Professional Dress Code Tips
dba-oracle.com
dba-oracle.com
When I was at Apple, we had a consultant who insisted on coming into work dressed like a professional consultant. The rest of us were in T-shirts, shorts and jeans, sandals or tennis shoes or hiking boots, a typical hacker crowd.
She wasn't getting much traction. It was awkward to have a "suit" in meetings, even though we knew she was an excellent engineer. A couple of us suggested that it might help for her to dress down. Finally our director (a woman, if it matters) took her aside and had a chat. A few days later the consultant started coming into work in jeans / t-shirt and so forth, and her interactions with us went a lot better.
The hacker in me wants to feel vindicated. But really it just shows how shallow we can be.
In any event, I am never, ever going to wear a tie or a suit to work.
I almost never wear a tie these days though except for certain big stage events.
At one point in my life, a person showing up wearing a suit was a big warning (e.g. government worker). I then went to work at a place that took its dress code a bit seriously[1].
Although, if a person is with a consulting company that is in the business of pushing out IT employees expect them to all wear suits and convince your management that they are serious workers and you are sloppy workers. The management tribe likes suits.
If you really want to freak people out, wear business casual, put on a BRAND NEW clean high-visibility safety vest and fresh, clean hard hat without any stickers and show up to a major high-rise construction site with a clipboard and DSLR camera. Have done this a few times (planning fiber construction/riser paths).
I was in a rural area. What a lot of people don't get about government site visits for grants is that there is a bit a pecking order. The upper officials get to go to "cool" places like Hawaii or New Orleans during Mardi Gras, or any number of interesting places during an event. Now, the screwups and very low level folks get to go to North Dakota. If you ever wonder why some folks in rural areas hate the government, then take a look at the kind of person DC sends our way.
I was told they'd had a suit up Friday one time where one engineer had protested (in jest) and had worn a Goofy costume underneath his tuxedo.
I like to suit up sometimes because it makes me feel good, but acknowledge that we're social animals who mostly want to fit in.
Dress clothes and peer pressure suck. Nice clothes don't.
Things are so casual here that I know an engineer who never wears socks, and wears Birkenstocks through the winter.
> Major ISP
The people with 'enable' on the core routers for the largest ASNs in the Vancouver-Seattle-Portland region are also the ones most likely to show up to work in an old ratty NANOG t-shirt and cargo shorts. If they're not working 100% remote.
It's a way to show that you "get it" and are part of the same tribe.
There are reports that he doesn't pay his consultants.
https://donburlesonfraud.wordpress.com/
https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/don-burleson-burleson-c...
http://oracledoug.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/1303-W...
Burleson issuing DMCA notices: https://hoopercharles.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/on-the-topic-...
I consider a lot of non-technical stuff on his site to be just funny.
Look at this doe bell from one of his sites: http://www.rampant-books.com/product_deer_butt_doorbell.htm http://www.dba-oracle.com/redneck.htm
o...m...g... do I read it now or wait and read it later? Which will be funnier?
> If you have been working all night and have an early morning meeting, you can use an anti-inflammatory hemorrhoid cream (e.g. Preparation H) to quickly shrink those unsightly puffy bags under your eyes.
And if you work on site at a bank on the east coast, you better have a nice suit. Otherwise nowadays you're usually fine with slacks and a button down at most places.
Honestly it can be a lot of fun, in small doses (do that every week for months and you realize why not everyone is a consultant though)
(I had a hardcore Oracle guy once walk in when I was at a Bank - there was a product issue nobody was able to solve. This person had a pony tail, white t-shirt, blue jeans and sports shoes. Charged a ton of money for his 3 days and by the time he was gone things were measurably better off. Nobody was minding his attire - and it was 8 years ago.)
I used to work in telecoms consulting, which is fairly buttoned up: usually dress shirts, slacks and nice shoes, although us engineers were permitted to dispose of the tie and open the top button. But the best engineer in my company -- the guy who'd be flown in by private jet when needed because the billing systems were dropping $1m/hour on the floor -- maintained a steady uniform of ripped jeans, ratty T-shirts and permanent 3-day stubble, and the clients would always fall over themselves with gratefulness when he showed up. Not because of what he wore, of course, but because he was "the real deal" and very good at actually fixing problems, instead of talking about them.
This is classic countersignalling behaviour: By refusing to pay the cost (financial, time, and comfort) of dressing up, you're communicating that you're not afraid of being mistaken for an interloper.
permanent 3-day stubble
I really want to know how to do this. My stubble goes from 0-day to 1-day to 2-day to 3-day and then back to 0-day...
> I really want to know how to do this. My stubble goes from 0-day to 1-day to 2-day to 3-day and then back to 0-day...
