13 ms·
Professional Dress Code Tips
- tptacek 9y ago"Skirt suit. No pants, ever." These people sound awesome.
- ekianjo 9y agoYeah. I can understand some level of minimum dress code but that is goIng pretty far into specifics.
- packetized 9y agoIf the next sentence was “The skirt allows for ease of access,” it would not shock me one single bit. This is pretty insanely regressive.
- koolba 9y agoMake sure you scroll to the bottom to see the pic of “Burleson home office” attire.
- heartbreak 9y agoI've encountered at least one circuit court judge who "ruled more favorably toward skirts" as a colleague put it. https://abovethelaw.com/2015/02/judges-want-women-lawyers-to-stop-showing-off-their-distracting-cleavage-legs-in-court/ https://abovethelaw.com/2015/02/judges-want-women-lawyers-to...
- eric_b 9y agoAs someone who wears jeans and t-shirts to work almost exclusively, this comes off as old fashioned and probably not terribly topical anymore. That said, he's not entirely wrong. What you wear absolutely affects how other people perceive, treat, and judge you (rightly or wrongly). Good to always be mindful of what your appearance says to other people, whether you care what they think or not.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- flukus 9y agoWhat many don't realize is that i goes both ways. They might be dressed nicer than us, but I'm going to assume they're sleazy salesmen like just about everyone else that still wears a suit. I'll assume that no one half way competent works at the company, because we work in a competitive industry and the best people have options to work in better environments. I'm sure most of us here have worked with enough useless consultancies to know that there is no correlation between dress and ability. It's not even a class symbol anymore, the biggest group of people that wear suits to work are in retail these days.
- mc32 9y agoWhen you say suit, do you include sports jackets/blazers? I ask because I do see a few people who choose to wear those as a fashion statement. It's not something super popular, but you see it here and there.
- astura 9y agoUm... Some people like dressing up for work and feel professional attire gives them confidence.
- pliftkl 9y agoThis has always been important to me, and it's one of the ways that I mentally distinguish my "I'm going to go out and be professional" me from my "I'd rather not be working" me. When I tie my tie, I'm thinking about my customers and my employer. When my tie comes off, I don't think about them anymore.
- newfoundglory 9y agoSo you know there's no correction between dress and ability but you're going to assume that people who wear suits are bad at their job? Seems like a poorly supported assumption.
- gcmac 9y agoI used to laugh at stuff like this, then at orientation the place I was working with said "The best way to show your personality is through your socks." I noped right out of there.
- eitohaoeth 9y ago"Burberry accessories - Burberry hats are for Chavs"
- brianwawok 9y agoI love Burleson and his small-horses, I cannot believe he made hacker news ;) Guy is really old school, raises mini horses for fun, and literally shows up in Google for any Oracle error ever. He is long tail SEO before there was such a thing...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- eitohaoeth 9y agoI refer to him only as 'Cowboy'. Everyone I work with knows who I mean.
- mc32 9y agoJust as cool if he were called 'Tex' (be he from there or not).
- ghaff 9y agoI agree that this comes across as pretty old-fashioned although many of my sales compatriots routinely dress more conservatively than I do these days. The dress codes for a consulting company I worked for 15 years years ago were fairly conservative but not this conservative. For what I do, even traditional business casual starts to look more like being a "suit" than I prefer. [ADDED: As someone else said, do read to the bottom. This is a commentary on what clients are looking for.]
- packetized 9y agoThis dress code, much like “Oracle consulting”, has gone out of style.
- killjoywashere 9y agoThis attitude is probably closely aligned with why the federal government can't find good help, and why start-ups struggle to attract federal contracts.
- quickben 9y agoHow you dress, matters.
- tytytytytytytyt 9y agoInteresting comma usage.
- quickben 9y agoI'm not a native English speaker, so sometimes my mind's plays with the delivery form in various languages :)
- TheCoelacanth 9y agoTrue, but following this guide to the letter will make you appear boring, overly conservative and unfashionable. Even people who still wear suits regularly would probably be well-advised to branch out a bit from a plain white shirt, black shoes and a conservative tie every day.
- quickben 9y agoYeah, just it's nice to have a good reference of what combination looks sharp. I added it for the next interview shoplist.
- ekianjo 9y agoDepends a lot on the industry.
