Slashdot Mirror
Gaffes That Keep IT Geeks From the Boardroom
buzzardsbay writes "Yes, it's all in good fun to point out the mismatched belt and shoes and the atrocious hairstyles, but honestly, I'm committing three of these errors right now! Is that why I can't get a key to the executive washroom? Or is it my rebellious attitude and pungent man-scent that's keeping me down? The shocker in here was pigtails on women... I love pigtails on women!"
Trying to get first post is a classic sign
-1 not first post
Who cares about the pay, once you are earning above a certain amount, being happy with what you do is far more important than earning more money. programming sounds far more fun than managing things and people. Give me t-shirts and jeans, screw wearing shirts, ties, suits and overpriced uncomfortable stuff like that.
I am embarrassed to say a couple of those got me - but since I work at a university, it's pretty obvious I gave up on the corporate ladder long ago...
But seriously - do corporate IT folks really wear ties at all? Or is it just the managers (the "I like to pretend I'm a tech guy, but really I'm clueless" folks)?
#DeleteChrome
This is something for people just entering the workforce. Common sense stuff . . . c'mon now . . . .
Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
Maybe that is the reason why. Schoolgirl outfits and pigtails go hand in hand. It may be sexist, I won't deny it, but women who do this probably remind the men too much of a strip club and they need all that concentration on how best to screw the consumer
Let's not even touch men with pigtails either
I thought the title said Bedroom for like 2 minutes.
How we know is more important than what we know.
is a major cause of slow-downs in innovation, one has to wonder if we're not looking at the problem in reverse.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
People base a hell of a lot on first impressions.. Although in theory this isn't the best approach, unless we have a new enlightenment one would be wise to "overdress", always.
Why the hell did you link to a slideshow? That site's slow as hell for me(rest of the net's fine), and the images weren't even loaded by the time it decided it was time to switch slides. The net isn't meant to be like a powerpoint presentation. Worse was the fact that adblock caught the "pause" button.
www.isoHunt.com
I have the answer! You can't get into the board room because you're too busy fixing the CEO's computer that he broke again while he's in the meeting. I think we all know that's the real reason.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
I'm in my mid-40s here in the UK, I've been a techie in telecoms and security for 25+ years now, I'm now a consultant earning a good salary as does my wife. Admittedly we've no kids but we've got our own home as well as two holiday homes overseas (not time-shares, fully ours) and I couldn't want for a better life. I work a 37.5 hour week and at 5:30pm I can pretty much forget about work until the following morning, but whilst I'm at work, I do work hard.
So quite frankly, you can stuff your boardroom job, flashy cars, Armani suits, the endless travelling and hotel rooms, and the sixteen hour days because I'm not interested. I earn enough to live very comfortably provided that I'm careful but my life of "three thirds" is going great - one third work, one third sleep and one third pleasure...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Everyone knows only the devil wears Prada.
Seriously, I got through about three pages - each image took about 4 seconds to download on my 20Mbps broadband, before I gave up.
I got excited.... I thought it read....
Gaffes That Keep IT Geeks From the Bedroom
I'm so lonely...
ever. Even for slashdot.
... people that think it's more important to judge people by their looks than by what they can contribute to the job. Sure, if the job is is to look pretty or whatever, then you better be able to do that well. But if the job is to make the database perform well, or keep the network secure, or debug the company application product, then those skills are how a person should be judged ... not on their T-shirt color, length of dread-locks, wearing of sandals even in winter, etc.
OK, bathing every day is good.
Choice of after hours sport might affect things, but it should only be because of who is at the same sporting place at the same time. One group might congregate at the golf course, while another is at the skating rink, and yet another is at the shooting range.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The real gaffe: getting your fashion advice from Slashdot...
If being a respectably-paid techie means I can wear a Hawaiian shirt and shorts on a hot sticky summer day, I'll take that over some high-paid exec sweating bullets in his black suit when its 90+ degrees out. Hell, if it's 100+ I'll go Kilting because I can. That's the kind of freedom over stuffy board rooms and sweating suits, and plust the fact that I love the work I do I'll keep that "lower" position thankyouverymuch.
The author of the linked article seems to know all about being a "board"-whatever, but isn't able to make a decent presentation (the page is updated too quick for me to read the text). Sort of fits together...
Board memebers most precious ability is to talk and eat bullcrap straight faced. if a geek hears something he thinks is total crap, they aren't able to not say something. I know i can't, i just have to point out the flaws in a bad idea.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
... for the best part of 8 years, in shorts and a t-shirt, with bare feet.
... and also put down some serious code as required.
...
No travelling to work (unless you count climbing the stairs to the office), I can smoke, drink, eat pizza etc in my office
Of course, I'm lucky, I work remotely
Oh wait, I think that's supposed to be bad. I guess that explains my pay scale.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Just because you're well dressed doesn't mean you can't be a good scientist/coder. The old guys knew that...
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/08/cleaning-up-your-nerdy-appearance.php
First post
Gaffes Keeping Geeks Out of the Board Room
1. Mismatching Shoes and Belt
2. Tie and Short Sleeve Shirt
3. The One Binary Watch
4. Tight Black Jeans
5. Oversized Hawaiian Shirts
6. Socks and Sandals
7. Alternative Hairstyles
8. Concert T-shirts
9. A Closet of Vendor and Trade Show Gear
10. Stains
It's really testament to the shallowness of the boardroom that these are actually taken seriously by those with the ability to promote people. Your plan for upgrading the servers using well-reasoned arguments backed with meticulous research data to save the company megamoney in maintenance well be passed over because they are concentrating on your mismatched belt and shoes instead. >sigh
First of, wearing a tie or not has nothing to do with your actual competence. Neither is all of IT about tech. Corporate IT is far more then "just" the programmers and the managers. Some of the best people I have met over the years were not all that hot on the tech site but still good IT workers because they could bridge the gaps between the tech guys and the customer.
I am a bit suspicious of either extreme when it comes to dress code. Some people just don't fit in suits (I am one of them) while others only competence is to look good in one. I had this situation years ago when I worked for a small company and didn't have my driving license. I would be sent to the customer with a guy who drove me, that was really all he was good for IT wise, he just didn't have a clue, but he sure did look good in a suit. It was pretty common for us to arrive at the customer and for them to mistake him as the "boss" and me as the helper. I couldn't blame them but it did proof to me that people look at the tie first, competence second (if you are lucky).
However those cases were ALWAYS when the good looking people had screwed up and I had to come in to clean up, so this helped to make me acceptablebecause by this time the bosses were screaming and most bosses are rather down to earth and don't give a shit what the person who shovels the shit away looks like just as long as he is fast. But that doesn't make it any easier to get hired in the first place or to get the "easy" projects, we had a number of customers were I would only go under escort by sales because they had to provide a shield as it were of being dressed right to keep up appearances. A large customer dealing with real estate was one of them, everyone was in suits there, I looked like I was coming to pick up the trash, so thinking back to it we sorta send in the sales guy first to blind them with his outfit so I could do the tech work. For a lot of corporate IT SELLING your tech skills by putting it in a nice package is just as important as having the skills in the first place.
If you are detached somewhere where a full suit and tie is the regular dresscode they are going to have to be sold on your expensive contract by someone they can relate too. If you are REALLY good then a competent sales guy can sell your sandals but you better be REALLY good and you have to accept that for jobs were a really good guy ain't needed, they prefer to sell the guy who is easier on the eyes.
Mind you, there some far nastier versions of this. Females whose skills are sold disguised behind a male because tech guys can't possibly have tits. Don't even get me started on race issues.
Looks matter in the business world where everyone is always trying to sell you something. Goverment and education are different, goverment typically is run by people who just stuck with it for decades and education is were everyone who is to weird ends up, but in "business" it is everyone for themselves and you constantly have to sell yourselve.
