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The White House vows to let programmers dress informally

82 points by Libertatea 12y ago

AndrewKemendo 12y ago
This is a clear power play and is playing by the same rules as those that are wearing suits. What dressing like that is saying is, no I don't have to wear the uniform of this culture because I am in a position of informal power. The New Yorker did a piece on that same issue last year: http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-power-of-the-hoodie-wearing-c-e-o http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-power-of-the-... At the end of the day I am torn on this issue. The idea that competence counts makes sense and that is all that should be judged. However there is something to be said about shared cultural displays and how they fit into a larger team effort. The modern suit is a pretty benign display in the larger scheme of things. Especially if you look at the rumpled messes that check the "suit" block, roaming around government agencies. All that said, I fucking despise having to wear a suit.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- toby 12y ago
  Agreed, you'd probably find that a lot of tech guys in a hoodie and jeans spent more on their clothes than DC staffers in "suits".
  - walshemj 12y ago
    Really my last suit was $750 and I was looking at a nice Vivien Westwood one the other day which was $1200.
    - josephschmoe 12y ago
      It is hard to beat suits on the upper high end range in terms of price, but easy on the low to average range. My suit cost me around 150$ though. I have several outfits which are comparable in cost and designed specifically to be informal.
    - walshemj 12y ago
      jeez some people here have thin skins and would not survive long working in the city in hft/quant's where the end customers will think nothing of spending 2k on a pair of hand made shoes. It's quite possible to be a hacker and appreciate fashion and good quality tailoring
      - mpyne 12y ago
        Unless you're a DC staffer (and more specifically, a "typical DC staffer"), your showing off about your expensive suit didn't actually contradict anything in the comment you replied to, which is why I think your comment got grayed out.
    - ianstallings 12y ago
      Oh yeah? Well I got on sneakers that cost more than your suit. (yeezys) ZING. I think what he's saying is even though they look dressed down the price of the clothing is typically high. I have no idea if that's true. I just love sneakers.
  - nknighthb 12y ago
    I wear t-shirts and shorts. Always. Mostly from King Size Direct. Add in underwear and socks and the total cost of whatever I'm wearing at any given moment is <$100. Add in shoes and it's probably about $160. I'm always comfortable, which is difficult for me with any other off-the-shelf clothing. So tell me, how much more am I spending than DC staffers in what would have to be custom-tailored suits to match the comfort level?
- smacktoward 12y ago
  Yeah, I'm of two minds on it too. On the one hand, I'm all for letting people be comfortable at work. On the other hand, it's the fucking White House we're talking about here, not a paper company in Scranton. If there is a single office in the world where the people at least make an attempt to act like grown-ups, I'd want it to be that one, you know?
  - hugs 12y ago
    How about when you're actually in the White House to meet the president you wear a suit, but when you're at your desk in some other building (aka: not the WH) you don't. That was our policy last year on the hc.gov turn-around: Bring a suit (just in case!), but don't plan on wearing it everyday.
    - smacktoward 12y ago
      Good idea. It tracks with my experience working on the Hill years ago, too -- business casual (maybe with a tie) was fine in the House & Senate office buildings, but if you were going to the Capitol, you put on a suit. True story: I worked for a while in the office of a Midwestern Senator who felt very strongly about this rule. He'd actually fired people in the past over it, apparently. But at one point my boss (his communications director) needed someone to help with a press conference he was holding in the Capitol, and I, who was not wearing a suit, was the only one available. My boss decided I would do because the Senator wasn't going to be at this particular press conference, so he'd never know. So off we go to the Capitol. Then, halfway through the press conference, the Senator ambles into the room, unannounced and unexpected. My boss' faces turns white as he realizes that if the Senator realizes I'm from his office -- I was too far down the totem pole for him to recognize me immediately, thank God -- we're both screwed. So to protect us both, he does the only thing he can do: he physically grabs me, pushes me into a wiring closet, and closes the door. This was surprising, but at least I was smart enough to stay in there and keep quiet until he opened the door and let me know the coast was clear...
    - eastbayjake 12y ago
      That seems like a reasonable compromise. Where are the 18F and US Digital Service offices? I'd imagine you could be more low-key at some nondescript office park in Bethesda versus working in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building or some other all-suits federal agency HQ in the center of the city.
- pseudonym 12y ago
  It comes down, for me, to more a question of "how much external facetime do you have in your day-to-day job". Shared cultural displays are one thing, but forcing everyone into the "Least Comfortable Denominator" just because some subset of your culture does need to display that level of formality... Even above the comfortable clothing aspect of it, inflexibility in a comparatively minor thing like "dress code in non-customer-facing positions" indicates potential inflexibility in far more important things (sick/maternity/bereavement time, butt-in-chair time, informal 1-on-1s with higher-ups, merit-based raises, etc) and would greatly negatively influence the likelihood of taking a job for me.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
dang 12y ago
The title is taken from the url (which is fine, and better than the doc title in this case), but it's ungrammatical. What's a minimal fix? I can't think of one. Edit: Ok, we changed it from "The White House vows to let programmers dress like ones do".
- gk1 12y ago
  The White House vows to let programmers dress down
  - dang 12y ago
    If I know my Hacker News, that would spark an argument about the prejudice of saying dressing down. So maybe we'll use "informally", as more neutral. Thanks!
- pzxc 12y ago
  The White House vows to let programmers dress like programmers
kabdib 12y ago
The acid test for me: Will they hire software engineers who don't have degrees? I've worked with quite a few people who didn't bother to finish college, or never went to begin with. There doesn't seem to be a correlation between "great engineer" and "got a BS in CS" -- let me re-state that; you can be a great engineer without the paper, or a lousy one with the degree. So the question is: Is it a meritocracy, or is it a meritocracy? [also: sandals? :-) ]