- bllguo 9y agoI haven't seen such an ugly website in a while. I'd give that much more weight than physical appearance
- wilkystyle 9y agoThis dress code provides great insight into the culture/personality of BC (and why I would never want to work there), particularly this part: > If you have been working all night and have an early morning meeting, you can use an anti-inflammatory hemorrhoid cream (e.g. Preparation H) to quickly shrink those unsightly puffy bags under your eyes.
- jjeaff 9y agoThey must be joking... right?
- myhf 9y agoIt's unusual to use topical anti-inflammatories in the US, but in other countries they are common and available with non-hemorrhoid branding.
- theossuary 9y agoSometimes that's just consulting. Your goal is always to make your company look good to the client. You already flew out and forfeited your week to be on site for those sweet sweet billable hours. You have to be done by Friday because that's when you go home, so you get out of the client's office at 6-7 (always after your boss leaves), and you have the choice to sit in your hotel room bored or keep going. You finish working at 3am, but have to be in before your boss looking fresh, so you iron everything, shower/shave, and do it all again. And if you work on site at a bank on the east coast, you better have a nice suit. Otherwise nowadays you're usually fine with slacks and a button down at most places. Honestly it can be a lot of fun, in small doses (do that every week for months and you realize why not everyone is a consultant though)
- philwelch 9y agoInteresting reference to the bushy eyebrows of the legendary Admiral Zumwalt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmo_Zumwalt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmo_Zumwalt Zumwalt, as Chief of Naval Operations, was responsible for the roughly ten-year span when sailors were allowed to wear beards, outraging the naval counterparts of Mr. Burleson here: https://news.usni.org/2014/10/23/brief-history-grooming-u-s-navy https://news.usni.org/2014/10/23/brief-history-grooming-u-s-...
- legohead 9y agoI liked the stories of Zuckerberg attending investor meetings in his hoodie. Sad to see him in full suit attire these days.
- buttcoinslol 9y agoNow he is dressing for the job he wants to have.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- voxadam 9y agoCongressmen?
- RepressedEmu 9y agoPresident/God-Emperor
- SmellTheGlove 9y agoI suddenly live in a world where I can't tell whether or not this is satire. And I was a consultant!
- blinkingled 9y agoEverything about this is so overdone for 2018. I understand you should be a bit on the conservative side and not do outright stupid things (flip flops for e.g.) but this is just too much. (I had a hardcore Oracle guy once walk in when I was at a Bank - there was a product issue nobody was able to solve. This person had a pony tail, white t-shirt, blue jeans and sports shoes. Charged a ton of money for his 3 days and by the time he was gone things were measurably better off. Nobody was minding his attire - and it was 8 years ago.)
- _0nac 9y agoOddly enough, in stuffy industries not adhering to the dress code is a strong social signal that you're good enough to be able to flaunt it. I used to work in telecoms consulting, which is fairly buttoned up: usually dress shirts, slacks and nice shoes, although us engineers were permitted to dispose of the tie and open the top button. But the best engineer in my company -- the guy who'd be flown in by private jet when needed because the billing systems were dropping $1m/hour on the floor -- maintained a steady uniform of ripped jeans, ratty T-shirts and permanent 3-day stubble, and the clients would always fall over themselves with gratefulness when he showed up. Not because of what he wore, of course, but because he was "the real deal" and very good at actually fixing problems, instead of talking about them.
- cperciva 9y agoOddly enough, in stuffy industries not adhering to the dress code is a strong social signal that you're good enough to be able to flaunt it. This is classic countersignalling behaviour: By refusing to pay the cost (financial, time, and comfort) of dressing up, you're communicating that you're not afraid of being mistaken for an interloper. permanent 3-day stubble I really want to know how to do this. My stubble goes from 0-day to 1-day to 2-day to 3-day and then back to 0-day...
- pheldagryph 9y ago> > permanent 3-day stubble > I really want to know how to do this. My stubble goes from 0-day to 1-day to 2-day to 3-day and then back to 0-day... I achieve variable-length shaven-stubble with "Amazon: Panasonic Beard and Mustache Trimmer and Hair Clipper for Men". Once-over with the main clipper (sans attachment) is like a 2/3 day (but it looks a little uneven), and then the mustache trimmer to achieve a 1/2-day. Avoiding zero-days is a priority of mine, also, so I felt compelled to share. Good luck!
- buttcoinslol 9y agoWhile the rules are stodgy, they generally line up with mainstream men's business fashion guidelines. Charcoal or navy suits, pressed white shirts, conservative ties, a pair of captoe oxfords (Allen Edmonds or better, black and/or brown)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- defen 9y agoImagine how much money Facebook or Google would have been worth if they'd had a dress code like this.