So do you have to wear a tie? Well it all depends on what role you have. When you are coding at home or your own office, who cares. When you go to implement it, well, it isn't very comfortable. At the launch party? People should know how good you are by now. But when it is time to sell yourselve, then yes, it is just polite to dress up a bit. In sales, you dress up and if you are unlucky enough to have to be part of the selling of your skills, then looking right helps. A good IT company will help the hopeless with that. I simply arranged at one company that they dressed the worsed offenders of us. Because while going in jeans and a t-shirt is bad, it is even worse if you force these guys to buy a suit because they will screw it up. Send them out shopping at a good store that helps them pick the right outfit and have the company pay for it, keep it at the office and let the secretary handle keeping it clean. Let the people with a clue to dresscode handle the dressing, it might sound childish but it does work and offcourse in plenty of
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I'm sure all of the "tips" in that article are valid, if you work for a stodgy old company run by stodgy old people, or a company full of superficial twits who judge other people by superficial things like clothing. IF you work for a company like that, and IF you intend to continue to do so, AND you care about "climbing the corporate ladder" then sure, ditch your jeans, Iron Maiden t-shirts, Hawaiian shirts, sandals, etc.
On the other hands, you work for one of those kinds of companies, and if you don't care to be a sell-out ("to thine own self be true" and all that) then I suggest quitting and going to work somewhere populated with people who care about things that actually matter, like performance, cultural fit, work ethic, etc. Or, better yet, quit and start your own company.
"Those people" are dinosaurs and there time is passing anyway. Hopefully as the "Gen X" and "Gen Y" kids start to displace their predecessors in the business world, it'll represent an opportunity to inject some fresh thinking and new approaches to things. Life is too short to waste time worrying about what morons think about your belt and shoes.
Now excuse me while I go back to listening to Skid Row's "Youth Gone Wild." \m/
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
How utterly .... american.
And how much your clothes cost, nothing more.
But the communication and social skills (or lack of) from 'techies'. You're not gonna get invited to the table if they can't friggin understand what your bashing about.
Or at least they should turn off images before loading the page. (I'm only half-kidding.) This isn't a classic "dancing bears" website, it's a "the dancing bear reaches out and pokes you in the eyeball with a jagged claw every 3 seconds" web page.
It is literally painful to try to read the article's text within the images. Slowing down the reload to every 10 seconds would make it tolerable.
I've never been guilty of any of those...and I'm still just a code monkey after 32 years of experience programming! What you wear does not have as much bearing on getting into the boardroom as having an MBA does. I think I would prefer suicide over being surrounded by the scumbags and morons in business school.
Alternative Hairstyle: Guilty. However, I think in my case the real reason has more to do with statements such as, "Greg, you would do well not to turn this into a matter of honor."
Although, "If you knew what you were doing, I wouldn't be here. Why don't you make yourself useful and go get me a cup of coffee. Black," probably runs a close second.
Yep: they tell us you can be in charge, but only if you conform and obey. And the person who is above you - he (yep, it is more likely to be a he) got there by conforming and obeying. And all they way up the chain the same rules apply. Except, the geek wonders, what happens at the top? Reduction ad absurdam, guys - who does the top person obey and conform to? Lord Xenu? Some Darth Vader guy who allows himself alone to wear the cool black cape, and everyone else has to wear the regulation grey? Som being of pure energy that is unable to support a tie, and yet can insist on it on others?
Actually, no. I have seen clothing standards spontaneously appear. A clean room was set up. The people who worked in it got to chose the colour of their clean room gowns and shoes. Noboday wanted the white. The people who worked in there went for the light blue. People like me who had occasional buisness there, and needed to use the electron microscope used the deep blue ones. We had white ones for visitors. After about a month, I found I was getting ticked off for wearing the wrong colour gown, even though the gowns didn't actually belong to anybody in particular.
The Scientific Civil Serivce in the UK used to start at jacket and tie, then go to light suits (meaning you didn't do anything too messy or chemical, and could go double jeopardy with matching trousers and jacket. The further up you went, the darker the suit got. However, I could not go and get a perfectly black suit and become King - the system enforced the dress, not the other way around. In the Foreign office things were the other way around - going from dark suites, via light suits, to jacket and trousers, perhaps implying you spent your time in Jakarta, Bejing, Hawaii, and Bongo-Bongo-land, and you are only popping through London. I bet the Queen would rather wear almost anything on her head other than the Regulation Shiny Hat that her office requires for one or two state occasions.
The ancient Romans thought the toga was silly and impractical, but it was traditional, and it was status. The tale of the 47 Ronin was all started by someone being advised to wear the wrong colour of trousers at court. Year yellow stockings cross-gartered at the knee, and you were a fool in Shakespere's day. Come the Revolution, we shall all be wearing Mao suits. if the fashionistas say silly long middle-ages shoes, or ruffs, or bustles, you jump, or you fall behind. Is there truly no escape?
Let me qualify that last cry: is there no escape, that also allows us power, influence, and a decent wage?
> and the images weren't even loaded by the time it decided it was time to switch slides
there were images?
Seriously, why is it that if an artist dresses like a tramp and snarls at anyone who tries to distract him (or her) while working, that's just how talent operates, but when it's engineers or programmers, that just shows how dysfunctional they are? I think Toby Young had a handle on it in an article last weekend. "Management types" are often not too bright, therefore they want people to perceive factors other than intelligence as important in the workplace. You can be as thick as two bricks, but given enough money you can wear expensive suits and haircuts and drive a Porsche. So hey, suits and haircuts and expensive cars are evidence of managerial talent. Of course, you can have all those things and be a good manager, but the correlation, to my mind, does not imply causation.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The general problem with "low level" employees is not that they aren't bright enough, or hard working enough to be management. The problem is that they only care about themselves.
You get paid at work because you're useful to someone else. But "low level" employees do their tasks, and that's it. "High quality" employees succeed by figuring out how to constantly be more useful to their boss. Don't confuse this as "sucking up" - creating efficiencies, new opportunities, and helping your boss achieve his tasks means your organization is making more money, and some of that money will get directed to the source if it can be found.
Lower management takes objectives and organizes the people to accomplish them for the middle management. A middle manager strives to hit the benchmarks for the upper management. The upper management strives to keep the profits growing for the CEO. The CEO is redirecting the company and dealing with the board of directors and everyone who wants his ear as the figurehead. Every step is about serving someone else - the CEO is a slave to the Board, who are slaves to the investors, who need the stock price to go up to pay for their retirement or their kids' tuition.
If you want to be paid more, just keep trying to keep the end customer happy.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
There's stereotypically two routes to the boardroom that are denied the stereotypical IT geek (and we're expressing ourselves in generalities here):
1. The "Must be there" effect. With this you can be in the boardroom and top management at any age - the requirement is simply that the rest of the board members feel they NEED you there. For example, if you founded the company, you can be a board member at the age of 20, wahoo. Or if you happen to have a Harvard MBA and the rest of the board feels their academic-peni are collectively insufficient to impress the rest of the world, they may invite you because they feel you might not join if they didn't. This is rather obvious.
There are however enough IT people with a sufficient level of experience that are happy enough with regular jobs that there's no desperate need for IT people on boards. Or at least that is the feeling. IT scandals may change that from time to time and cause boards to look for someone with lots of IT experience, but even in those cases the _number_ of board members as a percentage of every IT geek in existence will be miniscule, so don't expect every second colleague to join the board. Companies whose PRIMARY business is IT will typically have IT people on the board. For example the board members of Apple include the CEO of Google.
2. To trickle up through age and experience. To do this however you need to be seen as having a certain mindset, and that mindset is _the company as a whole above everything_. You also need to be a well-rounded character, because anyone at board level may be asked to comment on any issue (and as well-known from Slashdot, the tiniest slipup from a privately employed senior manager and the torches are out). People whose mindset narrowly concern one area of the business will never rise to any more than at most "manager of area X". IT people are often narrowly focused on IT issues and are rather specialised characters (or have specialised beliefs, as again commonly seen on Slashdot), and to put them in charge of a company is like putting the star chef of a cooking program in charge of managing the program production. Effectively you need to be good at your current job, but at the same time always have a mindset that more things than your current job matter. You should within not too many years find a match between the sphere of things you care about and the sphere of things you have responsibility for.
But to clarify, the 'boardroom' notion is rather misguided - the 'board' of a company is not the same at all as 'senior management'. The board is effectively the oversight authority for senior management, with the ability to hire and fire them and represent shareholders, and so will typically consist of senior individuals (in age) with a range of typically _generalist_ experience. They are supposed to be the guys who see beyond buzzwords, don't get seduced by pet projects, and see the entire company as a whole. The board are like the civilian chiefs of a national army - people who are set apart from the organisation and see it in a different and holistic light. The answer then gives itself - you need to be a person who could do that.
