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Sandals and Ponytails Behind Slow Linux Adoption
Eric Giguere writes "CNet is reporting that according to former Massachusetts CIO Peter Quinn 'the lax dress code of the open-source community is one of the reasons behind the software's slow uptake in commercial environments.' In particular, Quinn blames the 'sandal and ponytail set' for sluggish adoption of Linux by businesses and governments." From the article: "Quinn, who faced plenty of scrutiny over his support of the OpenDocument standards-based office document format, said proponents of open source in government faced formidable opposition from vested interests if they went public."
Since when does a developer's alleged mode of dress influence the decisions of those who never meet him? It's yet another excuse: "Oh, those open source guys are hippy dippy slobs with pony tails and sandals! Let's buy from MicroSoft who makes their (sales) people dress up nice!!"
It's bullshit.
Besides, microsofties wear west coast developer attire too, just they don't let them make sales calls. Also, I know damn well what the Apple geeks wear, and it isn't suit and tie. I see them whenever I drive down the DeAnza Blvd in Cupertino. They are definitely ponytail compliant - although some of them their *only* hair is their ponytail, with nothing on top!
use Sig::Witty;
but your very own work and feelings about yourself change based on your dress.
While that can be a positive correlation for some folks, for many of us it is a negative correlation. The dressier the environment, the less relaxed I feel and the less I am able to concentrate on producing high quality product.
But I have noticed a large positive correlation here in the stuffy Midwest between dress and pay. My previous job was in IT at an airline. I took a 20K/year pay cut just so I could wear blue jeans and sandles. Fuck that business casual crap.
FreeSpeech.org
Sometimes dressing in less "professional" apparel can lose you a sale. Sometimes, it can gain you a sale. I know a lot of the sales guys are somewhat leery of dragging along scruffy looking geeks to business meetings, but from what I've seen it often works to convince businessmen of the credibility of tech. "Wow look at all those piercings, if the company lets him get away with that he must be brilliant!" This works well in smaller, more technical markets I imagine.
I also notice that the work environment at a company is one of the most important aspects in attracting really talented people. Smart people, who love what they do would rather dress like slobs, have free beer, and a ping-pong table than make an extra $20K a year. The environment is worth a lot to a person's quality of life. Now that does not mean just because a company is relaxed it has talented people, but if you are looking for extraordinary people, that is one very visible sign.
I also notice that given a relaxed or absent dress code, the clothing of choice widely varies. Some people prefer to wear a suit every day, even if they are just going to sit at a desk and code for 12 hours. Others will be wearing shirts with fake boobs attached. I have not noticed that either type tends to be more or less proficient.
I know I'm not the only one to have noticed this trend and I know it is something in some businessmen's minds when they are meeting with new partners, suppliers, or customers. The rule that a dress code will get you more sales is not universal and does not apply to all market segments. A dress code might get you more sales, right up till all your talent moves on and your more relaxed competitor starts to clobber you in head-to-head comparisons.
Shower. Shave. Buy some button up shirts and a pair of slacks. From my experience, this makes all the difference in the world. Like it or not - it's the way the game is played.
Funny, having worked at several successful software companies I've heard the phrase, "he wore a suit to the interview," used in a negative way more than once. Often your appearance does matter, but you need to tailor it to your audience. In some markets bringing along a sloppily dressed geek will instill in your potential customers a belief that your product must be advanced. In others, it is seen as a sign of a small player, not worth dealing with. Most customers expect a somewhat professional looking salesman, but in many cases they are happy to see "those geeky guys" if they tour the facilities or if someone comes out to install a few million dollars of high-tech gear for them.
As for the game, that isn't half of it. Knowing where the good strip clubs/bars/hookers/drugs are is more likely to get you sales than your dress, from what I've seen. I've seen us lose sales to people we were pounding into the ground in head-to-head comparisons, because the competition spent a week taking the purchaser out to strip clubs. The point is, sales is more than dress code, and lack of dress code may actually get you more sales in some markets.
it's a good thing to remember that ties and folded down shirt collars used to be the sign of drug users, rebels, and layabouts, in earlier times.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Kind of. I do war with this a bit myself... when I went into business for myself, I had a nosering, for example. Lost it one day, slow to replace it, healed over... and I would kind of like to have it back, but now i'm all nervous about it (now that the biz is moving up).
On the one hand, I very much like the idea that perhaps dressing as YOU feel comfortable could strike some sort of blow for a meritocracy. That is, if it makes just a few people stop and re-evaluate their set of assumptions about "people with piercings" or what have you... it may make some beneficial changes. Perhaps encourage more people to look at substance instead of image. and in the meantime, I get to look the why I like to look.
On the other hand, if it spooks someone, it could cost me and my biz a whole lotta bread. And while I like my nosering, I wouldn't walk out and pay $5000 to have one, and I'm not sure I'm willing to risk that (or more, or less) simply for a fashion accessory which isn't ultimately all that important.