- ACow_Adonis 9y agoWhile I appreciate and agree with the point that people judge others by their looks, I'm just going to put this out there: When you socially optimise for superficial appearance, you'll both work for clients who value superficial appearance and attract employees who optimise for superficial appearance. Not a day goes by that I don't thank god I don't have to work for a consultancy, though I do often dread that I'll have some brought in and have to deal with the particular kind of moron employees they attract. /superficial generalisation
- nihonde 9y agoDress codes are just a coded way of communicating that you conform to a particular social group’s norms. On Wall Street, it’s Zenga and Rolex. In Palo Alto, it’s T-shirts and Allbirds. In Tokyo, it’s gaucho pants and beanies. In stuffy old consulting companies, it’s stuffy “business” garbs from the 1990s. In other words, it’s just local fashion.
- stevebmark 9y agoI'm not anti-professionalism, and have come to appreciate putting in some effort at work for clothing thoughtfulness, especially among people with more authority. But it's interesting to see how skilless roles like bankers and financial consultants focus on this stuff to weed out people they don't like. Interesting opposite to the idea of a merit based system that they pretend to uphold.
- abakker 9y ago“Skilless roles like bankers and consultants”. Are you 12? Are you kidding? You should approach things you don’t understand with more respect than that.
- heartbreak 9y ago> skilless roles like bankers and financial consultants Those roles are hardly skilless.
- meritt 9y agoBefore you get out your pitchforks, this page is from 2001. He's made updates and added email commentary since then but it's reflective of a very different age from someone (Don Burleson) who was very much considered "old fashioned" back then too.
- oliv__ 9y agoLove that comment section... I wish all comment sections were like this today
- kabdib 9y agoThis works both ways. When I was at Apple, we had a consultant who insisted on coming into work dressed like a professional consultant. The rest of us were in T-shirts, shorts and jeans, sandals or tennis shoes or hiking boots, a typical hacker crowd. She wasn't getting much traction. It was awkward to have a "suit" in meetings, even though we knew she was an excellent engineer. A couple of us suggested that it might help for her to dress down. Finally our director (a woman, if it matters) took her aside and had a chat. A few days later the consultant started coming into work in jeans / t-shirt and so forth, and her interactions with us went a lot better. The hacker in me wants to feel vindicated. But really it just shows how shallow we can be. In any event, I am never, ever going to wear a tie or a suit to work.
- ghaff 9y agoI speak at a lot of technical events even though I come from the product management/marketing side. The standard business casual--khakis and button-down oxford shirts--had felt comfortable to me forever. These days I feel I really should ratchet things down to a "tribal" T-shirt or at least a polo so I don't seem so generically corporate at many events. I almost never wear a tie these days though except for certain big stage events.
- protomyth 9y agoYep, dress to the social norms. If your company and the onsite people differ then wear what everyone else is wearing and hang a suit up if you have to visit the brass. At one point in my life, a person showing up wearing a suit was a big warning (e.g. government worker). I then went to work at a place that took its dress code a bit seriously[1]. Although, if a person is with a consulting company that is in the business of pushing out IT employees expect them to all wear suits and convince your management that they are serious workers and you are sloppy workers. The management tribe likes suits. 1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3015677#3015969 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3015677#3015969
- walrus01 9y ago> At one point in my life, a person showing up wearing a suit was a big warning (e.g. government worker) If you really want to freak people out, wear business casual, put on a BRAND NEW clean high-visibility safety vest and fresh, clean hard hat without any stickers and show up to a major high-rise construction site with a clipboard and DSLR camera. Have done this a few times (planning fiber construction/riser paths).
- jackvalentine 9y agoI love how their second section is all about the status of the law. Very nice and heavy handed.
- ineedasername 9y agoFor me that screamed, "I've been sued for this because I was an ass about it but won because technically being an ass, by itself, isn't illegal"
- jgautier1 9y agoHahaha the dress code is nothing compared to this http://www.dba-oracle.com/t_make_deer_butt_alien.htm http://www.dba-oracle.com/t_make_deer_butt_alien.htm and http://www.dba-oracle.com/redneck.htm http://www.dba-oracle.com/redneck.htm
- mc32 9y agoIt seems excessive by today's US standards (but not Japan or some other places) but as long as it's not over the top and or excessive for the position, and they are up front about it, I see no problem with it. I mean, why shouldn't a Metal band, for example, require their roadies to wear leather and spikes or spandex and hairspray if that's their thing.
