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No one covers their tattoos (except because it's cold) or shaves (because they're required to, obviously a lot of people shave) in New York tech offices. And, um, there's a lot of tattoos and beards among New York tech hipster types.

Shorts are certainly more useful here in the summer (okay, they're basically mandatory if you don't want to be miserable some days) than in SF where it's usually sort of chilly.

Seems overly reductive.

Pure tech no, but I bet they'd all roll down their sleeves if they're interviewing at a financial services company.

I know at least one executive --- as in, is on the website --- of an east coast Fortune 50 bank with sleeves and a bushy beard.

I'm sure they exist but by far that's the exception and not the norm.

I've worked in sales before (in the investment bank), and was chewed out for the 3 months I tried to grow out a beard.

I have no trouble believing the rules for sales are not the same as the rules for IS/IT.

They're probably more stringent as it's directly customer facing.

You've obviously never worked at a more conservative place. I worked at a place where tattoos must be always covered completely and beards have to be very well kept. Jeans were a hard no and they had just loosened their dress code so women could wear pants.

Even the New York Yankees have to shave - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Yankees_appearance_po...

Women couldn't wear pants!!??? Was this an airline? Or maybe the service industry??

It was an office.

I left there 12 years ago and the women could wear pants policy was new then. So it was around 2003-04 when they first started allowing women to wear pants. By coincidence (or maybe not) this is also the time when laws banning smoking in public places (bars, restaurants) first started to be passed.

It was a conservative office. Customers were other business, not the public.

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2016/02/women...

Is it possible you've worked out west and in the mountains more recently than east coast/midwest? I ask because I've worked in a lot of different cultures in the midwest, from banks to startups, and tattoos are not an issue in any of them. 15 years ago that wasn't so true but in the last 7 or 8 for sure I've never seen it be an issue. Facial hair hasn't been an issue ever in my experience.

> East Coast/Midwest: tattoos should be covered. West Coast/Mountains: tattoos are okay as long as they are not offensive.

California: Anything goes. I've seen people walking around barefoot in the office. I have yet to see anyone completely nude at work tho, though plenty on the streets of SF.

I wouldn't allow barefoot in the office, just because of lawsuits if someone steps on something like a tack.

Walking barefoot has 2 fairly immediate effects: the skin under your feet becomes much thicker and tough; and your step becomes much lighter and reactive. If you stepped on a tack barefoot, it'd hurt a bit, but it most likely wouldn't pierce through your foot like it would the sole of the shoe, because your foot is much more aware with what it's walking on, and you don't slam down your feet on the ground as much as you walk around.

Putting rigid shoes on your feet is like stuffing your nose with cotton - you're completely blocking a very sensitive organ to the rest of the world.

All this just to say: people who walk barefoot every day are not worried of stepping on tacks :)

You're the guy who's barefoot in the office, aren't you?

I ran all over Creation barefoot as a kid. He's not wrong. Your feet toughen up, and you're aware of what you step on.

On the other hand, I've worn work boots since high school, and wouldn't give them up. (Literally! Uniform required penny loafers or better. I got chewed out more times...) Callused soles won't save you on sun-hot asphalt or gravel, and knowing what you're stepping on won't do you a lick of good when 120 pounds of server and handcart run over your toes.

> people who walk barefoot every day are not worried of stepping on tacks :)

As a manager, I wouldn't be worried about them being worried. I'd be worried about them suing the company if they injure their foot.

Get them to sign some sort of liability clause. I imagine even that wouldn't be necessary. Any judge would throw out the case immediately - you probably wouldn't even need to hire a lawyer.

Liability clauses are routinely invalidated in court.

Wouldn't a more apt comparison be wearing gloves?

Rigid gloves that are an inch of solid rubber, sure :P

> people who walk barefoot every day are not worried of stepping on tacks

Unless they're encumbered with a 80-pound piece of furniture that they're carrying down the stairs.

Okay, but maybe don't walk barefoot if you're moving furniture around.

I love being barefoot, but I don't go barefoot in public because of sharps! I don't typically encounter broken glass or used needles, but both of those things will cut right through your "thicker and tough" skin before you can feel it.

Broken glass is far more common in modern times than it was on the savanna, so it's wise to dress accordingly. You don't have to wear Dr Martens, but a millimeter or two of Vibram can dramatically improve your quality of life.

> but both of those things will cut right through your "thicker and tough" skin before you can feel it

From personal experience, it takes quite the sharps to cut through 10-12mm calluses.

I hate wearing shoes, and I'd look crazy going barefoot in my office. I compensate by wearing really light-soled vans and no socks.

> I wouldn't allow barefoot in the office, just because of lawsuits if someone steps on something like a tack.

As someone who walked barefoot in Chicago for much of a summer: why is this everyone's nightmare legal scenario? Sure, I could be barefoot and step on a tack, but why is that so much more of a nightmare than if I'm not looking and put my hand down on a tack on a desk? (Well, maybe because I put my hand down with less weight than my foot, but that's not the point.) There are plenty of ways to be injured in the workplace, and we are allowed to manage most of these risks ourselves; why is shoelessness so particularly terrifying?

