15 ms·

> We no longer wear suits and ties just because everyone wears suits and ties. I have trouble parsing this sentence. Do we or do we not wear suits and ties?

TeMPOraL 10y ago
Yeah. We wear suits and ties not because everyone else does that too. We wear suits and ties because we want to impress investors. ;).
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braythwayt 10y ago
If we wear suits and ties, we do so intentionally, not just to conform mindlessly :-)
- forgottenpass 10y ago
  What are you talking about? Proper attire is no less mindless conformity than whatever heyday of suit and tie wearing you're thinking of. The only difference is that suits have fallen out of favor as the correct uniform for many situations.
  - braythwayt 10y ago
    Speaking as a 54 year-old, I can tell you flat-out that there is far less clothing conformity in technological jobs today than there was thirty or forty years ago. It's not like we swapped white shirts and ties for khakis and polo shirts. People in many jobs wear things that are more associated with their personal tribe than their job, and more to the point, there is far less judgment about their technical competence based on their attire than in years past. That is the germane thing to this discussion: Are people judged as incompetent if they wear the wrong thing, or speak the wrong way? Do we say, "Well, they ought to know better than wear that thing or to speak with that dialect, and if they don't know better than to wear that thing or speak with that dialect, they won't know better than to force push to master without running CI?" I don't think we tie those things together as much today as we did thirty or forty years ago. That's what I'm talking about.
    - ams6110 10y ago
      It depends on the job and always has. Thirty years ago I wore a suit and tie to my work as a programmer with a "big" consulting firm, and later as a programmer at an investment bank. Everyone but the mailroom guys wore suits though. Yet at the university I had recently graduated from, I never saw anyone wear a tie except the highest level of administrators. I would expect that if you are a consultant for Booz-Allen these days you are still wearing a white starched shirt, dark suit and conservative tie to work, probably don't have facial hair or if you do it's very neatly groomed. If you were to show up in cargo shorts, Birkenstocks, and a Tee-shirt you'd be sent home and probably written up.

TeMPOraL 10y ago

Yeah. We wear suits and ties not because everyone else does that too. We wear suits and ties because we want to impress investors. ;).

deleted 10y ago

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braythwayt 10y ago

If we wear suits and ties, we do so intentionally, not just to conform mindlessly :-)

forgottenpass 10y ago
What are you talking about? Proper attire is no less mindless conformity than whatever heyday of suit and tie wearing you're thinking of. The only difference is that suits have fallen out of favor as the correct uniform for many situations.
- braythwayt 10y ago
  Speaking as a 54 year-old, I can tell you flat-out that there is far less clothing conformity in technological jobs today than there was thirty or forty years ago. It's not like we swapped white shirts and ties for khakis and polo shirts. People in many jobs wear things that are more associated with their personal tribe than their job, and more to the point, there is far less judgment about their technical competence based on their attire than in years past. That is the germane thing to this discussion: Are people judged as incompetent if they wear the wrong thing, or speak the wrong way? Do we say, "Well, they ought to know better than wear that thing or to speak with that dialect, and if they don't know better than to wear that thing or speak with that dialect, they won't know better than to force push to master without running CI?" I don't think we tie those things together as much today as we did thirty or forty years ago. That's what I'm talking about.
  - ams6110 10y ago
    It depends on the job and always has. Thirty years ago I wore a suit and tie to my work as a programmer with a "big" consulting firm, and later as a programmer at an investment bank. Everyone but the mailroom guys wore suits though. Yet at the university I had recently graduated from, I never saw anyone wear a tie except the highest level of administrators. I would expect that if you are a consultant for Booz-Allen these days you are still wearing a white starched shirt, dark suit and conservative tie to work, probably don't have facial hair or if you do it's very neatly groomed. If you were to show up in cargo shorts, Birkenstocks, and a Tee-shirt you'd be sent home and probably written up.