- pmorici 12y ago
  The question isn't whether they will hire them. They most definitely would. The question is will they pay them equally. Government pay standards are typically based on degree. At heavily tech oriented government organizations they have different pay scales for people with CS/Math/EE degrees than people w/o them. Also having worked in government before, not the White House, they didn't expect the engineers to wear suits. Shorts and sandals were acceptable.
- blutoot 12y ago
  Getting one degree in engineering increases the likelihood that the person will be higher than average in her software engineering skills. When you have 1000s of applicants and your approach to everything is fairly conservative compared to the private sector, you won't go out on a limb and hire a dropout unless that dropout has a stellar portfolio of some extraordinary work. And it's the dropout's responsibility to get that work noticed in the marketplace.
  - mahyarm 12y ago
    Usually for software engineers, you are not getting 1000s of applicants unless you have 1000s of positions. It's folly to use cheap filters such as a degree at that point. Especially if your an unattractive employer such as the government.
- kohanz 12y ago
  I know you re-stated it, but I disagree with the first statement. I believe there is a correlation. The strength of the correlation can be debated, but in my experience, a degree is a positive signal when hiring someone to be part of a software engineering team. Note that I didn't just say software engineer. In my book, technical skills are only part of the equation, but the ability to communicate well, operate well within a team, etc. are also very important and in my experience, going to school helps prepare people for this kind of work. In the end, a degree or lack thereof only becomes a significant signal if there isn't enough real-world experience on the resume.
pcora 12y ago
I'm the only one that noticed that the guy get's a Blackberry for the job? That's interesting.
- josephschmoe 12y ago
  That's common in government work. It's usually for the purpose of emailing/texting at work and nothing else. I know half a dozen people who have a separate work phone they turn off when they get home.
- ryanburk 12y ago
  maybe it can be used as a cautionary tale. inspiration to build for the future, not the past. (edit: wow, this is what becomes my first down voted comment on hn?! apologies to the blackberry crowd I offended)
- smacktoward 12y ago
  Government procurement moves slooooowly, and BlackBerry has already been through the exhaustive process of security vetting that's required for gear that's going to be used in sensitive locations like the White House. I'm sure there's Apple and Android gear making its way through that process now, but it wouldn't surprise me if it wasn't all the way through yet.
- dodders 12y ago
  Security, innit.
blutoot 12y ago
In my opinion, techies make as much of a big deal of outfits as do the finance/business guys. They just do it by shouting about how much they are against dress codes.
quaffapint 12y ago
In my last gig we had to wear the whole tie getup even though we're crawling under desks or setting up servers. The funny thing is when they had investors and such come through the building they didn't let us downstairs - we had to stay hidden. What the heck was the tie for then. I even got reprimanded by my manager's manager because my dress shoes did not match my dress pants.
a3n 12y ago
Why would you want to work for an employer whose board of directors, Congress, regularly uses employees as hostages when they threaten to shut the government down? I'd wear a clown suit if the work was steady, interesting and well paid.
djb_hackernews 12y ago
This reminds me of the attitude of a former employer. It was a small tech company, the CEO/owner was an old school business type. Always well groomed, nice suits, the car, etc. He often had visitors come in to the office to see him, and he'd give a short tour on the way to his office. He'd stop by the sales area and introduce whoever was around and then he'd bring the visitor to the entry of the open office style room that had 4 of us software developers and say something like "And this is the bigger room, with a couple programmers" in such a way that it was as if he was showing off exotic pets or automated machinery. As if we were literally sitting there punching in the correct sequence of buttons in order to program a VCR. "Programmers" are low status, and now when we are at the White House it'll be easier to tell who we are.
- yoblin 12y ago
  I think in some ways programmers have brought this low status upon ourselves. If you want to be taken seriously in a business setting, like it or not how you dress affects your credibility. When a coder complains that the executives at the company are not taking their ideas seriously, maybe they should switch out of the t-shirt that says "talk nerdy to me" on the front. Dressing professionally isn't just about corporate conformity, it also signals that you take your job seriously.
halleym 12y ago
Seems like he wore a comically wrinkly shirt, just for the video. Kind of ruins the sentiment. Some how.
goshx 12y ago
I hate to have to dress up just because people won't take you seriously if you don't. To me this is just a very old preconception created by society long time ago (when perhaps it made sense) and people keep doing it apparently for no clear reason. I love when I see CEO/CTO's dressing whatever they like (e.g. Mark Zuckerberg, Werner Vogels, etc.). The only time I can accept this "dress up" thing with no contest is when you go to meet someone and you want to be respectful to this person, so you dress better to show respect/appreciation... like he did for the President. Now, the dress up for the sake of dressing up because this gives you status and then people will treat you better, I can't stand it.
- collyw 12y ago
  The thing is, its all very well saying that people shouldn't judge based on what we wear, but like it or not some people do. Its just a bit dumb and teenager like to not accept that and put a shirt on if its going to give you better options in an interview or whatever.
sbmassey 12y ago
Why would they vow to do it, and not just do it? Ok, it's just the title, but still.
matthewowen 12y ago
I find this obsession with avoiding suits to be so tiresome. It's as though programmers are small children who get treats (like dressing down) in exchange for not being treated like real professionals. It's a suit. It's simple. It's not hard to wear. It's not uncomfortable. Being afraid of wearing suits makes programmers look petty, juvenile, and unprofessional. Yes, it doesn't have direct practical value, but human behaviour and codes of conduct are full of things with minimal practical value that we still go along with. Culture is complex.
- collyw 12y ago
  Agreed. I have worked in academia as well as the private sector (banking amongst others). PHD's really amuse me how they think they are getting some sort of freedom, by working long hours for crap wages, but not needing to wear a shirt and tie and not needing to be in by 9.