But, maybe that's the kind of thinking that allows image-based evaluations to continue on a wide scale?
I still don't know. I have no concrete evidence that when I did have one, that it ever cost me, or my previous employer a project. but what if, what if...
IBM used to make their techies wear suits. Then, during the dark period in the late 80s and early 90s when they were struggling to reinvent themselves, they had a revelation: Business-type customers like to see people in "professional" business atire, but this only matters if the customer actually sees you. The rest of the time, it is fine to dress comfortably. Thus sales, marketing, and any techie who happened to be interacting with the business-type customers would wear a suit and tie, everyone else wore what they wanted. Bam! Problem solved! And since then, the "sandal and ponytail set" hasn't stopped IBM from making sales, now have they?
So the fundamental problem, if there really is a real problem behind the article, is that the wrong people are speaking to each other. If you're trying to make an OSS business case to the business-types, then yeah you need a business-type person dressed in business-type clothing to do the talking. If you aren't a for-profit organization who can hire such a person to do the talking for you, then why do you give a fuck if the business types listen or not? The techies will listen to you, and you'll get in like most OSS has gotten in -- via the back door in the server room. If you are a for-profit, then why do you need a cnet article to tell you to "dress for success" and hire a marketing person instead of sending your be-sandled techies out into the field?
I don't know, this whole thing smacks of misdirection. He says it's the poor dress code that's causing the slow adoption, but then makes it sound more like it's politics and "IT leadership" (interpreted to mean some kind of management, shouldn't be wearing sandals) that are to blame. It sounds to me like the real reasons for the slow adoption of OSS have nothing to do with "sandals and ponytails", and "OMG RMS dresses looks like a dirty hippy!" is just an excuse.
The enemies of Democracy are
By the same token, there is a usually a deep-seated psychological reason people need to dress and act like everyone else --- it probably has to do with fear of expressing individuality and being accepted. Hair grows naturally; but we aren't born with business suits and razors.
Latching onto subcultures is pretty typical human nature. The corporate softball team is a subculture; the PTA is a subculture; the local church is a subculture. It gives people a sense of belonging and generally, looking at social structure you see that views on appearance, subsets of morality and so on are quite flexible and usually are readily adaptable to belonging to a given subculture. Actually, the ones that you really need to worry about are the ones that can't find a social group to latch on to. Believe it or not, relating to goths or ravers or punks isn't nearly as fundamentally different to relating to suits as the guy that wears polo shirts, but can't talk to other humans.
I personally think the European underground techno scene is a lot of fun. I really enjoy dancing all night on weekends. To an extent I look the part. But this doesn't keep me from being one of the lead developers in the LinuxLab at one of Europe's largest software companies.
Why don't I take on the appearance that's typical for the European IT industry? Well, honestly, I'm not that far from the default, though I do have hair down past my shoulders and tend to have kind of a grunge-nouveau look. But the more important thing is that I'm established within my field. I feel like my accomplishments speak for themselves and if you're not the sort of employer that's willing to look past my long hair to the long list of cool things on my resume, then you're not the sort of company that I want to work for. It is in a sense a statement -- it's a statement saying, "I'm good at what I do. I'm not going to be a cookie cutter cog in the corporate environment. You do need to have some flexibility, but if you're cool with that, then I can probably do good things for you."
Thanks for the non-kneejerk reply. :)
Honestly, I'm a pretty decent guy. I get along well with the people I work with, and for the most part always have, in a number of different settings (the military, corporate IT, and now academia.) And although of course I've had to do things I disagreed with, for the most part, when I felt strongly about an issue, I was able to bring management around to my point of view through reasoned discussion.
My original post, as only one other poster seems to have noticed, was directed at a specific type of manager -- the type who automatically dismisses people who don't dress the way he does, who refuses to recognize that for the most part (not always, certainly, but that's the way to bet) casual dress is just as much a mark of the competent techie as a sharp suit is of the competent businessman, who honestly believes that Microsoft is better than F/OSS because Bill Gates wears a suit and Richard Stallman doesn't. And who, not incidentally, inevitably ends up driving competent tech people away from his organizations because smart people refuse to put up with his crap.
People like that are really just as lacking in social skills as the stereotypical smelly geek; but (as with smelly geeks, come to think of it) there are a lot of them, and they congregate in groups where their antisocial behavior is not only accepted but encouraged, and they reinforce each other. Unfortunately, because they are primarily interested in telling people what to do rather than actually doing anything useful themselves, they tend to acquire enough power to make other people's lives miserable.
Believe it or not, I don't prejudge people in suits; I deal with them exactly as I do everyone else, and that's pretty well. However, I refuse to deal nicely with anyone who does not extend me the same courtesy.
(Oh yeah -- I'm obviously not a full-time writer, and never have been except for a brief period a number of years ago. The truth is, making a living from writing is damned rare. Which is too bad, but so it goes.)
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.