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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!"
Wow, a lot of that list was written by MBA jerks jealous over what IT staff does. I never thought of it that way before. It never bothered me in my jobs as "what" I was wearing. But as ThomasHoward says, "being happy with what you do is far more important than earning more money".
T-shirts and jeans!
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
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 difference between t-shirts and jeans and suits and ties is one of corporate culture, not management vs grunt.
That sort of elitist thinking ("programming sounds far more fun than managing things and people") is part of the culture that keeps IT and engineering staff out of decision making positions. You're looking at the business from your perpective and yours only, and announcing it to everyone.
Building a business, building a team, management -- they're all forms of creative problem solving every bit as "fun" or creative as programming is. In fact, imaging programming for a CPU whose instructions have unpredictable execution speeds and results.
Management isn't generally a bunch of PHB's who flail around with no idea what they're doing. Just as there are good engineers and bad engineers, the same is true of people who build and run businesses, but good or bad they're doing the same thing you're doing -- they're engineering teams or a business just as you are engineering classes or applications.
Recognizing that will get you a long ways towards getting into the sort of position in a company where you can do what you find fun *and* have the influence needed to ensure decisions that impact areas of your responsibility are made correctly. Ignoring it will leave you forever being the monkey who has to jump when asked.
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.
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?
Speaking as a contractor who has worked in dozens of companies, led and built teams and generally blurred the line between geek and management, I would say that:
is basically wrong. Generally they are exactly that.
Maybe not in a bricks and mortar business, but in IT that's pretty much exactly what they are. IMHO, of course.
Cheers,
Justin
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
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...
You need to look around. The Peter Principle is alive and well, and is easy enough to see. Look at all those clueless top management at the Fed, the White House, the banks, etc., - everyone who went against the obvious - that at some point a mortgage is only worth as much as the earning power of the person who is paying it - and brought us yet another crisis.
Why do you think that newer businesses can beat out older established competitors? Part of the reason is that the longer a business has been around, the more positions are filled by people who have been promoted to a position one higher than they are really capable of. So they're not all that competent, and their boss, who refuses to address it, is also incompetent. And his boss, and so on and so on and so on ...
This is true. That uniform signals attachment to a subculture.
I've had customers explicitly state that they feel comfortable about our competence because of the density of Coke-bottles, combat-boots, long-beards, band-shirts, hacker-attitude, incomprehensible posters with inside hacker-jokes, in our offices. These things signal attachment to a subculture, and indicate, to them, someone who lives, breathes thinks, lives code.
Which is just as silly as trusting a salesman because he has a nice suit, but there you go, nobody ever said customers can't be silly.
Let me guess, you're unemployed and single? No offence, but the thing is, you and I might think its unimportant, but other people do not. Since we live in a society where everyone depends on each other, other peoples opinions are actually extremely important. If it wasn't for my boss and the women in my life, I'd never even think about my belt and my shoes. But my life depends on them, so I have to.
We ask the non geeks to avoid downloading bonzai buddy and anything similar, they ask us to match our belt to our shoes. How hard can it be for everyone to just follow these small pieces of advice?
YOu might also want to look into the quality shoe thing more...if you want chicks!
Yep....women are ALL about shoes, and not just for themselves, apparently they put a good deal of importance in men who wear nice and often $$$ shoes. And if you spring for good shoes, you're probably gonna match the belt with them too.
Don't get me wrong...I missed out on this a LONG time, but, it does seem to be true.
So, dressing well, presenting oneself well can mean chicks and a promotion to higher 'office'.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I've got a good one, too.
My workplace is business-casual, but nobody really says anything if we push the limits of that. I'm a software developer who's just a few years out of school, and I hadn't been making much of an effort to look nice, largely because I was still dirt poor and didn't have decent clothes.
Well, before long my financial situation started to improve (paying off debts from school and old medical bills, etc). I made a resolution to start dressing nicer. Over a long weekend, I went out my wife helped me pick out bunch of new clothes. Still business casual, but toward the nicer end of that. Slacks and nice button up shirts and the like.
So, on Monday I come in dressed up significantly nicer than usual. Then, shortly after lunch, my wife calls me. She's feeling lousy and wants me to take her to the hospital. I go tell my boss that I need to leave for the day, and he looks me up and down, realizes that I'm dressed much nicer than usual, and leaving early.
So, obviously, he jumps to the conclusion that I'm off interviewing at another job. Within a week I had a sit down with my boss and his boss, and they're giving me a 10% raise and a promotion, just out of the blue. They said it's because they're really happy with the work I've been doing, and I just deserve it. I hope that's at least partially true, but I'm totally sure the impetus the clothes.
Of course, this is more an argument for keeping your bosses on their toes than for dressing nicely every day, but I still like the story.