My impression, fwiw, is that it's more than just gaffes that prevent assent to the executive washroom. By it's very nature, good programming comes from accurate and honest people - there's just not a lot of room for fudging and half-arse attempts to make do. Executives, on the other hand, seem to need incredible motivation to acquire all the accoutrements of executive status and an almost pathological desire to fudge details and skip awkward counter factuals.
Google has got one very relaxed, energizing and creatively stimulating atmosphere and still is one of the top tech companies out there. More and more startups are going the way of a relaxed corporate atmosphere and in doing so are helping set a new paradigm in corporate culture. The age of the suit is steadily moving into the past. I doubt it will ever go away, but there is more emphasis on what a person does over how they look when the do it.
Serious question. I'm from Hawaii. Everybody wears Aloha (Hawaiian) shirts -- even in the board room. If your wearing a tie, your either a lawyer or going to a funeral or something.
Anyway, we're about to do a little tour on the mainland to talk about some of our software. This isn't commercial (shrinkwrap) stuff. Our clients know us so when we show up in Aloha shirts, I don't think they care, but generally, how are Hawaiian shirts perceived on the mainland? I assume its not ghetto, but is it casual? Nice? Gaudy?
Sure, I love pigtails on women. I love'm that much that I'm wearing pigtails myself! And the fact that I hardly ever step out of my ICSA-Labs shirt, or the classic BSD-wireframe shirt... who cares? We're not dressed to go red carpet for the Oscars, aren't we?
I'll take that over some high-paid exec sweating bullets in his black suit when its 90+ degrees out.
You know, since we're on the subject of fashion, I want to err the gripe I have about the black suit. It has been making a comeback in business attire, and for the life of me I cannot figure out why.
First, the social argument against the black suit. Traditionally, black suits were the province of the help or the dead (i.e., butlers and funerals). Black dye was cheap, and the suit color looked austere which is why they perfect for funerals and the help since it never drew attention. In fact black was so verboten, famous clothier Brooks Brothers did not even offer an off the rack black suit until the 1990s, because Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in one. Source. Why, given its history, that its come back in fashion I do not understand.
Second, the practical argument. You are completely right in that black suits are absolutely miserable to wear in the summer. They also tend to get noticably washed out faster from dry cleaning. They also are show absolutely no originality or as Office Space would say, "flare." A black suit, IMO, shows that a person put less thought into getting dressed than a person who wears sock/sandals and a big Hawaiian shirt. At least those things exhibit character.
I've had this rant building in me for a while, so it feels good to get it out, but if I had one piece of fashion advice to give to fellow geeks its: DON'T WHERE A BLACK SUIT! A simple navy, charcoal, or sharkskin suit will do much to set you apart from bland tasteless masses that insist on only wearing black.
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
Suits? Uncomfortable? What sort of crack do you smoke?
Seriously - stop buying off-the-rack crap, and go to a tailor.
That said, I generally work without pants. Go go telecommuting. I've no problems wearing a suit when required, however. Really, if you think suits are uncomfortable, you're doing it wrong - it is buying clothing. Epic fail. Et cetera.
But first impressions ARE important! I for one immediately judge suit wearers as uptight tools with great social skills and no brains. It can take a long time for me to change my mind and gain any respect for them whatsoever even if they spend every day afterward in jeans and a T-shirt.
Cow Cube
I barely managed to read the first page; but there is a grain of thruth in there. Every group of people has its own 'culture' and norms, and if you don't fit in, you will find it hard to be accepted as part of the group. Part of that is the way you look - if you want to be accepted amongst upper management, you have to look the part. The same is true for engineers - after all, would you trust a programmer wearing an impeccable suit and tie?
But much more important than the clothes you wear is the person you are. Are you reliable? Are you life-competent? In all groups it is important to contribute to the group, not just professionally, but also socially. You can fit into a group even if you break a lot of the norms, if you are seen to make important contributions to the group. A bit like the messy old grandpa who seems to be from another planet, but who none the less resolves a lot of family conflicts with his understanding and wisdom.
I never understand what engineers have against wearing a suit. It's just bloody clothing. The pants are just like any other pants. The shirts like any other polo shirt. Shoes like any other shoes (get one of those fancy pads if your are that fussy). And you take your blazer off when your sitting at your desk doing computer work. Heck it might do your posture some good, get's rid of the typist's shoulder slouch (I know I do it way too much). If the tie is choking you, your DOING IT WRONG!
You can get all nerdy about suits [they have soooo many details] and such that you'd be the most well dressed man in the company.
If your that attached to your hats or other things, you can make it fit with your suit.
Look at this guy for example: http://www.betterthanyourboyfriend.com/images/wedding1.jpg
Or you can get the 17 different kinds of suit hats meant to go along with suits. You can even be super nerdy and wear a fedora while you work on your fedora boxes. Trilby's because you like the game series so much.
If you get turned away from local drinking establishments due to your lack of dress sense, what makes you think it's good enough for work at all, let alone a boardroom..?
I hate this shit. Why does it matter if I have long hair? Why should people give a crap what I'm wearing? These things have nothing to do with my competance to perform any given task. Yet I know that people will judge me based on it.
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
"Gaffes Keeping Geeks Out of the Board Room" "Gaffes Keeping Geeks Out of her Bed Room"
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
Any company that thinks like that doesn't deserve to have me work for them.
In my experience, most people which are exceptionally gifted in dealing with technology and/or creating and navigating complex logical structures (which is what programs are) are quite inept when it comes to dealing with people (especially people from different professional backgrounds) or complex social situations.
This is by no means an absolute rule - some people manage to successfully straddle both domains.
In my view, this explains why so many people fail to success when promoted from technical positions to management (the skills that count the most in management have to do with dealing with people).
Fortunately, "dealing with people" skills can be learned up to a point, though for technical people that often requires one to be willing to step out of one's comfort zone (which is why so many don't even try).
looked like "Gaffes That Keep IT Geeks From Boredom".
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
The first slide says that mismatched shoes and belt shows an inattention to detail. Surely they are not talking of IT geeks here, as the opposite is more likely to be true - that the IT geek is likely to pay too much attention to detail and not enough on the 'overall picture'.
... he won't even admit he's jealous!
... it's crap.
Anyway, I concur with your opinion of the article
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
There was this one guy at my old work who's keyboard smelt like KFC because I guess he didn't find it finger licking good, another gaffe.
On another note I'm an Oracle DBA but I ain't dressing like this?! http://www.dba-oracle.com/dress_code.htm ; The sad thing is I think he's serious.
Any tech who thinks that they can cut the best code and will one day make it to the top because of the awesome code they've been writing, or problems they've been fixing is living in a fantasy land unless they drastically change something.
The management world is a world away from rational scientific thinking where fortunately/unfortunately some techies live. Management makes decisions based on money and sometimes pride. If you're a techie fixing a problem chances are the senior types are thinking 'hurry up and fix it fatso' but saying to you 'How are you? We really need this fixed, if you could work on it and give me an ETA that would be greeeaat'. If you really want to be "in", you have to start throwing around management mumbo jumbo and acting like a prick to people. Kiss some arse at a few out of work functions, start staying back late and soon you'll be delegating that code cutting to some other 'fatso'.
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
There's your first mistake. Little boys love pigtails on women. Real men like pigtails on women, and love lingerie on women.
stuff |
... but there really is no excuse for bad hygiene.
+++ATH0
I thought this would be about personality, not attire. As in: Overly arrogant to the wrong people. Won't stop MST3k-ing the presentation. Laughing at buzzwords. Taking/sending texts during meetings. Laptop as crutch. Refers to policy questions as "Stupid."
No, spineless slaves try to be more useful to their boss. The autonomous decide what they want to do, then go where they can do it, or do the minimum necessary work to get there. And no self respecting person should have "being useful to their boss" as an end in itself.
In all but the smallest of companies, your employer (the company) is not your friend, and will never be your friend.
Ne mæg werig mod wyrde wiðstondan, ne se hreo hyge helpe gefremman.
Someday I hope to see articles written by clueless hack journalists aimed at the MBA types asking them to wear pocket protectors to impress their came-from-the-IT CEO.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
a Fluff articles with amateurish humor and no content.
b Articles that are spread over multiple pages and primarily feature large pictures.
c And most importantly, articles that give you a pop-up ad on every single page click.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
Well, I will have to make sure I wear my brown belt more often (I only own one pair of office-quality shoes, and they're black).
