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I don't understand the aversion to tattoos in many workplaces. I have tattoos myself, one on each leg and one on my arm. You cannot see them when I'm wearing my

I don't understand the aversion to tattoos in many workplaces. I have tattoos myself, one on each leg and one on my arm. You cannot see them when I'm wearing my interview clothing, but during the summer when I wear shorts and a t-shirt at work you can easily see them. When people see them, they don't expect me to be the kind of person that has tattoos. By associating tattoos with a certain type of person before you even get to know their abilities means that you lose out on a lot. The same goes for people who have differently coloured or styled hair. The lead developer for one of our products at the company I work for has a green mohawk, yet he's an extremely talented and knowledgeable developer. Appearances have nothing to do with knowledge or ability. The quicker people learn this, the better for all of us.

hippich 13y ago
Playing devil's advocate: Let's be honest here - just like gender, age, nationality, political view doesn't have anything with knowledge. Well.. It kinda does, but in a different way. Just like anything else. This is system - if you do not fit in particular one - it become expensive and risky to try to fit you in. Why HR should risk, what is the point? They will find another developer who have more in common with their management expectations. And then we start talking about not just knowledge, but blob of characteristics under "company culture"...
- InclinedPlane 13y ago
  > Why HR should risk, what is the point? They will find another developer who have more in common with their management expectations. Except they won't. The talent pool isn't infinite, passing up talent for silly reasons is a major opportunity cost. The whole article is about how that's having a huge impact on the government. I imagine it has just as much impact elsewhere, except few people have the guts to answer the "why can't we find anyone?" questions with "because you already disqualified the best candidates".
  - hippich 13y ago
    Having tatoos and being in software development doesn't automagically make someone "best candidate." There is still risk that person who wear tatoos is trying to get against system. Just like girls would be expected to be less technical, just like foreigners would be expected to be hard communicate with. Startups and other frugal types of businesses can afford that. Big corps - not really. The whole point of big corporations is to standardize everything and run as few expenses (including time of CTO to interview "non standard" candidate) as possible. Again, simplifying a lot, HR have either hire someone wearing tatoos, or tell "well, for salary we have in budget we don't have anyone." So why they should risk?
    - InclinedPlane 13y ago
      If you reduce your talent pool intentionally and then you find you have problems filling roles, you have only yourself to blame. At large companies it may not be as obvious that they aren't getting the same level of talent they could have but usually the end result is a diminished capacity to execute successfully. Why should they risk? For two reasons. The best people are often not "normal". Look at some of the best coders or hardware hackers out there. Imagine if Netscape didn't hire Jamie Zawinski, would they have been as successful? When Jobs and Wozniak started Apple their previous most successful business venture was phone phreaking, selling illegal "blue boxes" that allowed people to hack the telephone network (and make free calls, incidentally). If you only want boring people then you will quickly remove some of the most talented people from consideration.
  - at-fates-hands 13y ago
    >>> Except they won't. The talent pool isn't infinite, passing up talent for silly reasons is a major opportunity cost. This is a great point. Spoke with a recruiter just last week who talked about the market here in the midwest. He said there's so many openings, he can't find the talent, and companies are advertising further and further out from the city. He said the last person one of his clients hired lived two hours away and they had to pay him a monthly stipend to cover his daily commute. Sure, they let him telecommute at times, but for the most part they expect him in the office and have to pay for it.
rdl 13y ago
Tattoos and lifestyle do strongly correlate with other factors which are themselves viewed as correlating with "personnel unreliability or susceptibility to foreign influence or coercion". Tattoos and pink hair -> drugs, party lifestyle, potential crime -> bad at managing money/desperate, making bad life choices, sleeping around, etc. -> pressureable by foreign intelligence -- potentially by threatening to reveal those issues to the Government (which is irony in purest form...) It's inherently discriminatory, but if I had to hire a code clerk (or other non-differentiated role, which did need to be trustworthy), I'd hire a successful 45 year old Mormon with kids comfortably in school and no history of any problems. Where this is fucked is that quality computer security people are also usually (false?) positives for the pink hair and tattoos. There's also the HUGE factor of foreign citizenship or foreign ties -- a Pakistani or Iranian or Chinese engineer with grandparents in the home country is definitely at risk for coercion by a foreign power. Parents, even more so. Personal citizenship, vastly more so. Lots of great engineers meet this criterion. The way contractors deal with this is by having low-side roles doing the actual work, with untrusted employees, in a way which doesn't directly touch anything classified; they then throw the work product over a wall to the high-side where much less skilled people make $300k to take the research/products and implement them in the classified environment, while being US-citizen 2nd+ generation white people without tattoos.

