IT Workers Worst Dressed Employees 959
Poorly Dressed Anonymous Coward wrote to mention are article run in the Syndney Morning Herald saying that IT workers have been dubbed the worst dressed corporate employees. From the article: "Help-desk staff were named as the worst offenders, followed by those working in technology start-ups, many of whom had continued to wear T-shirts to work as a consequence of the casual web culture of the '90s. 'The internet is now such a massive industry but people haven't caught up in terms of their dress'."
Hmmm. (Score:2, Interesting)
Goddamn right (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess the real question is why do IT workers get that freedom when others don't? There's certainly lots of other positions in the world where appearance matters as little. Is it because we've successfully trained the world to diminish their clothing expectations of geeks?
Re:How strange. (Score:3, Interesting)
I've lived in/near Seattle for the last 6 years, working in the tech industry, and I've regularly seen people come to work in sweats or wearing shorts in the dead of winter (and it gets cold up here - we're only a 3 hour drive from Canada). The most disconcerting thing, though, is the growing presence of fat guys in kilts.
- Greg
Re:Don't dress too nicely (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How strange. (Score:3, Interesting)
Geeks shouldn't be afraid to put thought into their clothes. Style is not completely mysterious, and though the rules can sometimes be subtle, they are learnable with a bit of effort. What's more, looking nice does wonders for your self-confidence and your authority with others, whether they are conscious of the effect or not. It doesn't even have to be expensive if you know where to look.
Also: Chicks dig it when you ask them to go clothes shopping with you. You get style advice, and they get to play with a life-sized Ken doll.
further marginalization (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, why not? After all, we're the first to get "downsized", first to have our budgets cut- this despite the fact that IT workers have the highest attrition rate of virtually any other job category. We're often the only people in an entire company "required" to carry a pager. Our managers won't stick up for us, we work in a job which we're visible only when something is wrong (so no matter how good a job we do, the question is "why did this break in the first place). We spend all day listening to people whine and have little "chats" with the boss when we don't bed over far enough. We're the #1 excuse of why business doesn't get done ("oh, I didn't get that out for fedex by 6 because my laptop stopped working right before I was going to save it! Those IT people can't do anything right!").
Tell you what? Give me that salary review I was promised when I signed up. Give me a competitive wage even half that of the slick-haired assholes in sales, or the ditzy bleached bimbos in marketing. Take me out to lunch when the mail server crashes and I get everything back up and running in record time, yet again.
I'll be more than happy to dress nicer in return.
Re:Goddamn right (Score:3, Interesting)
Awhhh... And just when I was agreeing with you.
It does not matter all that much what you look like or dress like, IMHO. I always dress in a single colour T-shirt, jeans and Caterpillars, and I have had ONE remark so far during all those years.
The remark came from a client, who said to me I'd (quote) "better dress in some kind of suit instead of whatever the hell I was wearing" if I was going to work in "his" building.
I told him without hesitation that if he wanted a brilliant coder, he'd better reconsider. If he wanted to hire an idiotic monkey in a suit & tie - by all means. No hard feelings.
He never gave a comment on my way of dressing since, and the project ended in a job well done.
Re:How strange. (Score:2, Interesting)
What they fail to explain in the article is how this helps improve our ability to provide services to those who hire us. Are white shirts and ties really going to provide better code for instance?
They focus on T-shirts rather than the work provided in making people's lives better.
Re:What ya need is... (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Stylish non jean pants
2. Stylish comfortable shoes, with matching belt and socks
3. Polo shirt
Looks good, is comfortable to wear and management doesn't have a problem with it. Honestly i'm sick of suits and ties and just let my quality of work do the talking.
And from what other workers tell me, they seem to appreciate my relaxed attitude when it comes to crunch time, because I don't look like i'm getting stressed out.
You want well dressed- pay well dressed wages (Score:5, Interesting)
Plus,...well,...their brains work differently.
It could be worse. Lip Shit Ralph Lauren forced the people working in his stores to buy the company clothes from his company at full retail cost. And then he paid them minimum wage plus a few points commission on what they sold. How's that for suck?
