you'd be happier in a slave labor camp in some foreign country where everyone looks the same, or is forced to lest they be persecuted, segragated or killed for doing so.
The glory of America is that A. we all dont have to think like you, and B. that we dont all think like you. People fought and died for these rights. Whether or not you or I have any opinion as to their appearance is irrelevant.
Well, he doesnt have to go to "a far away foreign country", you could send him right into Guantanamo Bay where Amnesty International declared the military base "A Human Rights Scandal"
Come on, America is no example of nothing related to Liberty or even Democracy when it comes to international order, and now, with laws as the Patriot Act, they arent being even in the domestic order!
Just as a disclosure: I must admit im no fan of North America in any way (USA as a Country, not every person in it, but those who represent them), they have supported all types of prosecution around the world, supported dictatorships when it was for their benefit, and done a lot of wrong in the name of good (or liberty or whatever).
no sig
[nt]
That's not obscure; it comes with a Wikipedia link. If I'd used a nonstandard spelling of some name to make it hard to Google, and not link it to anything, then I'd be obscure.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I don't care about tattos or body-modifications. If it bothers me, I avoid looking.
But don't smell bad is the Unspoken Rule for me. Odor is pervasive. No BO. No excessive in-your-face-feel-my-new-fragrance from ladies, too.
Hey, let me give a tip to those of you who want to be different: don't shower for a week, don't shave, and use jeans for 6 months without washing. Go to work smelling like a homeless person. Then explain you believe in "natural odors". You will be "different" alright.
I used to work for IBM, who has no mention of tattoos and piercings in their dress code, but was penalized and publically (via email) mocked to the entire (600+ employees) floor about my tattoo.
When I brought this to the attention of my boss, he told me that she was a higher up, and whatever she said goes.
I believe that it hindered my success, and quit because of it. I'm still debating legal action against her.
"If you need to distinguish yourself from other people by what you look like, there's a big chance you have no other beneficial qualities to dinstinguish yourself with". There are exceptions to this, but not many in my experience.
Then I think it's safe to say that you don't have very much experience.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
> Then I think it's safe to say that you don't have very much experience.
Either that, or I don't evaluate people by how creative they are at self-expression through outward appearance.
"The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it"-R.A.Heinlein
THINK for a moment about the word "minority". You are not being insightful.
Minority? The United States, Canada, and the European Union collectively make up a minority of the world population.
Christ I hate California.
Plan on repenting from your sin of hatred?
So things that are naturally occurring, but occur in a small percentage of a population would be normal by #2, but not by #1. OK?
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
Here's the expert on all such sartorial and cosmetic crisis: http://www.dba-oracle.com/dress_code.htm Ah, I'm glad to be working somewhere with absolutely no dress code ;)
Me (Blog)
I very much enjoyed your philosophy lesson. You also either have no idea what the word "bigot" means, or you have misjudged me. I have nothing against human pin-cushions as people. They are simply not welcome to work for my company. There is a difference.
Regarding discrimination, I'll grant you that discrimination can be different from the legal definition, if you grant me that discrimination is not always a bad thing. For instance, in my apartment rental business I discriminate against low-income individuals who could not afford to pay rent. I also discriminate against individuals with poor credit and against those with felony convictions. I discriminate based on criteria that you would never understand why. This is all perfectly legal and desirable. I have not yet had to follow through on an eviction because I discriminate effectively up front during the application process. Fewer evictions means fewer people getting tossed out into the street by the county sheriff, a humiliating experience.
Just so you know, I do have (and have had in the past) tenants with body piercings and tattoos. I've never had a tenant who looked like a pin-cushion, but I would not reject an applicant for having too many piercings or tattoos.
By the way, a qualified applicant could not win in court if it could be proven that I rejected him or her because of too many piercings. Neither could a rental applicant win. I see that this bothers you, but no one has the right to work for a particular company. No company is required to hire anyone. And "people with tattoos" are not a protected class. Obviously I would never tell someone that I rejected him on account of his appearance, even though the law is on my side. I don't really feel like paying my lawyer to demonstrate that fact, so I don't go out of my way to offend people.
The fact that I am allowed to run (more than) one corporation has little to do with the government. Oh, sure, they are chartered by the state of Delaware, but nothing says that I have to have that piece of paper. I could simply provide a service in exchange for compensation and pay others to help me. Call it a corporation, a sole-proprietorship, or just some guy trying to make a living. It doesn't matter.
You said you think it hurts me that I would exclude human pin-cushions from working for me. Well, my company will not be represented by people with such an appearance. When you modify your body in such a way, you are making a statement. If you want to make an individual statement, please be my guest! State all you want and state some more to your little heart's content. But you will not be making such a statement as a representative of any company I own.
Cheers!
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
If you are confused, threatened, or just curious why not simple ask?
Again, that's exactly my point. If an employer is looking at hiring one of two people to do important IT work that involves interacting under time pressure with other people, and all other things being equal, why would she hire the person who brings - to every meeting with new vendors, customers or co-workers - the baggage of having to field questions (and take time to explain) it? Deliberately outlandish, provocative dress or body art are, well, provocative. It provokes behavior, response, and the time those things require. Meanwhile, no IT business is getting done. Nothing's being created, protected, backed up, maintained. It's bad enough when once in a while an employee's behavior distracts from the actual work for which everyone's getting paid... but when someone brings a deliberate, built-in, high-profile distraction designed to take attention away from other people/things - and it's there every day - that says something about how much that person values the business, the clients, the staff, and the financial health of the organization writing the paycheck and providing the benefits.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Either that, or I don't evaluate people by how creative they are at self-expression through outward appearance.