I don't want to be management. I like being a programmer and sysadmin, and I'm good at it. I don't think I'd be that good at management.
And since I have the ear of the person who is, for all intents and purposes, the IT Manager, I have a good amount of say in what goes on (when I want to) anyway ;-)
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Sorry, but pigtails on any girl over 16 == pr0n. I have established this following extensive Internet research.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
No. It's because your father didn't have a key to the exexcutive loo.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
According to TFA, my entire wardrobe is out. (ponders consequences of going to work wearing nothing but sneakers and a smile)
I wonder whether we geeks should continue to be stereotyped as people with no sense of reality, when in reality it seems like those suits are those who really are up there in the clouds? As humorous as the article is trying to be, the little bit of truth that comes thru tells me of a fact that management and all those function over-oriented suits really do not know what LIFE really is. They spend all day figuring how to make money out of thin air, bash on us that work for them for not looking perfect, and then go home or to a pub to be confronted with the same people they just half-jokingly accused of harmful imperfection. 99% of the world does for sure look more like a geek with a stained shirt and black "roadie" jeans, than a suit. That's life for you, management and board room folks :-) It's all been upsidedown like this since the dot com boom or something. And yes, I like women with pigtails (personality matters :p)
Actually, men who have some kind of aversion to suits probably have never had a properly fitted one.
A suit should be as comfortable as a pair of pajamas.
Of course, this means getting properly fitted by a tailor, especially the shirt. If you think about shirts, they can't possibly fit every body perfectly. Some people probably should have custom tailored shirts. It's expensive, but as in many things having to do with clothing, men have it a lot better than women. Men only need two pairs of quality dress shoes in their adult life (if they get them re-soled). You can get by with three suits and maybe ten shirts, even if you wear them every day (you hae to get them cleaned every week). You then accessorize with ties; even a guy who wears a suit a couple times a year seemingly can't avoid amassing a collection of ties.
So, the issue isn't suits. Suits are symbolic of something else: of being judged on superficial grounds. More broadly, suits are symbolic of BS in general.
I've known many, many engineers in my life, and the one thing they all have in common is that they want to be judged on objective grounds, found deserving, then be rewarded and taken care of as an extremely valuable contributor. An aversion to BS means that suit or no suit, there are only so many places where they can combine ego success with business success. The business world is awash in BS, from block headed, intransigent customers to crafty and unscrupulous vendors, with ruthless, backstabbing colleagues standing in between.
Engineers tend to be puritanical; they'd rather make a sale by having a better product than making a sale on a shoeshine and a firm handshake. In the end, business means swimming in an ocean of BS, while engineering is more like standing on a tiny island in that ocean. While the intellectual skills of an engineer are highly useful in upper management, the reason that more engineers don't head that way is that they aren't interested in taking the plunge.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I honestly can't see why I'd want to do more work for less money.
You might be happy in your salaryman job, working 16 hours a day so you can pay for the daycare for the children you never see and things for the wife you never see. My time is worth more.
Would you want a nuclear power generator that LOOKS nice, or one that keeps all the dangerous crap in?
Now, if it could do BOTH, that would be best, but if it's doing one more than the other, which should be more?
So is wearing a suit that makes you LOOK competent worth more than having a list of accomplishments? Now do you ever ASK to see a list of accomplishments?
No? Then you aren't being a rational agent.
With their long necks eating the best leaves! Keeping good I.T. geeks down...
What? I got to slow down in reading this stuff...
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Having "baselinemag.com" open on your desktop... that may even kill any geek cred you might have had also!
.sigs are for post^Hers.
IT, by its nature, is too complicated for most people to understand and you dress funny.
It is a pity really. I have known IT people, who were natural leaders, but they go unrecognized because they didn't know how to get it.
Sorry the late post...
Get Dress for Success by Molloy and avoid everything plaid.
Join Toastmasters.
Break the geek wall.
ill tell you what i can do without the auto refresh. even when you press pause this geeky piece of junk just insists on regenerating my page. that would keep you out of my board room buddy. ok i didn't rfa, but, thats because i had a seizure from all the flickering...
Wow too early to read that fast.. Will check back after my 2nd code red.
MISSING - Sig file. 2 years old black and white and very funny. If found please email me.
Or is it my rebellious attitude and pungent man-scent that's keeping me down?
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Shouldn't that be an "m"?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I don't see this as a problem. My day job as a programmer is exactly that: a job I do to pay the rent. I have other interests, and other ambitions. Getting a key to the executive crapper isn't one of them.
I'm not out to "be useful" to management. I'm out to get paid, and I don't get paid for being a fuckup.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
I dress down. It's an easy way to filter people. Those that are impressed by 'dressing up' deselect themselves, leaving me more time for my life and people who actually make the effort to know me, not my trousers.
Correct. The IRS requires your withholdings from bonuses be at the maximum tax rate and not your "normal" tax withholdings. If I recall right, that would be 42% of your bonus will be withheld for fed taxes. I assume everyone here knows the difference between withholdings and the actual tax amount you pay...
So, in real terms, it is 6 one way and half a dozen the other. ie: there is no benefit one way or the other.
You just have to wait until you file taxes to get that "extra withholdings" back. But you do get some back (assuming your tax rate is less than 42%). They do this to make sure people don't get some large bonus, go spend it, and then not be able to pay the tax on that bonus when it is due next April 15th. Makes sense but I, personally, don't like giving the government interest free loans so I tend to offset my bonus withholdings by decreasing the withholdings on my monthly paycheck.
One of the ongoing sources of fights in my marriage was that my wife wanted me to pay more attention to what I wore. I tried, some, but my heart wasn't in it, and frankly, my three year old has a better sense of what matches than I do.
After many years, we hit on a solution. She took complete charge of my clothing - she picks out and buys everything, and throws stuff away. And she occasionally tells me to change my shirt (there's something wrong with wearing linen in the winter for some reason...). As a result, I don't have to worry about my clothes. She gets to see me looking nice. And we don't argue about it anymore.
The point is, she has to look at me a lot more than I do, so why shouldn't she want me to look nice? She didn't think any less of me when I dressed like a slob (she married me, after all) - but she likes the way I look when I'm better dressed.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
"Alternative" Hairstyles (I let my facial hair grow)
Stains (but I wash before I wear it again..)
Mismatching shoes and belt.. heh I never realized brown belt/black shoes was bad. Good to know.
Tie and short sleeved shirts - I don't wear ties unless I have to and I like wearing T-shirts to work, does that clear me?
Binary Watch - I would if I could read binary that easily! (One day...)
Oh, and I shower every morning before work (my clothes may be worn more than once between washes, but at least my hair looks kempt)!
how is babby formed?
....The place all the dead calculators go, I do not have pigtails and bad shoes.
Happy is the geek with pink hair, DM boots, jeans and a Firefox / or Misfits / Candlemass T-shirt....
See all those in the boardroom "look the part" but it is those behind the scenes that do all the real work. No offence to those who are in the boardroom.....
In the name of sticking up for someone with autism, f**k you! Prejudiced bastard.... that is unlawful and linuc for dumm
i enjoy tossin on my social engineering specialist shirt for meetings, management doesn't care because we get the job done, and everything always works. so as long as we do our job they could care less what we ware. i guess we are lucky.
where can I get that watch?
Everyone wants to be part of some kind of in-group, to be accepted by peers. Amongst geeks, there's a respect for ability and knowledge. Of course, you do get the raging egotist BOFH's who are just like asshole lawyers who think they're better than other people because of how much they earn, where they live, what they drive, and who they're fucking. That all proves the size of the pipe they're swinging. In the BOFH world, knowledge is dick size. Then there's also the matter of making a virtue out of necessity or out of the way things are, so a geek who forgets about personal hygiene becomes proud of it, proud of non-conformity, and will actually put extra effort into it because this all relates to how big his dick is. He gets puffed up on his esoteric knowledge and looks down on people who aren't as familiar with it as he, even though the whole reason why he has a job is because he knows things other people don't.
Bear in mind, what I say above are for the worst-case stereotypes. The true geek sees these behaviors for what they are and avoids them.