- markbnj 9y agoWait... this is real? Come on, this isn't real. Is it?
- humanrebar 9y agoI've wondered why "tropical attire" hasn't caught on in the American South and Southwest. In the summers especially it is consistently hotter and more humid than most tropical locations. If anything, multi-layered wool-and-leather getup is inappropriate for the climate. If plastic melts in your car in the parking lot, maybe requiring people to wear a coat or jacket is a bit much.
- raincom 9y agoBurleson had a good reputation before 2004. His technical reputation in the oracle dba world got ruined by other well know tuning experts in the field. There are reports that he doesn't pay his consultants. https://donburlesonfraud.wordpress.com/ https://donburlesonfraud.wordpress.com/ https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/don-burleson-burleson-consulting/kittrell-north-carolina-27544/don-burleson-burleson-consulting-don-burleson-avoid-this-scammer-at-all-costs-kittrel-517594 https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/don-burleson-burleson-c... http://oracledoug.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/1303-Why-you-cant-just-say-Stop-feeding-the-troll-....html http://oracledoug.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/1303-W... Burleson issuing DMCA notices: https://hoopercharles.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/on-the-topic-of-copyright/ https://hoopercharles.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/on-the-topic-... I consider a lot of non-technical stuff on his site to be just funny. Look at this doe bell from one of his sites: http://www.rampant-books.com/product_deer_butt_doorbell.htm http://www.rampant-books.com/product_deer_butt_doorbell.htm http://www.dba-oracle.com/redneck.htm http://www.dba-oracle.com/redneck.htm
- eitohaoeth 9y ago"Understanding the redneck philosophy..." o...m...g... do I read it now or wait and read it later? Which will be funnier?
- csours 9y agoThis is satire, right? It has to be satire. Actually maybe just the pictures.
- acconrad 9y agoYou're better off going to a place like styleforum.net to learn how to dress well over this archaic nonsense.
- killjoywashere 9y agoI do hope the hackers with business aspirations (entree prawn yuers? something like that?) can see this as equivalent to a vulnerability write-up. Send a packet wrapped in fine wool, and you can get past all firewalls, without ever touching a keyboard! Like goddamn magic!
- smacktoward 9y agoReminds me of Edward "Tiger Mike" Davis and his infamous Tiger Oil memos: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/08/tiger-oil-memos.html http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/08/tiger-oil-memos.html > I am not fond of hippies, long-hairs, dope fiends or alcoholics. I suggest each and every person in a supervisory category (from driller up to me) eliminate these people. > Anyone who lets their hair grow below their ears to where I can't see their ears means they don't wash. If they don't wash, they stink, and if they stink, I don't want the son-of-a-bitch around me. > Do not speak to me when you see me. If I want to to speak to you, I will do so. I want to save my throat. I don't want to ruin it by saying hello to all of you sons-of-bitches. > DO YOUR JOBS AND KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT!
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- xtiansimon 9y agoHe has a fix for puffy eyes, but what about sweating?
- AstralStorm 9y agoUnfortunately aluminium based antiperspirants have side effects. Other are not efficacious. But you can often take a shower before important meeting and that is a good idea regardless of clothing. Just think about it - a paid shower... with consultant rates.
- cafard 9y agoBurleson seems to be longer on the SEO than the DBA, based on what I occasionally see when Googling for Oracle stuff. It has been a while since we had consultants underfoot at the office, and I don't remember them as being quite that dressed up.
- sunebeck 9y agoI read this as satire.
- aeriklawson 9y agoI'm really amused / shocked by the amount of people here that feel "awkward" or "bothered" in meetings with someone dressed in business casual versus jeans and a t shirt. I work at a startup in NYC and most of us are dressed very casually, but a few people do dress up / more nicely (especially those that used to work in finance and at those at the C-level). You know how much that bothers people at my company? Not at all. I've never heard it brought up once. The clothes someone is wearing barely enters my mind at all when I'm conversing / working with them. If the way someone dresses is bothering you and your coworkers to the point of social friction, I seriously suggest you look inwards to see what the problem is. The irony/hypocrisy in SV is too much to handle sometimes.
- ineedasername 9y agoHuh, I searched on Burleson, curious about this anachronistic throwback, but it didn't take long to see accusation of fraud committed against both employees and clients. Looks like they declared bankruptcy a few years back too [0] [0] http://bankrupt.com/misc/nceb13-01106.pdf http://bankrupt.com/misc/nceb13-01106.pdf