Fine, but generalizing the issue to the extent that, if someone feels a need to look different, then they must be rather dull in other respects seems unfair. In my experience, people who dress differently or have a different appearance may or may not be generally dull in my perception. People can have all sorts of needs and problems and strange desires and still be good and interesting human beings.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
"I'll just remember what my dad said: "Never get a tattoo where a judge can see it. If you're ever before a judge and he sees a tattoo on your neck or hands, he'll brand you a criminal.""
I just interviewed for a new IT posisition at a major cellular communications company with my hat on backwards, jeans, and a tshirt. No, I don't have any body mods, but I have been working on a design for a tattoo that I'm going to be getting... The reason I'm replying to this is because I don't think it's really an issue anymore. My outlook is that if I can't be myself and do my job for you, I don't want to work for you. My work is professional, my talk is professional, my work ethic is professional, and I think those are what matter now anyway. It's one thing for "Mr. Slacks-n-tie" to come walking in with all his certifications (and I'm not knocking them, I'm working on my MCSE myself) with no experience. But it's another to have "Mr. Pierced-n-tattooed" who has already been working in the industry and knows what to expect. When I'm an IT manager (one day), I'll be looking at character more than resume, and from what I've seen in the past that's what most people are looking for anyway.
Such a topic seems to bring out the best and worse in people... ok the worse... lol.
While there are arguments on both sides of the issue and each is just as valid as the other. The first thing is leave religion out of it... we had enough wars caused by that silly activity of man. As for tattoos et al. Yes, we have the right to do as we wish... yet we must also learn moderation. The fact is rebel or not, were are but a unit in the grand machinery of society. And yes, we do not want a half-human/half-junkheap to work or confront us in business, but we also need to be more open and realise that attribute X does not make the man.
Yet, it seems even if we do live in the 21st century. Man is still running around with thier heads stuck in the 19th. We obviously have not learned anything from the 20th. And continue to live in our own self-rightous biggetory ways.
If the 90 year old grandma cannot come to grips with the new world, let her take her business elsewhere. The fact is how we look does not matter to the results we accomplish.
Yes, moderation is something that indeed some people are lacking... We cannot rebuild the world in one giant leap forward, it takes time... and so far we F'ed up much of it so far.
Personally, I dont have a tattoo or anything like that... but I would not judge anyone if they had anything... that being said I would look at you strangely if you were standing in front of me with enough metal to build a car.
Moderation ppl....
Nuff said.
- Dragonlord Warlock (aka Dion) "So many computers.... so little time...."
I've found that the tolerance for this sort of thing varies wildly from place to place. I've got blue hair. (well, half of it) I'm originally from Dallas where you certainly will get funny looks and nobody seems to take you seriously, but in California, it's pretty much a non-issue. Yes, I am a college student, so that helps, but I'm an engineering student where you have to put on a suit (I tend to wear a shirt with it that matches my hair. It adds to the effect. Sort of the whole anime villain thing.) and give a presentation to a bunch of surgeons on the instrument you just designed that they're going to use.
I had to let it wash out before going home to salvage my chances of getting a job.
-twb
I refuse to cut off my ponytail. Have not had any significant problems with it in the workplace. Casual business dress is the code where I work.
I have a tattoo it is not normally visable, but on one very hot day I took off my jacket and a little of it could be seen peeking out under my sleeve. My boss was in the room and I apologized to him and he asked mt why. Now this guy worked for IBM he is definatly the suit and tie type and he has no issue with it because I can do my job. Since then I have pierced my nose again not an issue with my boss or my clients.
there's two things going on here. there's fallout from the 60s and there's simple math.
fallout from the 60s -- a lot of people who are like anti-tats and shit are saying things like "oh well you're not really a rebel" or "if you're so rebellious how can you get any work done?"
it's useful to pay attention to this because the pro-tat guys haven't been using the word "rebel" at all, while the anti-tat guys have been leaning on it very heavily. the anti-tat guys are seeing the whole thing as this act of rebellion against a system, which would be an accurate perception if it were 1967. the pro-tat guys are seeing it as a fashion choice. that's all it really is.
the second part, the simple math, is that fashion choices influence perception, and that in some fields perceptions are everything, in some fields perceptions are nothing, and in most fields they're somewhere in between. we probably won't have a tattooed President for a while; rock stars without tattoos look like posers; and everybody else is just going to have to find a balance. in some parts of the world, like Alabama or Iran, religious fundamentalism dictates dress codes, and anybody with any real soul is basically fucked. for most of us it's just a matter of do people like your fashion choices -- in which case, no problem -- and if not, does your job performance and skill set insulate you from having to give a fuck?
personally, I work in IT but I'm tired of IT. have hella geek skills but I have hella art skills too. I'm looking to get back into creative work -- ad agencies, graphic design firms, etc. right now I look like a normal person, and this is a huge disadvantage. it's not normal to have hella geek skills and hella art skills, it's remarkable, so I need to look remarkable. I need to go and get a new tat, some new piercings, etc.; in other words, this is on my pre-interview to-do list.
really what I need is blue hair, except I'm basically too old for that. I'm getting kind of thin on top. I'm working up the courage to shave the top of my head bald while growing a mullet in the back.
I'd say you don't have very much experience through your assumption that they're expressing themselves for your pleasure through their outward appearance.
My modifications are solely done for me, nobody else. It's my body, I have to live in it from now until death. If something makes life that bit more enjoyable then I'm sure as hell going to have it done.
pierced through their flesh in the name of fashion...
Actually old sport, I have my tounge pierced as I like licking my partners cunt.
Of course, your millage may vary.
Are you serious?
Go to Defcon[0], get on the network, wait five seconds, then find the guy who just owned you and ask him if he's got any tattoos. Hell, I bet he's got a hair colour that doesn't occur in nature, too.
[0] Yeah, lots of random posers, too.