Plus how about filling some of the cubicles with beautiful young women? Tech support guys know that they are zeros and will most likely always be zeros. They realize that they will constantly have to be studying new technologies in order to remain employed at chump wages. They know that they will never have the social status that their counterparts in Bangalore and Chennai have with the general public. They know that they will be working for the rest of their lives in dead soulless drab cubicles. They know that the only difference between their lives and the lives of those who are serving (in USA the same verb is used for being in the military and being in prison) 20 years for killing record company lawyers is that they are less likely to be raped after 'work'. So they figure, why not where whatever I feel like wearing.
What difference does it make to anyone?
Dressing fashionably maybe not so easy (Score:5, Interesting)
My relevent dimesions are 32, 36, and 36. Those are waist, inseam, and sleave length measured in inches. It is near impossible to find clothing that fits, even at big and tall shops. Actually, big and tall shops are much more consistant. They never carry anything that fits.
Long ago, I mostly gave up. I could find and buy short sleave shirts and jeans without major effort so that's what I wore. More recently, I am finding that I can't even find jeans without a multi day cross town search. After the last such search, I found two pairs at the largest of several GAP stores in my metro area. I bought them both. After I left the store, they once again had nothing in my size.
Some say the Internet is to blame. Brick and morter clothing shops think they can avoid the expense of carrying a full range of sizes but telling odd size people to buy online. Never mind that fit can not be verified through a web browser. Whatever the reason, it takes all the fun away. It is hard to get excited about fashion when even the basics are denied.
Re:You want well dressed- pay well dressed wages (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:How strange. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:How strange. (Score:2, Interesting)
That is about how I feel. I am a transsexual (yes, really) and have been living and working in my "new" appearane for the last 5 years. Prior to that, I would *never* have agreed to any kind of dresscode anyway since it would have seriously violated my perception of myself.
Besides the small minority of people like me, there are still people who take great pride in their own style and appearance and it can be a big part of who they are. If you take that away from them, they will have less confidence and perhaps perform worse. I feel people should be able to dress in what makes them feel good as long as they look clean and presentable.
Judging people by their clothes is just as stupid as judging people by the color of their hair (or skin).
Comments on dress vs non dress (Score:4, Interesting)
Dress doesn't matter in IT.
Several jobs ago, I was a sales-man. Selling toy soldiers. I wore suits, but when you were selling $10-$20k of product to a small independant retailer, you needed to make an impression.
I then worked for a cable giant, and was told to wear kakhi's and a polo to work. I did, there were a *LOT* of cute girls in that office, seemed easy to comply - especially with lunch dates in mind.
I left that job to go work for another fortune 500, where Jeans were expresly forbidden. I wore jeans every day. Once a director asked me [infront of a vp, and a department head] why i was allowed to wear jeans. This man, ironcally - the head of it/ecommerce, and 2 years later, my boss - was told by the VP of marketing : "Oh, thats cause he is one of those programmers, who wants to do all that math in a tie ?"
The two or three times I pulled an armani out of the closet (remember, i was in sales!) and wore them to work, I made people VERY
That being said, in a fortune 500 environment, I noticed that on the days I wore a $1500 suit, people stepped out of my way
Now I am the V.P. of IT at a smaller company, and all upper management actually tells me all the time to 'dress edgy' when I ask if I should wear a suit.
In the small co. / startup / under 50 million a year industry. Venture Caps *LIKE* to see the crazy IT guys, it provides them with an oddly inverted feeling of comfort - NO ONE who dresses like that could be hired by such a small company if they were not REALLY good at their job
Like it or not, we actually *HAVE* fostered the belief that good programmers really *don't* wear suits. And the tighter we hold on to that conviction, the more truth it gains
Re:No single women (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:How strange. (Score:3, Interesting)
In my last job, I made the conscious decision to force myself to wear shoes. I used to wear a nice long-sleeved oxford, twill pants with pleats, and sandals to work. (from early march through november in Chicago) I decided one morning it was time to act more seriously at work, changed to shoes when I changed jobs, and got on with my life. It helped separate me from the grad-students/post-docs, and was part of the whole, "time to get into character" aspect of work.
So, in short, it might make you code better. Give L.L. Bean a call, trim your facial hair symmetrically, and see what happens. At least you'll have done the experiment. As S. Jackson put it in Pulp Fiction, "Time to get into character."
"Thought abhors tights" (Score:2, Interesting)
Can't find it online, but it's in the book "Travels in Hyperreality" [amazon.com], a collection of miscellaneous essays. Postmodernism at its best, or worst, depending on your tastes. A brief sample ("fair use", I hope!):
Nice clothes + heels + data center = disaster (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, have you ever had to crawl under a desk for cabling... in a skirt?? Yeah, it sucks, though I'm sure that employee had a nice view that day.