82 points by Libertatea 12y ago

This is a clear power play and is playing by the same rules as those that are wearing suits. What dressing like that is saying is, no I don't have to wear the uniform of this culture because I am in a position of informal power. The New Yorker did a piece on that same issue last year: http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-power-of-the-hoodie-wearing-c-e-o http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-power-of-the-... At the end of the day I am torn on this issue. The idea that competence counts makes sense and that is all that should be judged. However there is something to be said about shared cultural displays and how they fit into a larger team effort. The modern suit is a pretty benign display in the larger scheme of things. Especially if you look at the rumpled messes that check the "suit" block, roaming around government agencies. All that said, I fucking despise having to wear a suit.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
toby 12y ago
Agreed, you'd probably find that a lot of tech guys in a hoodie and jeans spent more on their clothes than DC staffers in "suits".
- walshemj 12y ago
  Really my last suit was $750 and I was looking at a nice Vivien Westwood one the other day which was $1200.
  - josephschmoe 12y ago
    It is hard to beat suits on the upper high end range in terms of price, but easy on the low to average range. My suit cost me around 150$ though. I have several outfits which are comparable in cost and designed specifically to be informal.
  - walshemj 12y ago
    jeez some people here have thin skins and would not survive long working in the city in hft/quant's where the end customers will think nothing of spending 2k on a pair of hand made shoes. It's quite possible to be a hacker and appreciate fashion and good quality tailoring
    - mpyne 12y ago
      Unless you're a DC staffer (and more specifically, a "typical DC staffer"), your showing off about your expensive suit didn't actually contradict anything in the comment you replied to, which is why I think your comment got grayed out.
  - ianstallings 12y ago
    Oh yeah? Well I got on sneakers that cost more than your suit. (yeezys) ZING. I think what he's saying is even though they look dressed down the price of the clothing is typically high. I have no idea if that's true. I just love sneakers.
- nknighthb 12y ago
  I wear t-shirts and shorts. Always. Mostly from King Size Direct. Add in underwear and socks and the total cost of whatever I'm wearing at any given moment is <$100. Add in shoes and it's probably about $160. I'm always comfortable, which is difficult for me with any other off-the-shelf clothing. So tell me, how much more am I spending than DC staffers in what would have to be custom-tailored suits to match the comfort level?
smacktoward 12y ago
Yeah, I'm of two minds on it too. On the one hand, I'm all for letting people be comfortable at work. On the other hand, it's the fucking White House we're talking about here, not a paper company in Scranton. If there is a single office in the world where the people at least make an attempt to act like grown-ups, I'd want it to be that one, you know?
- hugs 12y ago
  How about when you're actually in the White House to meet the president you wear a suit, but when you're at your desk in some other building (aka: not the WH) you don't. That was our policy last year on the hc.gov turn-around: Bring a suit (just in case!), but don't plan on wearing it everyday.
  - smacktoward 12y ago
    Good idea. It tracks with my experience working on the Hill years ago, too -- business casual (maybe with a tie) was fine in the House & Senate office buildings, but if you were going to the Capitol, you put on a suit. True story: I worked for a while in the office of a Midwestern Senator who felt very strongly about this rule. He'd actually fired people in the past over it, apparently. But at one point my boss (his communications director) needed someone to help with a press conference he was holding in the Capitol, and I, who was not wearing a suit, was the only one available. My boss decided I would do because the Senator wasn't going to be at this particular press conference, so he'd never know. So off we go to the Capitol. Then, halfway through the press conference, the Senator ambles into the room, unannounced and unexpected. My boss' faces turns white as he realizes that if the Senator realizes I'm from his office -- I was too far down the totem pole for him to recognize me immediately, thank God -- we're both screwed. So to protect us both, he does the only thing he can do: he physically grabs me, pushes me into a wiring closet, and closes the door. This was surprising, but at least I was smart enough to stay in there and keep quiet until he opened the door and let me know the coast was clear...
