4 ms·

If you view human beings as perfectly rational machines then dress codes make no sense, but that's not what we are. Dressing formally puts you in a different fr

If you view human beings as perfectly rational machines then dress codes make no sense, but that's not what we are. Dressing formally puts you in a different frame of mind. It reminds you that your work is serious and that different standards apply to how you act and talk than in your casual personal life. If you dress to work the way you'd show up to a dive bar, then you're that much closer to behaving like you do at a dive bar. Economist Tyler Cowen makes another good argument for formal dress: it is a vehicle for social mobility.[1] In a society that values formal dress, you can signal your intent to move up the social hierarchy by how you dress yourself. If you want to become an elite, then dress like one and people will take you seriously. But when the elites adopt casual dress in their professional lives, what is left are much more subtle and hard-to-adopt class signifiers: manners of speaking, interests, childhood experiences, travel, etc. Yet another problem is that dressing "smart casual" is actually more difficult and expensive than wearing a suit. A suit is a great equalizer. A $2000 suit is not all that different than a $300 suit. And you can very easily get away with having only two or three suits. But smart casual is much more difficult, subtle, and expensive to pull off.[2] [1]http://www.businessinsider.com/wearing-casual-clothes-at-work-to-show-wealth-2017-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/wearing-casual-clothes-at-wor... [2]http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/05/informal-dress-social-mobility-sicilian-perspective.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/05/inf...

amelius 9y ago
> Dressing formally puts you in a different frame of mind. Actually, it makes me feel like I'm talking to a sales person. It is as if dressing up is used to conceal something about the intentions or shortcomings of the person. I probably don't explain it in the right way, but that is more or less the feeling it evokes.
- ACow_Adonis 9y ago
  Pretty much ditto. Well, maybe not ditto, but similar affect (and yes, I have suits I have to wear for public facing activities at work). There's this assumption of "universal reference" in social signals, so for me to be told that "wearing a suit puts you in a different frame of mind", as in one which makes you work/feel better about yourself is completely wrong...in the sense of what frame of mind it puts you in. For me, a suit is the uniform of the con-man, the salesman, the fraud, the bludger, the twit. You put on a suit because you want to fool people who can't think rationally and they're incapable of making judgments except by what you look like through signals of conspicuous consumption. Imagine being constantly told that you should dress in a uniform with such connotations to make yourself psychologically feel better/superior (especially compared to clothes that you have yourself chosen because they do make you feel better).
gaius 9y ago
But when the elites adopt casual dress in their professional lives, what is left are much more subtle and hard-to-adopt class signifiers: manners of speaking, interests, childhood experiences, travel, etc The NYT had an article on this recently: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/opinion/how-we-are-ruining-america.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/opinion/how-we-are-ruinin... I took a friend with only a high school degree to lunch. Insensitively, I led her into a gourmet sandwich shop. Suddenly I saw her face freeze up as she was confronted with sandwiches named “Padrino” and “Pomodoro” and ingredients like soppressata, capicollo and a striata baguette. I quickly asked her if she wanted to go somewhere else and she anxiously nodded yes and we ate Mexican. American upper-middle-class culture (where the opportunities are) is now laced with cultural signifiers that are completely illegible unless you happen to have grown up in this class.
- xxpor 9y ago
  That op-ed was mocked mercilessly.
  - marcoperaza 9y ago
    That's sometimes a sign that you're onto something. Donald Trump was mocked mercilessly. Looks like he got the last laugh. The sandwich shop example is a little weak, but I agree with Brook's point. There is a cultural segmenting of American society into the top 20% and the rest, and it's a strong barrier to social mobility. At the college I attended, there was a clear social barrier between the kids from upper middle class urban families, and those from lower middle class suburbia. The differences in interests and life experiences were profound and hard to overcome. Ironically, the much derided fraternity system was one of the few effective measures for bridging that gap, by creating common experiences and a new shared identity.
    - jldugger 9y ago
      >Donald Trump was mocked mercilessly. Looks like he got the last laugh. _Is_ mocked mercilessly, and I don't think he's got the last of anything yet.
jacquesm 9y ago
Or, maybe we could just judge employees by whether they get the job done or not instead of how they dress up. I've employed plenty of people, if anything those who were overly busy with how they looked tended to under-perform and used their dress as a way of compensation.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
jldugger 9y ago
> Dressing formally puts you in a different frame of mind. It reminds you that your work is serious and that different standards apply I wonder, if appearances matter that much, would your staff believe that they can be publicly wrong, admit mistakes, or take any risks that would lead to either scenario? Would they ever ask a question, when it signals they don't already know everything? It seems like once you take on such a formal dress code persona, the ethics of "serious business" might strangle your company's long term survival odds. > In a society that values formal dress, you can signal your intent to move up the social hierarchy by how you dress yourself. If you want to become an elite, then dress like one and people will take you seriously. IMO, when a peer dresses formally, I trust them less. It signals an endorsement that appearances matter more than results, and that promotion up the social ladders is important enough to you that you might end up screwing me over if given the chance. Ideally, social mobility shouldn't rely on the promoting the richest person up to managers and executives.
- marcoperaza 9y ago
  >Ideally, social mobility shouldn't rely on the promoting the richest person up to managers and executives. I think we agree 100% on this point, no?
fpig 9y ago
Regarding hard to adopt class signifiers, this is definitely true, however, this is the case regardless of whether everyone is wearing a suit or an anime t-shirt. As for the second part, that's also true, but the argument is a bit moot because having a "smart casual" dress code is not really that much different than a suit dress code. It is casual only in name. When I hear casual I think of a job I had where people wore almost anything they wanted (from "smart casual" to sports jerseys with low-hanging shorts) And I didn't notice any dress-based discrimination there, not even subtle. But my main problem with the idea in the article is: > The problem is this: If everything is casual, what exactly do you do to show your seriousness? > There isn’t such a simple way to visually demonstrate you are determined to join the ranks of the upwardly mobile. Looking smart on “casual Friday” may get you a better date, but the boss will not sit up and take notice. You show this through professional accomplishments - deep and wide technical ability, doing your job well, being reliable, resolving problems others get stuck on, ending up as one of the people both coworkers and clients gravitate towards for advice/help with difficult problems and so on. This stuff gets noticed. The author seems to hold the view that it should be possible to rise up by playing the game of workplace social dynamics and that the fact that this is difficult in our field compared to more traditional fields presents a problem. But is that really a bad thing? He is likely not a software developer, but I've heard this "I don't know what I have to do to be taken more seriously" sentiment (only a couple of times) from people in SD. However those were people who were weaker technically but had a strong desire to get ahead, manage projects and people, etc. Their problem had nothing to do with discrimination based on social class and everything to do with discrimination of superficial and/or narrow professional knowledge. At most companies, expertise shows, and usually very quickly. His "positive" example of China etc is: > The young and ambitious really can set themselves apart from the slackers, even if doing so looks conformist and stifling when multiplied and observed on a larger scale. Societies of upward mobility, when based on large and growing business enterprises, look and feel somewhat oppressive. Much as many of us might not want to admit it, the casual and the egalitarian are closer to enemies than to allies. But why would we even want the "young and ambitious" to set themselves apart through the way they dress or by conforming in other ways, and why would we want to decide who is a "slacker" based on that? People can set themselves apart by being exceptional at what they do. Nobody can claim this doesn't, overall, work very well in the software industry. The author is basically complaining about the lack of ability to advance in your career through superficial means.