As for management, there's a lot of mediocrity in any company. In the IT field, I've seen people aping the behavior of the in-group in order to gain acceptance but that's mainly with people who lack the skills to be in IT and hope to get along by acceptance and faking it. They're like Dilbert's Wally. Management draws more of these types because it's the more glamorous side, the road to power and pecking order in the monkey troop that is the company. It's an ego-stroking circle jerk where everyone tries to convince each other that they're good representatives of the in-group, that things are going fine, sniffing each other's farts and complimenting the bouquet. These people are aping the behaviors they see tied to success because they don't have the ability to make the success for themselves, they're Wally's of the boardroom.
From what I've seen, Einstein was right: the two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. What protects so many incompetent people is that their bosses are also incompetent. The only people who could judge their behavior and fire them for it are also incompetent. You can end up with a good ol' boy network of people covering for each other's gross incompetence and mistakes.
The comment above mentioning the Peter principle killing off older companies, making them the Spanish Armada to the start-up's English fleet, I think that's exactly right. You end up having politics and tradition and superstition playing a bigger role in decision-making than hard facts. Only a country with a fucked up aristocracy would have a king deciding to put the earl of bumfuckshire in charge of an important military operation because of his family connections rather than martial prowess. Small companies that make such stupid mistakes die in the cradle and we never hear of them, but we will hear of the large companies where someone is given a position because it makes political sense, even if the business case looks like swiss cheese.
Churchill said that wars are won by the side that makes the least number of mistakes. I think this holds true for any contest throughout life. To bring this back to a geek topic, Microsoft vs. Open Source. Both sides make tons of stupid mistakes because they're staffed with the spectrum of humanity, geniuses to dunces. If Microsoft kept playing smart, Linux would still be 100% marginal. Because Microsoft has been fucking up so bad, Linux has been making steady gains.
To put it back to the original topic, if you have to deal with a management staffed by morons, you have to play their little games to be taken seriously. If you can find a place that isn't staffed by morons, they'll be smart enough to judge you competently instead of obsessing over superficialities. If you find such a company, please let me know, I want to send them my resume.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
The incompetence game, that is. Each organization has a conspiracy of incompetence to some degree. There is an understood agreement to collectively hide each other's lack of ability and/or performance. The thing that such a conspiracy most fears is someone who is thorough, effective, and right most of the time. Computer geeks who developed their skills with unforgiving, cantankerous technology such as was deployed between the 60s and the early 90s came up in a very Darwinian environment. Machines don't play the game, either. If you fuck up the dip switch settings on an old ISA modem, clippy isn't going to tell you about it when you reboot the computer. In the days before Google, you had to simply know that you'd created an IRQ conflict.
It is this core cultural conflict that forever separates first generation computer geeks from the rest of the business world. We don't play the conspiracy of incompetence game. We cannot sit in a 10 hour meeting that accomplishes nothing other than to fill calendars and create paperwork. We tend to think in terms of the very real effort required to do our jobs properly, and this puts us at odds with almost everyone else.
Interestingly, I think this is one key advantage that Indian outsourcees have. No matter how good they are (and some are very good), they will gratefully and enthusiastically play the game. They will gleefully sit in that meeting, toil away for months on "bridges to nowhere" projects, and participate in the game of hiding the resultant culpability. I've often wondered as to the reason for this. In my more racist moments, I have thought that it is the product of economic desperation. "If some stupid American wants to pay me like royalty to sit in an eterna-meeting, it sure as hell beats harvesting rice by hand in feces infested rice paddies." But I've come to think of it more from the Indian perspective. Consider the experience Indians must have of US corporations through outsourcing agencies and call centers. They see collossally stupid organizations filled with very stupid people doing very stupid things. It is no wonder they think of America as a swarming sea of incompetence. It would be quite natural, given their frame of reference, to keep their smarts behind closed doors at home in Bangalore, and to outwardly speak the language of idiocy when on the phone. Given this perspective, they would quite obviously see the game for what it is and take to it quite naturally, even if they have no incompetence to hide. Where we would see working on a pointless, tedious, meaningless project that is doomed to failure from the start as being complicit in incompetence, they would see it as their bread and butter. To them, switching gears to incompetence mode would be as easy as switching gears to speaking in English.
And that article is largely bunk. The only time I wore a suit was board meeting presentations. If we were hosting any of the regional people I might have my jacket and tie on a hangar, just in case. Most days it was slacks and a dress shirt. In the summer slacks and a polo shirt were fine. On more than once occasion I caught the president of the company wearing shorts, although he usually didn't venture outside his office on ultra-casual days.
The IT department would wear jeans on days we were dragging cable or doing installations. Shorts were okay for the odd weekend.
Really fashion is dictated by the character of the office and your position. Some companies it's casual every day. Programmers frequently get a pass on the red carpet because they're rarely out front meeting customers. If you do any kind of budget management, you have to be a little more grooming conscious as that frequently puts you in meetings with non-IT departments. Take a cue from your peers at the office and do keep a spare shirt in the car. I used to get mine pressed and boxed at the dry cleaner and keep a spare box with different color shirts in the car. That way no matter what color slacks I had on that day I could find a shirt that matched in the event of an accident.
I went from upper management back to a grunt programmer job and loved it. Slacks and a polo shirt was dress up day. The best part was not worrying about it. I built some of their core systems and would have been hard to replace. It was obvious they were annoyed at my attitude some days, but there wasn't much they could do.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Uhh, how long does it take to notice that someone is wearing something? It's not particularly hard or time consuming. With all the IQ points available to people who often make statements like that, one would figure that a half-second of processing in your head would be OK.
It can even be beneficial to morale to notice when a co-worker, especially those who take the time to present themselves nicely, changes something or has something particularly nice. This, however, can lead also to sexual harassment claims. Your mileage and tact may very.
Fashion exists as a method of self-expression. Sometimes there are people who really don't care about themselves in that context. Fine. Some people do care. Some people care too much. All are fine, but simply saying there are "far more important things" indicates that your priorities are different and over-rule other people. (I would consider providing people with clean drinking water more important than my job, or probably the anon poster here, for example.) As pleasing to your ego as that might be, it's not necessarily true.
Particularly for males, fashion isn't that difficult to do properly, just take the few minutes to do so. Women's fashion is a whole other animal. Fortunately or not; I haven't decided.
Of course, I forgot to comb my hair this morning. So what do I know?
Dan
No one will ever notice your belt doesn't match if your shirt isn't tucked it!
You never know when making a good impression on someone will help you later in life.
Several years ago I was working in a job I didn't intend to keep for long. I made a good impression on one of the guys on my team there.
Flash forward to a few years later and I'm working somewhere else at a job I hated. Long story short, I was lied to in a bad way during the interview process and the job was completely unlike the answers I had gotten to my questions while interviewing. Out of the blue I was offered a much better job because of the guy at the first job.
My story is more about quality of work than matching belts, but it never hurts to make a better impression when you can.
Some people live to work.
Some people work to live.
Neither group fully understands the motivations of the other.
-
The point of expensive suits is to show you have money, and like have having money. In corporate culture, it can have two purposes 1) Showing you are part of the elite 2) Showing you want to be part of the elite. Hence, you are more likely to help them engage in cut-throat business practices.
The majority of the comments about this boil down to the following :
"Don't be a sheep, dress and act like you could care less"
or
"People who care too much about looking and acting professional are too stupid to bother with"
The "article" isn't extolling the virtue that everyone should be out for a high level position, just that the traditional "geek"
doesn't conduct himself professionally enough to get that kind of consideration. I fail to understand why there has to be a
strict dichotomy between professionalism and "geeks". Why does non-conformity have to be the rule at the so-called "geek" level?
It's as if I wouldn't be taken seriously in IT if I didn't wear transformers T-shirts or moon boots everyday. One very salient point from the article
is about the binary watch. It is very off putting to anyone when someone constantly goes out of the way prove how smart he is.
It is one thing if you have the binary watch or clock because the aesthetic works with your suit or something, but otherwise it says "I think
I am smarter than you".
Bonuses are taxed just like all other income. Taxes are determined by taking your compensation amount and multiplying it by (1/period over which that pay is earned) to get an effective annual rate. If your bonus comes through on your paycheck in a 2 week period, it gets taxes as if you're making that totalx26, and taxes are taken accordingly. If your accounting department was nice, they'd take your quarterly bonus and enter the payperiod as the 3 months, which would then be multiplied by 4 to get the "equivalent" annual rate.