  - eastbayjake 12y ago
    That seems like a reasonable compromise. Where are the 18F and US Digital Service offices? I'd imagine you could be more low-key at some nondescript office park in Bethesda versus working in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building or some other all-suits federal agency HQ in the center of the city.
pseudonym 12y ago
It comes down, for me, to more a question of "how much external facetime do you have in your day-to-day job". Shared cultural displays are one thing, but forcing everyone into the "Least Comfortable Denominator" just because some subset of your culture does need to display that level of formality... Even above the comfortable clothing aspect of it, inflexibility in a comparatively minor thing like "dress code in non-customer-facing positions" indicates potential inflexibility in far more important things (sick/maternity/bereavement time, butt-in-chair time, informal 1-on-1s with higher-ups, merit-based raises, etc) and would greatly negatively influence the likelihood of taking a job for me.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

dang 12y ago

The title is taken from the url (which is fine, and better than the doc title in this case), but it's ungrammatical. What's a minimal fix? I can't think of one. Edit: Ok, we changed it from "The White House vows to let programmers dress like ones do".

gk1 12y ago
The White House vows to let programmers dress down
- dang 12y ago
  If I know my Hacker News, that would spark an argument about the prejudice of saying dressing down. So maybe we'll use "informally", as more neutral. Thanks!
pzxc 12y ago
The White House vows to let programmers dress like programmers

kabdib 12y ago

The acid test for me: Will they hire software engineers who don't have degrees? I've worked with quite a few people who didn't bother to finish college, or never went to begin with. There doesn't seem to be a correlation between "great engineer" and "got a BS in CS" -- let me re-state that; you can be a great engineer without the paper, or a lousy one with the degree. So the question is: Is it a meritocracy, or is it a meritocracy? [also: sandals? :-) ]

pmorici 12y ago
The question isn't whether they will hire them. They most definitely would. The question is will they pay them equally. Government pay standards are typically based on degree. At heavily tech oriented government organizations they have different pay scales for people with CS/Math/EE degrees than people w/o them. Also having worked in government before, not the White House, they didn't expect the engineers to wear suits. Shorts and sandals were acceptable.
blutoot 12y ago
Getting one degree in engineering increases the likelihood that the person will be higher than average in her software engineering skills. When you have 1000s of applicants and your approach to everything is fairly conservative compared to the private sector, you won't go out on a limb and hire a dropout unless that dropout has a stellar portfolio of some extraordinary work. And it's the dropout's responsibility to get that work noticed in the marketplace.
- mahyarm 12y ago
  Usually for software engineers, you are not getting 1000s of applicants unless you have 1000s of positions. It's folly to use cheap filters such as a degree at that point. Especially if your an unattractive employer such as the government.
kohanz 12y ago
I know you re-stated it, but I disagree with the first statement. I believe there is a correlation. The strength of the correlation can be debated, but in my experience, a degree is a positive signal when hiring someone to be part of a software engineering team. Note that I didn't just say software engineer. In my book, technical skills are only part of the equation, but the ability to communicate well, operate well within a team, etc. are also very important and in my experience, going to school helps prepare people for this kind of work. In the end, a degree or lack thereof only becomes a significant signal if there isn't enough real-world experience on the resume.