hippich 13y ago

Playing devil's advocate: Let's be honest here - just like gender, age, nationality, political view doesn't have anything with knowledge. Well.. It kinda does, but in a different way. Just like anything else. This is system - if you do not fit in particular one - it become expensive and risky to try to fit you in. Why HR should risk, what is the point? They will find another developer who have more in common with their management expectations. And then we start talking about not just knowledge, but blob of characteristics under "company culture"...

InclinedPlane 13y ago
> Why HR should risk, what is the point? They will find another developer who have more in common with their management expectations. Except they won't. The talent pool isn't infinite, passing up talent for silly reasons is a major opportunity cost. The whole article is about how that's having a huge impact on the government. I imagine it has just as much impact elsewhere, except few people have the guts to answer the "why can't we find anyone?" questions with "because you already disqualified the best candidates".
- hippich 13y ago
  Having tatoos and being in software development doesn't automagically make someone "best candidate." There is still risk that person who wear tatoos is trying to get against system. Just like girls would be expected to be less technical, just like foreigners would be expected to be hard communicate with. Startups and other frugal types of businesses can afford that. Big corps - not really. The whole point of big corporations is to standardize everything and run as few expenses (including time of CTO to interview "non standard" candidate) as possible. Again, simplifying a lot, HR have either hire someone wearing tatoos, or tell "well, for salary we have in budget we don't have anyone." So why they should risk?
  - InclinedPlane 13y ago
    If you reduce your talent pool intentionally and then you find you have problems filling roles, you have only yourself to blame. At large companies it may not be as obvious that they aren't getting the same level of talent they could have but usually the end result is a diminished capacity to execute successfully. Why should they risk? For two reasons. The best people are often not "normal". Look at some of the best coders or hardware hackers out there. Imagine if Netscape didn't hire Jamie Zawinski, would they have been as successful? When Jobs and Wozniak started Apple their previous most successful business venture was phone phreaking, selling illegal "blue boxes" that allowed people to hack the telephone network (and make free calls, incidentally). If you only want boring people then you will quickly remove some of the most talented people from consideration.
- at-fates-hands 13y ago
  >>> Except they won't. The talent pool isn't infinite, passing up talent for silly reasons is a major opportunity cost. This is a great point. Spoke with a recruiter just last week who talked about the market here in the midwest. He said there's so many openings, he can't find the talent, and companies are advertising further and further out from the city. He said the last person one of his clients hired lived two hours away and they had to pay him a monthly stipend to cover his daily commute. Sure, they let him telecommute at times, but for the most part they expect him in the office and have to pay for it.

rdl 13y ago

Tattoos and lifestyle do strongly correlate with other factors which are themselves viewed as correlating with "personnel unreliability or susceptibility to foreign influence or coercion". Tattoos and pink hair -> drugs, party lifestyle, potential crime -> bad at managing money/desperate, making bad life choices, sleeping around, etc. -> pressureable by foreign intelligence -- potentially by threatening to reveal those issues to the Government (which is irony in purest form...) It's inherently discriminatory, but if I had to hire a code clerk (or other non-differentiated role, which did need to be trustworthy), I'd hire a successful 45 year old Mormon with kids comfortably in school and no history of any problems. Where this is fucked is that quality computer security people are also usually (false?) positives for the pink hair and tattoos. There's also the HUGE factor of foreign citizenship or foreign ties -- a Pakistani or Iranian or Chinese engineer with grandparents in the home country is definitely at risk for coercion by a foreign power. Parents, even more so. Personal citizenship, vastly more so. Lots of great engineers meet this criterion. The way contractors deal with this is by having low-side roles doing the actual work, with untrusted employees, in a way which doesn't directly touch anything classified; they then throw the work product over a wall to the high-side where much less skilled people make $300k to take the research/products and implement them in the classified environment, while being US-citizen 2nd+ generation white people without tattoos.