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Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

This works the other way too. I know a guy who used to have a mohawk. He also represented his company (a mobile chip maker that was later acquired by ARM) to customers as the chief technical guy. I once asked him if the mohawk wasn't a problem with customers (who were mainly large, relatively traditional, tech bigco's). He said that it gave the customers the idea that "if he's allowed to wear that mohawk on customer visits, then he must be very good".

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This idea is expanded in Taleb's "Surgeons Should Not Look Like Surgeons": https://medium.com/incerto/surgeons-should-notlook-like-surg...

As much insight as he offers, I've always found Taleb's writing style to be vexing.

Once I realized his goal in life is to be seen as a philosopher and not an easy-to-read author, that helped me mentally adjust my filter to make him easier to understand.

His problem isn't that he's hard to understand. His problem is he loses his point halfway through a chapter while he rants against eggheads, bureaucrats, and anyone else he doesn't like.

Like, I get his point that experience beats expertise, and some experts don't really know any more than the general public. But he drives the point so hard that his later work is unreadable. He'll devote more time to bullying some breed of academic than he will to making his actual point.

Good section in that article "A BS detection Heuristic"

I can see it working this way. I think there are still boundaries though, like you have to be hygenienic and not too extreme. I don't think a woman can dress too skimpy for a business meeting unless she is a stripper or a porn actress or something. With clothes you have a lot of time and space to convince other people that it's ok to trust you, even though you look like Lil Pump. Because you are in the same room, you are close, and they are invested, the expectations are set, and it would be too weird to make an issue out of your clothes if you carry yourself with conviction.

This stuff doesn't work for things that can be classified as weak signal. Stuff like your resume, or name of your company. I follow author of Destroy All Software screencasts on Twitter and remember him mentioning that some companies refuse to buy his screencasts because of the seemngly silly name of his company (Destroy All Software). They think such collabaration is going to reflect on them badly. The signal is weak, it's just a few words on a screen, so it's easy to say no.

Clothing has relatively weak effect compared to your style of communication. You can't dress your way up to being a CEO of a multimillion dollar company, but you can talk your way up there. I don't mean lying, manipulating, and playing office politics. I mean being as intense as Gary Vaynerchuk. Just watch his videos, you can see effective he is at dealing with people. In my real life I have never seen anyone who comes even close. Everybody around me is ridden with flaws: some have severe speech impediments, some are too passive, some lack ambition, some (everybody actually) are too anxious, some are just clueless.

I think it's smart to aspire to be more like Gary Vaynerchuk. I don't want to be like Paul Graham, or Mark Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk, or Linus Torvalds. They are interesting people, but they are not free. They are stifled, rigid, and not cool. They manage to be successful leaders despite their crappy social skills. I mean, have you seen Elon's interview on Joe Rogan? Cringy! I mean, I love Elon Musk, but he should emulate Tony Robbins or somebody, it would be one of the most effective things for Tesla. I know very little about Tesla, but I'm sure there is a lot of failure going in communication when Elon is involved.

The double standard definitely works against women; they have more flexibility but that just means more unspoken rules to break, and a big challenge to be taken seriously that usually results in dressing more seriously than their male colleagues. And most of the outfits don't have pockets.

I'm also thinking of Naomi Wu drawing a tremendous amount of flak for skimpy outfits on Youtube, despite her pointing out that it was extremely hot in that part of China and not much skimpier than regular streetwear.

Naomi Wu is dressing as sexually provocative as possible. Is a transparent LED bra somehow a lot more suitable for hot weather.

Her clothing isn't really that provocative in Chinese culture.

> that usually results in dressing more seriously than their male colleagues.

Are yoga pants really more serious than khakis and a polo?

No, but where did you cherry-pick that example from?

(I would code yoga pants as casual because they're sportswear, unless worn under something else as opaque tights which are professional. Woman wearing shirt+chinos will incur a minor penalty for gender non conforming dress unless it's a uniform in which case you're working at Best Buy)

Cherry pick? No. Anecdote? Sure. In my experience women have dressed at or below the level of professionalism (for lack of a better word) than the men. Women have a lot more variance in what they can wear, and very few people will choose to dress higher than the cultural expectation of them. I see far more women wearing yoga pants in a professional environment then men in athletic shirts or even just T-shirts. It's similar for my GF who is a teacher. She's always rolling her eyes about how often teachers wear yoga pants to work.

>Woman wearing shirt+chinos will incur a minor penalty for gender non conforming dress

We just live in different worlds I guess. I've seen women dress like that all the time, and no one is looking askance at them, not even minorly.

It's not like the only alternative to business dress is skimpy clothing. T-shirts and jeans, or overalls, or a long casual dress, for example.

I envy women because I feel like they have way more options for dress and style than we men do. My choices are: t-shirt and jeans, button-up and khakis, some variant of those two, or one of the many contemporary men's styles that seem closer to caricatures than real life

I didn't mean to imply that skimpiness was the only option , although it is remarkably hard to find an outfit that someone won't sexualise.

I was thinking of this excellent thread: https://mobile.twitter.com/sehurlburt/status/965453047965958...

> Cringy! I mean, I love Elon Musk, but he should emulate Tony Robbins or somebody, it would be one of the most effective things for Tesla.

I don't see why Elon should change, except for appeasing and idealized perception what a successful CEO should behave like. Intensity is just one way of being successful or making people believe you are worth investing in. Gary's brand is the intense hustler that plays well with his target group of youthful entrepreneurs - or corporate clients who like buying creative services from an agency head who acts like that. Elon plays increasingly a mad Genius persona - not sure if intentional or not. I don't think he cares what would be potentially the best image he should portrait for Tesla. Instead he just acts in whatever he feels that day and pushes things he believes in forward.

I have a work uniform that blank t shirts and skinny jeans. Teva sandals in the summer and red wing boots in the winter. I've got a shaved head and a big old beard.

Most people in my industry are focused on looking really impressive and presentable to sway clients (CTO's). I'd rather look like one of their engineers than a sales guy.

I can't really say if I'd be more successful if I looked liked everyone else but I can say people certainly don't forget me.

Reminds me of a Dilbert cartoon http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_npWFFuYus3I/THtNIsIl46I/AAAAAAAAFh...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countersignaling

I've always thought this. The best lawyers seem to have crazy hair. When lettermen appeared with that beard on his new netflix show it told me he made it.

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