IT workers rarely deal with customers, though I try to look decent when I know I'll be meeting with vendors.
It's just not entirely reasonable to ask anyone in IT to dress up. We think on our feet, deal with hardware on the fly, and deal with various environments.
Re:How strange. (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think he should care. It doesn't bother me that he doesn't care. It doesn't bother me that people don't care. It's not really a big deal. However, when someone feels the need to run around, bitching about how much they don't give a fuck about something and that people who do give a fuck are just fucking stupid (that was the impression I got. Maybe I presupposed too much?), then I'd say they're lying. They do care about it. They think about it. Somewhere, deep inside, they need to face the fact that they give a fuck about it and either do something about it, or learn to deal with it.
I noticed on your website that you teach Latin dancing. That's great! I'm sure there's a million rednecks out there who probably think Latin dancing (and dancing in general) is for a bunch of fairy fags. Do you really care what they think? You might. But if you didn't, would you bother to stop and tell them that they're wrong and that "Latin dancing" is really a great way to exercise, a great place to meet women, and is really a lot of fun? (I say this as I plan to enroll in Salsa classes soon. Looks fun as hell to me). Do you walk down the street exclaiming "I don't care that you think I'm a fag for teaching Latin Dancing!!!" I doubt it.
Now, granted, maybe this is an anomoly for the OP. Maybe he's just having a bad day and reading this just caused him to lapse into a rant mode. (I'm currently unemployed due to a recent (last week) move). But the 3 or 4 other posts he's written appear that he's just trying to be some sort of internet bad-ass and is proud of the fact that he doesn't give a fuck about his appearance. Which means he does give a fuck about his appearance. I know people who don't give a fuck about their appearance. They don't mention how they don't give a fuck about their appearance. If someone (usually a female) asked them about it, the response was usually something like "huh? Oh, I dunno.. I guess I never thought about it.." and that was the end of that.
Re:How strange. (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess this is similar to this continuing thread: based on the single post of yours, you sounded basically exactly like the OP, at least from my perspective: someone trying to validate their life choices by publically putting down the opposite viewpoint. Now, after seeing a longer, more well-thought-out comment, my opinion changes. I'm not saying you were wrong in your previous post, or that you were wrong in how you said it, just that it was a one-off response that gave a bad (first) impression. Amusingly, that's somewhat similar to the topic at hand, the tendency for business types to get bad impressions from people who don't dress like they do.
Regarding your point about not running down the street exclaiming that I don't care what people think (nice funny image, btw), I tend to think it's hard to draw parallels that way: Slashdot is an easily-accessible soapbox where people can regularly let off steam in a quasi-anonymous manner. Someone who rants on Slashdot about something is unlikely to do the same in a (physically) public location. That's not to say you don't have a valid point -- quite the opposite -- but that kind of thing just bugs me a bit.
At any rate, thanks for the thoughtful reply. I'd like to think that I, in your position, would have taken the time to do the same, but more likely I would have just moved on, or, depending on my mood, continued to flame.
Re:You want well dressed- pay well dressed wages (Score:3, Interesting)
I absolutely hate ties - I feel like I'm being choked. I could wear a tie loose enought so that it doesn't feel like that, but then I look far more scruffy than just wearing an open collared shirt. I have left at least one job partly on the grounds that I had to wear a tie, and the fact that we can wear (reasonably) casual clothes (polo shirts/smart black jeans etc - and there are people in all departments, not just IT, dressed like that, including our CIO) here is one of the reasons that I've not left this job yet.
I don't turn up in dirty t-shirts, and these days I wouldn't even if the company allowed it, but so long as someone is doing their job, and the clothes aren't so dirty that they smell, I don't really see what the problem.
Re:How strange. (Score:3, Interesting)
Even though I wore suits to interviews, changing my day-to-day dress code really made a difference. Suddenly people who never looked at me twice before noticed it, and before I knew it I had moved jobs to a large enterprise based on contacts I had recently made. Since being here, I've been given the opportunity to work on projects and do things that I never would have dreamed of before.
Also, because they pay more, they tend to attract excellent technical people, so I've worked with better people and learnt more from them. What I've learnt has made my code better, my processes and documentation better, and helped my career more than I care to think about.