I achieve variable-length shaven-stubble with "Amazon: Panasonic Beard and Mustache Trimmer and Hair Clipper for Men". Once-over with the main clipper (sans attachment) is like a 2/3 day (but it looks a little uneven), and then the mustache trimmer to achieve a 1/2-day.
Avoiding zero-days is a priority of mine, also, so I felt compelled to share. Good luck!
If you're in an urgent need for a 3-day beard, a trip to Walmart and 3 days will do it.
That said, he's not entirely wrong. What you wear absolutely affects how other people perceive, treat, and judge you (rightly or wrongly). Good to always be mindful of what your appearance says to other people, whether you care what they think or not.
I'm sure most of us here have worked with enough useless consultancies to know that there is no correlation between dress and ability. It's not even a class symbol anymore, the biggest group of people that wear suits to work are in retail these days.
I have found a correlation between dress code and competence, places that focus on the former can't afford to be picky with the latter in such a competitive market. The more talented can usually get paid just as well at more relaxed companies.
Guy is really old school, raises mini horses for fun, and literally shows up in Google for any Oracle error ever. He is long tail SEO before there was such a thing...
> I am not fond of hippies, long-hairs, dope fiends or alcoholics. I suggest each and every person in a supervisory category (from driller up to me) eliminate these people.
> Anyone who lets their hair grow below their ears to where I can't see their ears means they don't wash. If they don't wash, they stink, and if they stink, I don't want the son-of-a-bitch around me.
> Do not speak to me when you see me. If I want to to speak to you, I will do so. I want to save my throat. I don't want to ruin it by saying hello to all of you sons-of-bitches.
> DO YOUR JOBS AND KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT!
In case anyone is interested, Alan Flusser's book, "Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion," provides a good background on the history of men's formal dress and why certain things are the way they are. Certainly, we can disagree as to whether it should be important, but clothing is a language, so we might as well understand what we're saying in a particular context.
...so you mean out of style?
It is a signalling of a maverick industry so powerful it can succeed without the approval or gatekeeping of stuffy banks etc. It is a huge middle finger to The Establishment.
Think of how YC began with the idea of two guys in a cheap apartment seeking to be ramen profitable. I will suggest it is no coincidence that I have read that Paul Graham is fond of (iirc) cargo shorts and sandals. It's a hugely self entitled position that his personal comfort matters vastly more than the opinions of gatekeepers.
There are good psychological reasons for enforcing it as an industrywide standard. You don't want people eroding that mindset of the industry or altering that social contract.
> There are good psychological reasons for enforcing it as an industrywide standard. You don't want people eroding that mindset of the industry or altering that social contract.
If you dig into these two paragraphs a bit, you’ll see they’re incompatible. You’re just trading one establishment for a new one, which is evidently just a susceptible to gatekeeping and biases as the old one.
It still refuses to curry favor with the old establishment.
If plastic melts in your car in the parking lot, maybe requiring people to wear a coat or jacket is a bit much.
This is pretty insanely regressive.
https://abovethelaw.com/2015/02/judges-want-women-lawyers-to...
I mean, why shouldn't a Metal band, for example, require their roadies to wear leather and spikes or spandex and hairspray if that's their thing.
Zumwalt, as Chief of Naval Operations, was responsible for the roughly ten-year span when sailors were allowed to wear beards, outraging the naval counterparts of Mr. Burleson here: https://news.usni.org/2014/10/23/brief-history-grooming-u-s-...
I work at a startup in NYC and most of us are dressed very casually, but a few people do dress up / more nicely (especially those that used to work in finance and at those at the C-level). You know how much that bothers people at my company? Not at all. I've never heard it brought up once.
The clothes someone is wearing barely enters my mind at all when I'm conversing / working with them. If the way someone dresses is bothering you and your coworkers to the point of social friction, I seriously suggest you look inwards to see what the problem is.
The irony/hypocrisy in SV is too much to handle sometimes.
For what I do, even traditional business casual starts to look more like being a "suit" than I prefer.
[ADDED: As someone else said, do read to the bottom. This is a commentary on what clients are looking for.]
It has been a while since we had consultants underfoot at the office, and I don't remember them as being quite that dressed up.
But you can often take a shower before important meeting and that is a good idea regardless of clothing.
Just think about it - a paid shower... with consultant rates.
When you socially optimise for superficial appearance, you'll both work for clients who value superficial appearance and attract employees who optimise for superficial appearance.
Not a day goes by that I don't thank god I don't have to work for a consultancy, though I do often dread that I'll have some brought in and have to deal with the particular kind of moron employees they attract.
/superficial generalisation