Of course, it's somewhat moot, as it's all made even at tax filing time, but I'd rather have the money now and owe a couple extra dollars next April than get $1000 tax refund.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
LEATHER!!! Now that's always a good choice!
http://keygen.us/img/g-vert.jpg
I for one welcome our...
...wearing geek overlords!
# Mismatching Shoes and Belt
# Tie and Short Sleeve Shirt
# The One Binary Watch
# Tight Black Jeans
# Oversized Hawaiian Shirts
# Socks and Sandals
# Alternative Hairstyles
# Concert T-shirts
# A Closet of Vendor and Trade Show Gear
# Stains
I'm a hacker, not a corporate type. If I want a key to the executive washroom, I'll make one myself.
If you believe this article and the many like it (and I do), geeks will never make it to the boardroom as long as they continue to be geeks, unless they're damn good actors. And acting like an executive means spending all your working hours (which will be long) pretending to be something you're not; that's pretty stressful. You generally can't be a geek and an executive at the same time (Bill Gates is the exception; you're not him). The mindsets required are totally different. If fund raising, corporate strategic planning, finance, or managing the day to day operations of a company are your thing, you're probabaly not a geek. If they aren't, you're probably not an executive.
Your belt should match your shoes. For example, if you are wearing brown shoes, you should be wearing a brown belt. Note that tan and cordovan are different colors than brown. Belts are cheaper than shoes, so if you need to buy another belt, do so. You have my permission to own more than one belt.
Your socks should match your pants. For example, if you are wearing brown pants, you should be wearing brown socks. Note that tan, khaki, olive, navy, black and white are different colors than brown. Socks are cheaper than pants, so if you need to buy a few pairs of socks in different colors, do so. You have my permission to have lots of pairs of socks. You also have my permission to THROW THE FUCK AWAY socks with holes in the heels, and buy new ones.
As your department head, please realize that I will be much more likely to ask you to participate in meetings with the division head if you don't look like a scruffy grad student. Unlike me, she doesn't know how talented and competent you are, so she is going to judge you by your appearance almost entirely. Please give HER the opportunity to give YOU a fair chance.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
Well, uh, I would theorize it's something like--well, you know, just like in that old Commodore 64 game--the inability of the tech--ooh! did you see the latest news on AMD--oh, as I was saying, it might have something to do with, well, that some technologists (as some of us prefer to be called) just ain't good communikators.
Hey, what were we talking about? I thought Slashdot had posted a news item on giraffes blocking IT Geeks from responding to a trouble ticket in the boardroom?
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Add to that reading /., digg, and /b/.
Signs that you are letting StarTrek leak too far into your work habits:
* Replaced your Enter key with an Engage key.
* If you are in management and have to fire somebody, you say:
"Kaaaaahn! You are fired!"
* "Our company decided not to assimilate you after all."
* Accidently keep calling attractive female coworkers "7".
* One of them understands the reference and slaps you. (Literally, or with a harassment complaint).
* "Dammit Jim, I am a programmer, not a network administrator!"
* Keep referring to your boss as "Captain".
* If your boss asks you to hurry up to reach a deadline, you say with a Scottish accent: "I'm givin' her all I've got, Captain".
* Multiply estimates by a factor of four.
* An irate user calls and you head over to visit them mumbling to yourself, "Screw 'stun', phasers on 'kill' this time."
* Refer to job interview as "first contact".
* Refer to the fax machine as "the paper transporter".
Or the "flattened sheet of carbon fibers transporter".
* Look at your paycheck and say, "There is no way in hell I'll live long and prosper".
* Refer to a Cartesian-Join as "Infinite diversity in infinite combinations".
* Rig your desktop computer to throw sparks and smoke if a program crashes.
* Refer to the marketing department as "the Ferengi".
* Refer to your monitor as "the main viewer".
* Refer to files with "hidden" attribute as "cloaked".
* Refer to over-promised difficult projects as "boldly going where no man has gone before".
* Replace "Women" sign on restroom with "where no man has gone before".
* Keep saying to the coffee machine, "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot!"
* Think wearing red ties will get you canned.
* Refer to the server room as "the engine room".
* The cafeteria is "Ten-Forward"
* The main meeting room is "the bridge"
* Offsite client visit is an "Away mission".
* A vacation is a "Risa visit".
* Keep telling users that you are an explorer and not on a military mission.
* When you get stuck on a project, you immediately try to call Spock via the wall thermostat.
* Double points if he answers.
* Ask coworkers if they want to play Fizzbin after work.
* Keep running into doors because they don't automatically open.
* Try using the voice interface to your computer. Once it has been pointed out that * your Boss hasn't installed speech-recognition, and you should use the keyboard, exclaim, "The keyboard. How quaint!"
* "Sorry, boss, I can't come to your office because I am out of transporter range."
* Refer to the phone as a "communicator".
* "Sorry, I can't hear you clearly on this communicator. There must be trionomic radiation on this planet." (80% of the planets they visit seem to have some kind of radiation that blocks their communication or their transporters. It is powerful enough to knock out 24th-century technology but still not fry humans devoid of space suits.)
* You bet 100 Quatloos in the office baseball pool.
* You call a coworker's style Klingon Programming.
(Courtesy c2.com)
Table-ized A.I.
As an IT student and worker I can honestly say that professional dress can make or break you.
I just left our career fair at my school, I was there only 40 minutes (I only wanted to talk to 2 consulting firms),
and I wore a tailored blue blazer, shirt, tie and slacks and I have to say the people I spoke to were paying me much
more attention than some of my IT class mates who showed up in polo shirts a khakis (some even in jeans =X). The people that do
hiring / promoting are NOT tech people they want you to look professional and be able to talk basic business.
There are a couple of GQ reading guys that are in my IT program that always try to look our best (we are also at the top of our class, the first to get internships and the first to get top job offers)
Combine this with a solid skill set and good personality and you are set to work doing *WHATEVER* you want.
Want to get down and dirty, you'll have no problem finding a programming or dev job, want to stay on the technical side but dabble in management then you might find yourself being offered project leads, or you may even be asked to go to the dark side of management.
Bottom line spend a few hundred $ on a business wardrobe, keep your skills sharp and be personable (but not a suck-up) and you'll be amazed at how quickly and often doors will open.
is far more effective at blocking "boardroom" access.
No lie, my co-worker literally wore two different shoes this morning. I don't even mean two different model brown shoes either. I mean one black shoe, and one brown shoe. Apparently, it was quite dark in his room when he got dressed this morning. Of course, that immediately invalidates any potential belt matching that could occur. Let's just say I'm pretty positive that he won't even get to look at a key to the executive washroom, much less touch one.
"if a geek hears something he thinks is total crap, they aren't able to not say something. I know i can't, i just have to point out the flaws in a bad idea."
You should be able to point out the flaw with generalization there.
I promise you, there are plenty of geeks who don't say squat when they see a bad idea. I think your situation is that you think you're smarter than you really are and, frankly, aren't smart enough to realize that.
Unintentionally misspelling "kitschy" and "hippie" doesn't do much for one's credibility when forming top-ten lists of unprofessional behavior.
It is said that Einstein had 7 identical suits and just picked the next one each day.
I have 30 identical pairs of black socks. All purchased on the same day from the same store. When I grab two socks out of the drawer they ALWAYS match. They will all be faded and lose their elasticity around the same time. They will all be brought to Goodwill at the same time, and I will buy 30 new pairs at that time. Enough on socks.
I have 15 pairs of dark pants. A few black, a few navy and mostly various shades of gray. All the pants can go with basically any of my shirts (mostly).
I have 20 long sleeve, button up shirts. Almost all solid colors. The only acceptably pattern is vertical pin stripes. Always wear a v-neck undershirt.
Two pair of simple, polished black shoes and a couple of black belts.
There you have it. You do not have to do wash for two weeks at a time. You never have to "match socks". You never have to match shirts to pants. You always look good and feel good without having to put forth mental effort.
Hey, programmers are elite. Those other "artists" dress in jeans one day and silk suits the next. I just wanna look good and get a little respect. Management is for people who do not know how to code anyway.
- I live the greatest adventure anyone could possibly desire. - Tosk the Hunted
You are perfectly accurate in your views, and as to the whys, except you miss the point ...
"A black suit, IMO, shows that a person put less thought into getting dressed than a person who wears sock/sandals and a big Hawaiian shirt. At least those things exhibit character."
