Mad Men: I worked at IBM Office Products Division Headquarters in the 1970s. Dress code was full suit with a white shirt. I was a systems programmer on the IBM 360 Mainframe. One day I walked from my office, into the hall, to the print room 2 doors away without my suit jacket. I got "written up" (a very bad thing).

In those days even IBM Field Service Engineers who repaired Selectric Typewriters wore suits. Their shoes were so well shined you could see your face in them.

These days I work from home. Sometimes I walk the hall to the cafeteria (the kitchen) without my suit jacket. I expect to be written up sometime soon.

Here's a clue a very senior manager (Ralph Gomory, IBM Research Division President) once gave me...

Managers make decisions. Only go to management with your need for a decision and always present the options.

They went to management with what was, in essence, a complaint. Worse, it was a complaint that had nothing to do with the business. Clearly they were not keeping the business uppermost in their priority queue. So management made a business decision and fixed the problem.

We had a "mass revolt" among the systems programmers across all of the IBM internal sites. We would only get "upgraded processors" after the customer returned an old one. We were working on trailing edge equipment. Unfortunately our internal memos (the "Tandem Memos") got leaked to Computer World (the big newspaper of the day). I got called "on the carpet" by senior management. I expected to be fired.

Fortunately IBM Corporate management saw that we were complaining about the business, not about personal issues. They changed the policy and we got leading edge equipment.

Mass protests sometimes work but they need to focus on improving the business. Unless you're in the fashion business it is hard to see how dress code protests matter.