pcora 12y ago

I'm the only one that noticed that the guy get's a Blackberry for the job? That's interesting.

josephschmoe 12y ago
That's common in government work. It's usually for the purpose of emailing/texting at work and nothing else. I know half a dozen people who have a separate work phone they turn off when they get home.
ryanburk 12y ago
maybe it can be used as a cautionary tale. inspiration to build for the future, not the past. (edit: wow, this is what becomes my first down voted comment on hn?! apologies to the blackberry crowd I offended)
smacktoward 12y ago
Government procurement moves slooooowly, and BlackBerry has already been through the exhaustive process of security vetting that's required for gear that's going to be used in sensitive locations like the White House. I'm sure there's Apple and Android gear making its way through that process now, but it wouldn't surprise me if it wasn't all the way through yet.
dodders 12y ago
Security, innit.

blutoot 12y ago

In my opinion, techies make as much of a big deal of outfits as do the finance/business guys. They just do it by shouting about how much they are against dress codes.

quaffapint 12y ago

In my last gig we had to wear the whole tie getup even though we're crawling under desks or setting up servers. The funny thing is when they had investors and such come through the building they didn't let us downstairs - we had to stay hidden. What the heck was the tie for then. I even got reprimanded by my manager's manager because my dress shoes did not match my dress pants.

a3n 12y ago

Why would you want to work for an employer whose board of directors, Congress, regularly uses employees as hostages when they threaten to shut the government down? I'd wear a clown suit if the work was steady, interesting and well paid.

djb_hackernews 12y ago

This reminds me of the attitude of a former employer. It was a small tech company, the CEO/owner was an old school business type. Always well groomed, nice suits, the car, etc. He often had visitors come in to the office to see him, and he'd give a short tour on the way to his office. He'd stop by the sales area and introduce whoever was around and then he'd bring the visitor to the entry of the open office style room that had 4 of us software developers and say something like "And this is the bigger room, with a couple programmers" in such a way that it was as if he was showing off exotic pets or automated machinery. As if we were literally sitting there punching in the correct sequence of buttons in order to program a VCR. "Programmers" are low status, and now when we are at the White House it'll be easier to tell who we are.

yoblin 12y ago
I think in some ways programmers have brought this low status upon ourselves. If you want to be taken seriously in a business setting, like it or not how you dress affects your credibility. When a coder complains that the executives at the company are not taking their ideas seriously, maybe they should switch out of the t-shirt that says "talk nerdy to me" on the front. Dressing professionally isn't just about corporate conformity, it also signals that you take your job seriously.

halleym 12y ago

Seems like he wore a comically wrinkly shirt, just for the video. Kind of ruins the sentiment. Some how.

goshx 12y ago

I hate to have to dress up just because people won't take you seriously if you don't. To me this is just a very old preconception created by society long time ago (when perhaps it made sense) and people keep doing it apparently for no clear reason. I love when I see CEO/CTO's dressing whatever they like (e.g. Mark Zuckerberg, Werner Vogels, etc.). The only time I can accept this "dress up" thing with no contest is when you go to meet someone and you want to be respectful to this person, so you dress better to show respect/appreciation... like he did for the President. Now, the dress up for the sake of dressing up because this gives you status and then people will treat you better, I can't stand it.

collyw 12y ago
The thing is, its all very well saying that people shouldn't judge based on what we wear, but like it or not some people do. Its just a bit dumb and teenager like to not accept that and put a shirt on if its going to give you better options in an interview or whatever.

sbmassey 12y ago

Why would they vow to do it, and not just do it? Ok, it's just the title, but still.

matthewowen 12y ago

I find this obsession with avoiding suits to be so tiresome. It's as though programmers are small children who get treats (like dressing down) in exchange for not being treated like real professionals. It's a suit. It's simple. It's not hard to wear. It's not uncomfortable. Being afraid of wearing suits makes programmers look petty, juvenile, and unprofessional. Yes, it doesn't have direct practical value, but human behaviour and codes of conduct are full of things with minimal practical value that we still go along with. Culture is complex.

collyw 12y ago
Agreed. I have worked in academia as well as the private sector (banking amongst others). PHD's really amuse me how they think they are getting some sort of freedom, by working long hours for crap wages, but not needing to wear a shirt and tie and not needing to be in by 9.