amelius 9y ago

> Dressing formally puts you in a different frame of mind. Actually, it makes me feel like I'm talking to a sales person. It is as if dressing up is used to conceal something about the intentions or shortcomings of the person. I probably don't explain it in the right way, but that is more or less the feeling it evokes.

ACow_Adonis 9y ago
Pretty much ditto. Well, maybe not ditto, but similar affect (and yes, I have suits I have to wear for public facing activities at work). There's this assumption of "universal reference" in social signals, so for me to be told that "wearing a suit puts you in a different frame of mind", as in one which makes you work/feel better about yourself is completely wrong...in the sense of what frame of mind it puts you in. For me, a suit is the uniform of the con-man, the salesman, the fraud, the bludger, the twit. You put on a suit because you want to fool people who can't think rationally and they're incapable of making judgments except by what you look like through signals of conspicuous consumption. Imagine being constantly told that you should dress in a uniform with such connotations to make yourself psychologically feel better/superior (especially compared to clothes that you have yourself chosen because they do make you feel better).

gaius 9y ago

But when the elites adopt casual dress in their professional lives, what is left are much more subtle and hard-to-adopt class signifiers: manners of speaking, interests, childhood experiences, travel, etc The NYT had an article on this recently: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/opinion/how-we-are-ruining-america.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/opinion/how-we-are-ruinin... I took a friend with only a high school degree to lunch. Insensitively, I led her into a gourmet sandwich shop. Suddenly I saw her face freeze up as she was confronted with sandwiches named “Padrino” and “Pomodoro” and ingredients like soppressata, capicollo and a striata baguette. I quickly asked her if she wanted to go somewhere else and she anxiously nodded yes and we ate Mexican. American upper-middle-class culture (where the opportunities are) is now laced with cultural signifiers that are completely illegible unless you happen to have grown up in this class.

