Slashdot Mirror
HP R&D Starts Enforcing a Business Casual Dress Code
An anonymous reader writes: HP was once known as a research and technology giant, a company founded in a garage by a pair of engineers and dominated by researchers. Whilst a part of that lives on in Agilent any hope for the rest of the company has now died with the announcement that HP R&D will have to dress in business "smart casual" with T-shirts, baseball caps, short skirts, low cut dresses and sportswear all being banned.
This seems like a logical step to encourage an atmosphere of professionalism in which HP's remaining employees can train their H1B replacements.
Decades ago, at Texas Instruments in Dallas, one of my colleagues was almost fired for wearing shorts in the middle of summer on a Saturday. After that incident, the dress code was changed to allow more casual dress outside normal working hours.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
... in severance packages. A hostile work environment will definitely reduce personnel.
Of course the smart people who have no problem finding another job will leave first.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
HP management is looking for scapegoat for their incompetence and has finally ran out of (other) scapegoats.
A sure sign of a company in trouble is when assholes at the top begins to blame people at the bottom for all the failings. I expect to see a lot of people shorting HP soon..
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Who cares?
I care. A dress code sends a message about a company's culture. The stricter the code, the more that company cares about having a professional appearance, and less about professional performance.
Perhaps they're also looking for ways to annoy enough people into quitting so that they don't have the pay out any severance when the next round of layoffs starts. This seems like something that would push a few people over the edge, though I suspect it might be some of their better workers. Then again, the current suit only cares long enough to hit some bonuses based on poorly chosen metrics in order to cash out with a golden parachute while the company collapses.
I think it much more likely that they are wanting to trim some fat off of their employment expenses, and doing this is a quick and easy way to get some people to voluntarily quit without looking too conspicuously like constructive dismissal.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
And this is what Logic 101 would call a non sequitur.
the more that company cares about having a professional appearance,
Yes.
and less about professional performance.
No.
They are not mutually exclusive.
The institution I've been with the strictest dress code was the private school I went to - it also had near top national academic performance. The principle was not that people were required to waste time worrying about what they wore, but that people didn't worry about what they wore, as everyone was wearing the same thing: a well-fitting, comfortable, smart uniform.
Business casual doesn't even require suits. A shirt or even a polo shirt is fine.
All it requires is basically that you don't look like a hobo.
This makes me laugh.
Years ago, I worked for a company in Mesa, Arizona. It's damned hot in that area, especially in the summer.
When the company tackled the thorny issue of dress codes, they wanted a unisex dress code--no double standards. The dress code ended up being, "You must be covered from shoulders to a little above the knee in clothing of good repair." Open toed shoes were okay, but no flip-flops.
That was it. No ripped jeans. No tube tops or spaghetti straps.
That said, there were some people who could just not handle hairy men's legs and, I'm told, argued vehemently against men wearing shorts. The head of HR basically said that whatever standards are there for women should also be there for men. If you want to wear skirts, you need to let men show their legs, too.
There were two other interesting things they did. One, they hung a sign in the lobby that said "This company supports a casual dress code." So you wouldn't wonder why people were wandering around in shorts. The other rule was that there were times--maybe once or twice a year--when it might be necessary to, shall we say, "dress to impress." When this happened, you would be notified by your manager--and it was up to your manager to do this and verify that you got the message--more than 24 hours before this would happen. If you were not notified and showed up dressed unimpressively, your manager was the one who caught the heat.
I learned two important lessons from one of my former bosses concerning dressing:
First: If you meet with a group of people, the least well dressed person is the one you're looking out for. It's either the tech or the decision maker. And both of them are important to you. The decision maker for obvious reasons, and the tech because he'll be the one asking the important questions and his reaction to your answers is also the important one, because he will later translate your answer to the managers. They can nod, ahh and ohh all they want to your answer, they don't understand it. It's the tech that will understand it and what he later conveys to his managers is what makes or breaks your contract. So that is the one person you need to convince.
And second, never trust a tech in a suit. Never. If you're in a customer meeting with someone who is allegedly a tech and he comes in dressed up like a manager, there's two possible reasons: First, he's not a tech but a sales goon who has been briefed by their tech, and he has been sent 'cause they fear their tech would tell us more truth about the product than they want him to. Or he is a tech and was forced to dress up to distract from the product being not able to stand on its own. If something needs a dolled up clown to sell it, it's not worth buying it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's something I never really understood. And it seems to be something that is actually pretty much an US thing. I don't see the same clinging to dress codes over here in Europe.
How the heck can it be important how someone dresses who is in no contact with customers? I can see the necessity of "professional" dressing when one has to do with customers. That's a given. You need to follow the rites of the human tribe. Dressing up in a similar way as the one you get into contact with makes him identify you as "one of his kind" and causes him to like you. He looks like me, so he's one of my tribe. That's deep in our ancestor's brain. That's why three piece suits are pretty much a necessity in management meetings because managers look at you and identify you as one of them if you're in the same three piece junk.
It's also, btw, the reason why techs don't like managers and why any tech dressing up as a manager immediately loses support with his peers. He's no longer "one of us". He's "one of them" now.
And no, I don't digress, actually, that's exactly the problem these things create. Because "business dress code" identifies a tech as "not one of us anymore". We not only don't want to wear that junk, we also don't like people wearing it. If anything, it alienates people.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.