A black suit means that you have no personality, THAT IS THE POINT. Corporate nature is to have a corporate personality, not one of your own. In fact, suits are making a comeback specifically because it represents consistancy and solid conservative approach to business. It represents that which geeks generally resent.
Businesses don't want created people who think outside the box. They want a consistant product to market. Suits represent this. It works for many people, as they don't have to think about what to wear, how to behave or other such trivial nonsense, they can put in their 8 hours and go home and watch tv for four more. They don't have to think, and they'll vote for Obama (or Hillary) or McCain in November, expecting things to change.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
"Who says regimental is bad when your boss is dying of heat in his oven-suit? "
Who says it has to be an oven-suit when it can be a nice summer suit instead.
Florida summers + suits here, with none of the problems you're so up in arms about. You're just buying crappy suits.
I find it very interesting that everyone assumes I want to be in the boardroom. I am perfectly happy architecting and implementing code, this is what I am good at, it's challenging and fun and I get a honest payment for my work. I suck at management and do not like it. Also, any article that suggests using concert T-shirts for painting is just clueless. They form a part of our identity.
Years ago, I did a questionnaire thingy for people entering a college football game. One of the questions was "income bracket". I found that this very closely corresponded to the quality of shoes the respondents were wearing.
Crappy shoes = Low pay. Nice quality shoes = Good Pay.
Not always true, but, yes, -- it was true MOST of the time. I guess chicks just pay better attention to these things.
- I live the greatest adventure anyone could possibly desire. - Tosk the Hunted
I thought it said Gaffes that keep geeks from the BEDROOM
A letter landed on my desk this very morning that told me I am scheduled for an interview for a promotion to a management-level on Monday. I actually RTFA in hopes that it might give me some helpful hints. What a waste of time. If I didn't already know all that tripe, I wouldn't even be getting an interview.
Profanity - The sign of a small mind trying to express itself.
So, in reading the "dos and do nots" of the list, I was struck by how many of them the TLC show "What Not To Wear" addressed very differently. Many of the fashion no-nos on this list are merely dependent on the rest of your outfit. Shoes and belt don't match? Not really that big of a problem, as long as your overall color scheme fits in - ie if you want to wear a brown belt with black shoes, then you should pick out a shirt and pants that are also in the brown/black spectrum so the entire outfit flows. Want to wear short sleeves and a tie? Go a bit "preppy" and throw a sweater-vest over the top. It is all in how you pull the look together, not in how well you follow the "rules" of fashion.
Incidentally, both my fashion and my husbands (who is a programmer) have improved by leaps and bounds from watching this show. It helps teach you little tricks to make an outfit presentable and how not to make it look awful so that you can make a good impression. For those unfamiliar with the show, they take someone who is seriously fashion-challenged (and just seeing some of the faux pas that these people commit might make you realize that your own pigtails are not so serious an infraction) and nominated by friends and family to New York for a week long fashion-therapy session. They go through the person's entire wardrobe and toss out anything that is too small, too large, stained, ripped or just in general poorly suited for the person's body and then give them $5,000 and teach them what kind of colors/shapes would look best on them. Then they let them go shopping in the city for two days and get an entirely new wardrobe (supervised, of course, to help them break bad fashion habits). Then they get their hair done and skin care (for the men)/makeup (for the girls) and show off their new look. The amazing thing is how they manage to make everyone feel really good about themselves - they tell you that you dress poorly, but the whole time they're building up your self-esteem about your body and self and encouraging you to show what a great person you are and to show off all the good things about your body with your clothes. It's pretty amazing to watch the people's transformations as they realize how good they look with just little changes to their wardrobes.
Gods, now I sound like a commercial! But, anyway, I think that this list oversimplifies the issue - which isn't that you should follow these rules, but that you should in general take care of and pay attention to the impression you are giving off with your attire and personal hygiene. And if you need a little help with the wardrobe part, maybe watching the show on TLC would help.
"Does bouncing count?" - Silk, Magician's Gambit by David Eddings
Seriously, this is a loaded proposition!
"When is the last time you beat your wife?"
One baseline metric of wealth is quality of life; specifically, free time and the ability to choose what to do with that time.
Being in the board room, may not deliver that as well as it will deliver dollars.
Blogging because I can...
Even though I have hundreds of tee shirts and polo shirts, I have a special place in my heart for:
1) Ones for companies/projects I have actually worked on. I was heartbroken when I lost my only 3R Computers shirt on a high speed boat ride between island in the Caribbean.
2) NeXT tee shirts.
However, I do actually buy some shirts. Unfortunately, they are Hawaiian shirts.
The singular form of "yourselves" is "yourself".
"Why would I even want to be in the Boardroom"
Because then you'd get some hand in changing things like "wearing shirts, ties, suits and overpriced uncomfortable stuff " insted of just bitching about it to other geeks on a geek website.
You know, actually do something (management) vs. whine about something you don't like while doing nothing to change it (your current situation).
First, let me say, be very cautious about fashion advice on Slashdot.
Second, your post is 100% spot on, if this was 1965. These days, not so much.
A lot of people tell me that I look better that way. It's not really "alternative", and I always wear suits, usually dark grey or dark blue. I'm a little concerned because honestly, I'm not as good looking with short hair- I look better with longer hair, at least that is what the majority of women have told me, and yes, I think I might be a little more concerned about their opinion than my bosses (at least while I'm not working), just being honest. At the same time, however, I've always seen myself in more of a managerial role- don't get me wrong, I like coding, but I enjoy interacting with people.
So...survey says? This is directed towards you MBA types. I'm also have good social skills and I'm not smarmy, if that helps. How much of an impact does "alternative hairstyle" make, when offset with good dress code?
oh man...you're absolutely right...
I've been eyeball-conned by a hack journo and analytically overtaken by an MBA jerk...this is wrong...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
...any problems with pocket protectors!
Yes, I really do wear one at work. I do IT support at a University, and it makes me easy to pick out from amidst the faculty and students, and even the CS majors don't argue with my tech advice any more; they just nod respectfully. I suppose it may be a question of what you want to be in charge of....
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
The rest of that was correct. Obviously, the rate at which income tax is withheld has nothing to do with what you pay in the end. Having a big bonus at the beginning of the year will essentially give the IRS a 1-year interest free loan though.
I probably screwed something up myself here, so look at the Publication if you want the real answer.
Clovis42
Clovis
^ Clovis, look! It's that guy you are!
Posting anonymously, for obvious reasons...
I work for a small company. Even so, I am grateful for the layers of insulation I have...
My boss is a developer. He doesn't get to spend much time on it, but he at least understands how it works.
He then turns around and explains it to his boss, who's the CEO, and to the other, marketing-oriented guy we have. Sometimes he has to explain it directly to our customers, who are usually much larger organizations -- which means he's explaining it to, not necessarily a PHB, but absolutely to someone who "doesn't get it".
So, my boss brings back stories of corporate politics gone insane -- we don't get a contract to avoid making someone's crack in-house team look bad (even if the in-house team can't even produce valid XML). And then there are the execs who browse the Web at 800x600 and believe all Google's search results are paid for (not just the ones in the section marked, oh, "sponsored links"). And the designers whose answer to every proposal of any web app/site/anything is "But does it support Flex?" And on and on...
If I were a religious person, I'd be thanking God every day for putting someone competent in the position of dealing with these people, and of having that person not be me. (There, but for the grace of God...) I don't want to deal with those politics, but I also don't want our marketing guys trying to explain it.
And yet, even the marketing guys frequently run into their own forehead-slapping moments, where they have a basic grasp of concepts like read-only optical media... "No, you do not have to worry about leaving space on the DVD! We write to the user's hard disk..."
All things considered, I wouldn't want a management job, buried in phone calls, paperwork, and office politics. Especially if it means having to look tidy and getting my workstation switched to a slow-ass notebook
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Smart, you've taken the RoR approach - use conventions to make everything work together, and just hope to God you never have to integrate with a pre-existing system, 'cuz then you're SOL.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Utilikilts aren't made from heavy wool. They are made from a rugged yet light cloth that is anything but sweaty in summer.
Haiku?
Imagine programming code semantically written as Haiku. It would baffle the hell out of anyone trying to put you out of a job...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Nearly every man can look good in a suit if they're willing to spend the money on tailoring. You're a lucky man if you can wear suits "off the rack."