(Incidentally, one of my favourite objections to my shoelessness was someone who claimed that it was unclean (for others, not for me). I wash my feet every day, but almost never my shoes, so which one of those results in more uncleanliness for the places that I walk through?)

Why would it be unclean for others? That makes no sense.

> Why would it be unclean for others? That makes no sense.

The claim was that I was tracking in all the dirt from outside on my feet, and spreading it around where it would dirty up others. Since I'd be doing exactly the same (plus all the other dirt from years of wear) if I were wearing shoes, I agree with you that it makes no sense.

Feet sweat, and can stain carpets and such after a while. It's the same reason one wears gloves when handling valuable things, etc.

>one of my favourite objections to my shoelessness was someone who claimed that it was unclean for others.

The difference might be that shoes aren't as good of a substrate for bacteria as a warm moist foot.

The athletic administration at my college required that I put my shoes back on when practicing soccer on the intramural fields. Their reasoning was that I could get a cut and develop an e coli infection.

> The difference might be that shoes aren't as good of a substrate for bacteria as a warm moist foot.

Oh, good point. I hadn't considered that.

> The athletic administration at my college required that I put my shoes back on when practicing soccer on the intramural fields. Their reasoning was that I could get a cut and develop an e coli infection.

This is also a good point, but not the issue that was being raised, which was specifically about others' health, not my own.

http://www.barefooters.org/barefoot-faq/

Here in Scandinavia, it's very rare to wear shoes inside. That's probably because most of the year the weather requires shoes that aren't practical inside and you want to leave your filthy wet shoes at the door and not bring the mess inside. Some people wear some kind of slippers at the office but mostly it's just socks.

I find wearing shoes for the whole day extremely uncomfortable.

But it's unlikely that you could sue anyone if you step on a tack either.

People wear socks in the office??

In NYC it's similar in winter -- people keep light flats or flip flops on their desk and trade snow boots for those during the day.

Yes, almost everyone at my office walks on socks and it's very common elsewhere too. Some guys have flip flops. It's basically everywhere indoors here, if you get invited to someone's home, you leave your shoes at the door and go with socks.

It's not the same for suit & tie jobs, they usually wear shoes. Or if there's a more formal party at someone's house.

I'm waiting for the minimum dress code to be "Koteka".

My step-father wouldn't let me grow my hair out long in the early 90s in preparation for the QUOTE/UNQUOTE real world. Of course, I grew up to write code for a living where I've worked with guys with dreadlocks, full sleeves, long beards, piercings, and -- perhaps worst of all -- guys who wear flip flops.

We also talked a lot about how I'd never have a boss who'd tolerate lateness. Cut to 20 years later: my co-workers saunter into the office at varying times, when they come in at all.

The world really has changed right from under the generation before mine. My father thought he was preparing me for a good life.

But he was wasting my time.

That part about tattoos strikes me as very odd. I live in Australia and have both of my arms fairly covered in tattoos, no job I've ever had has asked me to cover them, even as a travel agent.

That's because it isn't true anywhere in American tech. Maybe in some lower level service jobs but you'd usually just be discriminated against before getting the job if management didn't like the tats.

How old are you?

I'm almost 40. It used to be visible tattoos and piercings meant you were unemployable in most "mainstream" jobs. Same with odd colored hair or other unconventional appearance. I remember the "rule of thumb" was it was ok to get tattoos on your sleeves because you could always cover them up for work.

Tattoos are mainstream now so not so they are much more accepted at the workplace now. I remember I was really surprised the first time I saw someone with a facial piercing working a customer service job, it was at CVS.

Growing up in Texas it seemed like most C-level people had at least one tattoo. A lot of them were vets so they would typically be eagles or flags.

I have a theory that the mainstreaming of tattoos comes from the greatest generation. They were the generation who fought the Nazis and came back with markings showing their loyalty to their country and the people they served with.

I am the same age as you. I don't remember any boomer parents with tattoos. I wonder if our kids and grandkids will keep getting tattoos or if it will fall out of fashion

Now the stigma is pretty much gone and tattoos are basically ubiquitous. I'd imagine future generations won't find getting a tattoo to be as exciting. I suspect the fickle Instagram generation will be much more into temporary tattoos.

Kids are going to not get tattoos to rebel against their parents.

(That being said, I didn't grow up in Texas, I grew up in the Northeast)

I'm only 23. I guess I have grown up in a time where Tattoo Stigma is a very "old fashioned" idea.

Speaking from my previous consulting career (not my current one, which works exclusively with startups that don't care about this stuff):

Dress code varied --- rarely, but it did --- but rules about tattoos and facial hair did not. No client cared about ink or hair, even when they really wanted people wearing jackets and ties. The companies that cared about this stuff were all east coast financial, but mostly not Manhattan.

> it seems like the East Coast and Midwest are slightly more strict in wanting people to dress business casual, and be clean-shaven

I'm 33, in the Atlanta area, and I've never even heard of a company with a policy against beards. I'd estimate somewhere close to half of the men here under 40 have beards.