xxpor 9y ago
That op-ed was mocked mercilessly.
- marcoperaza 9y ago
  That's sometimes a sign that you're onto something. Donald Trump was mocked mercilessly. Looks like he got the last laugh. The sandwich shop example is a little weak, but I agree with Brook's point. There is a cultural segmenting of American society into the top 20% and the rest, and it's a strong barrier to social mobility. At the college I attended, there was a clear social barrier between the kids from upper middle class urban families, and those from lower middle class suburbia. The differences in interests and life experiences were profound and hard to overcome. Ironically, the much derided fraternity system was one of the few effective measures for bridging that gap, by creating common experiences and a new shared identity.
  - jldugger 9y ago
    >Donald Trump was mocked mercilessly. Looks like he got the last laugh. _Is_ mocked mercilessly, and I don't think he's got the last of anything yet.

jacquesm 9y ago

Or, maybe we could just judge employees by whether they get the job done or not instead of how they dress up. I've employed plenty of people, if anything those who were overly busy with how they looked tended to under-perform and used their dress as a way of compensation.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

jldugger 9y ago

> Dressing formally puts you in a different frame of mind. It reminds you that your work is serious and that different standards apply I wonder, if appearances matter that much, would your staff believe that they can be publicly wrong, admit mistakes, or take any risks that would lead to either scenario? Would they ever ask a question, when it signals they don't already know everything? It seems like once you take on such a formal dress code persona, the ethics of "serious business" might strangle your company's long term survival odds. > In a society that values formal dress, you can signal your intent to move up the social hierarchy by how you dress yourself. If you want to become an elite, then dress like one and people will take you seriously. IMO, when a peer dresses formally, I trust them less. It signals an endorsement that appearances matter more than results, and that promotion up the social ladders is important enough to you that you might end up screwing me over if given the chance. Ideally, social mobility shouldn't rely on the promoting the richest person up to managers and executives.

marcoperaza 9y ago
>Ideally, social mobility shouldn't rely on the promoting the richest person up to managers and executives. I think we agree 100% on this point, no?

fpig 9y ago

Regarding hard to adopt class signifiers, this is definitely true, however, this is the case regardless of whether everyone is wearing a suit or an anime t-shirt. As for the second part, that's also true, but the argument is a bit moot because having a "smart casual" dress code is not really that much different than a suit dress code. It is casual only in name. When I hear casual I think of a job I had where people wore almost anything they wanted (from "smart casual" to sports jerseys with low-hanging shorts) And I didn't notice any dress-based discrimination there, not even subtle. But my main problem with the idea in the article is: > The problem is this: If everything is casual, what exactly do you do to show your seriousness? > There isn’t such a simple way to visually demonstrate you are determined to join the ranks of the upwardly mobile. Looking smart on “casual Friday” may get you a better date, but the boss will not sit up and take notice. You show this through professional accomplishments - deep and wide technical ability, doing your job well, being reliable, resolving problems others get stuck on, ending up as one of the people both coworkers and clients gravitate towards for advice/help with difficult problems and so on. This stuff gets noticed. The author seems to hold the view that it should be possible to rise up by playing the game of workplace social dynamics and that the fact that this is difficult in our field compared to more traditional fields presents a problem. But is that really a bad thing? He is likely not a software developer, but I've heard this "I don't know what I have to do to be taken more seriously" sentiment (only a couple of times) from people in SD. However those were people who were weaker technically but had a strong desire to get ahead, manage projects and people, etc. Their problem had nothing to do with discrimination based on social class and everything to do with discrimination of superficial and/or narrow professional knowledge. At most companies, expertise shows, and usually very quickly. His "positive" example of China etc is: > The young and ambitious really can set themselves apart from the slackers, even if doing so looks conformist and stifling when multiplied and observed on a larger scale. Societies of upward mobility, when based on large and growing business enterprises, look and feel somewhat oppressive. Much as many of us might not want to admit it, the casual and the egalitarian are closer to enemies than to allies. But why would we even want the "young and ambitious" to set themselves apart through the way they dress or by conforming in other ways, and why would we want to decide who is a "slacker" based on that? People can set themselves apart by being exceptional at what they do. Nobody can claim this doesn't, overall, work very well in the software industry. The author is basically complaining about the lack of ability to advance in your career through superficial means.