... and I don't want to be in the boardroom. ;)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The thing about first impressions is that you only get one.
I've given up trying to make political statements with my t-shirts. If clothing is so unimportant to you, then why are you so attached to yours?
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
In all fairness, I think that's pretty common. It's becoming an old joke that the fastest way to get promoted is to get a job at another company -- and then have your old company hire you back at a higher salary. Yet it's not really joke: It happens over and over again.
I am willing to bet what you consider a "management" position is really a low-level mid-management position where you would not be making decisions, but rather herding other programmers or acting as a project manager.Well, sure. He's trying to sound impressive. But, let's be honest: All you did in this paragraph was replace "management" with some mostly-synonyms that just happen to have negative connotations. I think that's called spin. Because management is a lot of people-herding.
You mistake looking professional and impressing one's boss with sucking up and being a yes-man. One does not imply or require the other.Indeed you are correct. In fact, challenging your boss at the right times (in a diplomatic manner) can earn his respect. Which, if I were clever, I could turn around and use to deconstruct the whole GP's post (But I won't. Derrida was obnoxious.)
Apparently, you are either a dumbass, a liar, or both.He's exaggerating, sure. But your style won't do you too much good either. Let's be civil, a'ight?
Peace.
This list is all wrong!
My adviser and several other professors on my floor commonly wear socks with sandals. There are three men in my research group with long hair, two of whom wear floral-pattern shirts. Nobody wears a tie (eww!). I'm not sure anyone cares about the shoes/belt thing; I've certainly never bothered to make sure the person I'm discussing physics with is wearing matching accessories. Nobody I know wears a binary watch, but a few professors carry PDAs that they use for all manner of unusual purposes.
And you know what? All of these people are very successful scientists. Who'd have thought that the silly corporate obsession with appearance would be so irrelevant to real productivity?
Legalize it.
I just signed a new client yesterday. I mentioned to them that I wasn't getting rich doing tech support for small businesses because my marketing sucked. The manager then told me they'd called three or four other people before they called me, and I was the first one who was articulate and seemed knowledgeable enough to talk to! He said my marketing was fine. I told him my problem was more "lead generation" (that's what this client does.)
Yes, being a "geek" can cost you business.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
One day, at my first salaried job, one of the secretaries was nearly in tears. When I asked her what the matter was, she explained to me that a board member scolded her and told her that a woman should never show up to work without makeup on. I said, "If he EVER says ANYTHING like that to you EVER again, you send him over to my desk, right away. I would LOVE to hear him tell me that in person, so I can quit my job right in front of his face."
I love programming. Do executives get to program? No. So, why the hell would I want to be an executive, and put up with idiots like that guy?
If they were, board members would have to acknowledge the real structure of power in a company.
:)
From Top to Bottom:
1. Facilities. They control the master electrical switch. Without them, not much will happen. They also have the ability to change every lock in the building.
2. IT. IT can turn off the servers, computers, and expose whatever illicit affairs are reveled by the board member's email and other data.
We never figured it out farther than that, but it seemed to fit rather well as our Facilities and IT departments are regularly the most satisfied departments according to the employee surveys.
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
OK for once i actually decide TRFA, not only does it turn out to be contentless, and basically 12 pages of "dress smart", but the website was a complete mess:
1st it ran in a background tab, so when i got round to reading it all it showed was a list of different slideshows
It took me about 5 slides to see the pause button
The time spent on each slider was far too short, (i could barely read the slide let alone think about it)
The presentation didnt fit on the 1st visible page meaning for every slide, i had to scroll down to see the actual content (and i have a fairly minimal browser(40px) + window manager(13px), dread to think how much people on vista+ie7 could see)
The adverts around the page meant that every slider moved the navigation elements around.
The entire page was very cluttered.
The content, is basically "dress smart at work", has been riped apart for many reasons:
1)If your a geek, YTF do you want to be in the boardroom ( if you want $$$, YTF are you a geek)
2)If you work for a good company they value performance above presentation (tbh most companies suck tho)
3)If you work for a bad company the GTFO and find a good company (easier said than done, there are too many boardroom types and not enough demand for workers)
4)Women care about looks too, if they're slags. (maybe not slags, but quality = care about looks ^-1)
5)girls with pig-tails are hawt!!! (ok so i made this 1 up, but w/e floats your boat)
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
But to clarify, the 'boardroom' notion is rather misguided - the 'board' of a company is not the same at all as 'senior management'. ... They are supposed to be the guys who see beyond buzzwords, don't get seduced by pet projects, and see the entire company as a whole.
See beyond the buzzwords? Our directors are all *about* the buzzwords!
Not get seduced by pet projects? Our directors are only interested in pet projects!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Except for the belt and shoes, everything in the article is blindingly obvious to me. It's like saying "Don't whip out your dick and masturbate in the middle of a board meeting." I can hear the young whippersnappers protesting "But why not? What do my masturbation habits have to do with my programming or management ability?" Nothing of course.
But people tend to remember you for one thing. If you dye your hair pink, you're the guy with pink hair. If you look normal, act normal, and solve technical problems other people can't, you're the guy who solves technical problems other people can't.
We corporate types go to college, wear suits and ties, and act "professionally" because that's how we prove we can be trusted with our bosses' money. I wear t-shirts, like MBA students do, when I'm not expected to act "professionally." The reason corporate types wear suits and ties is to NOT look like the "common man." We are just lucky the business community was started by British aristocrats, and not Furries.
Business is about exchanging large amounts of money in exchange for goods and services, and giving large amounts of money requires trust. Anyone can look normal, but it takes a lot more effort to look like a polished professional, and most of the time, the untrustworthy don't bother. It's like a barbed wire fence - yes, anyone could safely cross it if he really wanted to, but for most criminals its just too inconvenient. For the mathematics behind this, read Spence, (1973) "Job Market Signaling." None of you will, because it is too inconvenient.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
No, it's the Arabic word for God. What do you think Christian Arabs call God?
Are you adequate?
If your not allowed into 'the boardroom' because of how you dress instead of your abilities, decisions and merits then it's probably not a place you want to waste your talents at.
Now, if you smell like a 5 day old hot dog that is another story!
Bonzai Buddy causes IT more work, wearing matching belt and shoes also causes IT more work, it isn't the same. In any case, I work at a startup in san francisco, wear sandals to work most days. Yea I don't work in a traditional corporation, but I think its a much healthier place to be. I don't have to worry what I wear or how I act, just that I produce awesome code as quickly as possible. Maybe you can't get far in a traditional company wearing sandals, but there are many other options.
If you want to rise to high level management roles as a geek, you just need to role play the non-violent psychopathic personality type and you will fit in perfectly. Oh and having pointy hair helps.
Sometimes you need a little finesse, and sometimes you need a LART.
It is the same, but you don't see my point.
The point is, we hear them complaining about their computer acting strange, so we tell them not to download malware, because we see the connection between malware and computer acting strange.
They hear us complaining how no one ever listens to our suggestions, so they tell us to dress like we're expected to because they see the connection between a certain dress code and getting the respect and attention you deserve.
"But its comfy!" -> "But it's cute!"
"Who cares about management anyway, I just want to do my programming, but they won't let me!" -> "Who cares about computers anyway, I just want to get this report done, but it won't let me!"
It is the same thing.
Fair point - I was talking about bonzai buddy creating more problems for us, but I agree with where you are coming from. imo just buy 1 matching shoes and belt, and then you never need to think about it.
no choices, no issues!
It's called climbing the corporate staircase. Similar to climbing the corporate ladder but much easier. I have managed a significant salary increase each time I change jobs.
So much so that I now make significantly more than equally skilled persons I left behind at previous employers. I also make more than most of my current co-workers, even some who are more competent than me.
Don't get me wrong. I'm pretty darned good. However a superstar who isn't willing to change jobs will make less than pretty darned good who is.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
I have consulted all around the world.
I don't have neck ties or suits, never had.
What does one thing have to do with each other?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
A contractor like you would have no place in my team.
For bunnies sakes, what an attitude...
Thankfully contractors can be whisked away quickly out of a building...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
This is a fine example of how Corporate America has lost sight of what is important in people and opted for the easier, less thoughtful method of judgement of worth to the company, prejudice.
Be as you would have the world become.