4 ms·

Unprofessionalism is an opinion. I'm a contractor and so its common for me to work in 3-6 different offices a year, depending on the amount of engagements i tak

Unprofessionalism is an opinion. I'm a contractor and so its common for me to work in 3-6 different offices a year, depending on the amount of engagements i take. I've been doing this for around 10 years now. So as you can work out i've worked in a lot of different offices, in ALL of them, i've never once worn a suit, i've never worn a suit to an interview and i have the luxuary of never having to wear a suit because its just not the norm in this industry. Then i went to an interview at a bank, the first financial sector client i've interviewed at. The feedback was that while they thought i'd was absolutely qualified for the role, they viewed me as unprofessional because i didnt wear a suit. At first i was kinda pissed off, because to me, wearing a suit has no bearing on whether i can do a coders job or not. But afterwards i came to the realisation that if a company judges my suitability on whether or not i'm wearing a suit, its not a place i want to work in. Dont be professional, be authentic. - 37Signals

Nursie 13y ago
I'm a contractor too. If you wear the suit they might think you're a consultant, that seems to go down quite well and can open up more money. It also might mean they take you for a more rounded professional that's able to (for instance) engage with management and with customers, rather than just a code monkey that shouldn't be let out of a cupboard I'm not going to even insinuate it would help you, but it's never hurt me to wear one to initial client meetings and other appropriate venues.
hkmurakami 13y ago
I just dropped out of business school because I realized that if I went through with it, I'd be paying an additional 6 figures to get into a job where I'd have to put on my corporate persona again. I've done this in the past, and it was just unnecessarily draining and stressful. After weeks of internal debate, I decided that I'd rather have a significantly lower pay but be able to the same self both in and out of the office. (Helps to have almost died earlier this year. Makes decision making a bit more straightforward than otherwise)
- mvzink 13y ago
  Funny; the article has me thinking about being more open with our humanity on the web, then you reference an apparent brush with death as a sort of backstory—something many, myself included, would be uncomfortable sharing. Thanks for being candid!
skylan_q 13y ago
At first i was kinda pissed off, because to me, wearing a suit has no bearing on whether i can do a coders job or not. But afterwards i came to the realisation that if a company judges my suitability on whether or not i'm wearing a suit, its not a place i want to work in. This, 1 million times. I had the same experience when asked "Where do you see yourself in 5 years" and my not replying with a pre-canned response of dreaming about middle management in a company I know almost nothing about.
__david__ 13y ago
My friend interviewed at government contractor/think tank and wore a suit. After the interview he called a person he knew at the company to hear how things went. The insider reported that most of the interview post-mortem was discussing how unprofessional it was for my friend to remove his suit jacket when doing a bunch of higher math on the whiteboard. We had a good laugh over that.

Nursie 13y ago

I'm a contractor too. If you wear the suit they might think you're a consultant, that seems to go down quite well and can open up more money. It also might mean they take you for a more rounded professional that's able to (for instance) engage with management and with customers, rather than just a code monkey that shouldn't be let out of a cupboard I'm not going to even insinuate it would help you, but it's never hurt me to wear one to initial client meetings and other appropriate venues.

hkmurakami 13y ago

I just dropped out of business school because I realized that if I went through with it, I'd be paying an additional 6 figures to get into a job where I'd have to put on my corporate persona again. I've done this in the past, and it was just unnecessarily draining and stressful. After weeks of internal debate, I decided that I'd rather have a significantly lower pay but be able to the same self both in and out of the office. (Helps to have almost died earlier this year. Makes decision making a bit more straightforward than otherwise)

mvzink 13y ago
Funny; the article has me thinking about being more open with our humanity on the web, then you reference an apparent brush with death as a sort of backstory—something many, myself included, would be uncomfortable sharing. Thanks for being candid!

skylan_q 13y ago

At first i was kinda pissed off, because to me, wearing a suit has no bearing on whether i can do a coders job or not. But afterwards i came to the realisation that if a company judges my suitability on whether or not i'm wearing a suit, its not a place i want to work in. This, 1 million times. I had the same experience when asked "Where do you see yourself in 5 years" and my not replying with a pre-canned response of dreaming about middle management in a company I know almost nothing about.

__david__ 13y ago

My friend interviewed at government contractor/think tank and wore a suit. After the interview he called a person he knew at the company to hear how things went. The insider reported that most of the interview post-mortem was discussing how unprofessional it was for my friend to remove his suit jacket when doing a bunch of higher math on the whiteboard. We had a good laugh over that.