We give out all sorts of signals and most in the tech industry are ambiguous, toxic and uncivilized.
Learn to read the signals and you'll break through to what matters most: culture.
A lot of the signals are cold, aloof, passive aggressive, disgruntled, dismissive, insincere, immodest, fake, insecure, uncultured, ignorant, insensitive, etc. That's just the human condition. Even if we don't mean them as such they can be interpreted as such by other insecure, insincere, imposter syndrome types.
Put a bunch of people in a room and the signals get amplified, it's the basis of reality television.
Combined, the signals whisper "you don't belong here."
Your manager is giving you a signal by wearing running shoes to your 1:1. What does it mean? How can you interpret it?
Your founder is giving a signal by walking in with a coffee. Again what does it mean?
Your VC is giving a signal by his haircut. Your project manager is giving a signal by her exposed skin. Your developers are giving signals through their man boobs.
All of these signals are wretched and don't entice quality people to stick around because they stink of belligerence.
In an honest open and transparent environment the signals align with the values and people don't need to wallow in cognitive dissonance until their minds crack under the pressure to conform, because fundamentally people will do almost anything to be accepted by a group, and when your job depends on fitting in the company has a lot of leverage over you to essentially milk you for your efforts in exchange for keeping you around.
Downvote if you are triggered by man boobs.
I'm trying to comment more substantively but you're not giving me anything to work with.
There's this myth that brilliant people are supposed to be anti social, but only to a point? Look how antisocial I am, at least on the surface.
I'm actually using this forum as a testing ground for my fevered ideations. Any substantive meaning you may extract is all in your own mind.
Obviously I threw you off the scent by triggering your sensibilities.
But I'll have you know I've worked with PM's who had very distinct physical traits that attempted to buck the conventions. One woman worked exclusively in athleisure and halter tops, even in winter. Another guy had piercings all over his face and ears. This other nitwit wore the same exact orange hoodie abomination every single day for four months. My favorite is the guy who wore tiny golf shirts so I could see his underwear on top of his jeans. This is a grown man, with a beard! He should have gone into military service to learn something about personal grooming and had no place in the organization no matter how brilliant. His very presence was a sector stating "abandon hope all ye who enter here" as in you have zero chance of seeing a real client now get back to your coerced agile workflow.
These signals are impossible to ignore and reek of bougie decadence and cause people like me who want to invest their whole lives to something more than an unfair exchange of time for money to die a little inside and seek the comfort of strangers to air our grievances only to get downvoted, therefore reinforcing the trauma.
Plus I like to disguise my modesty in an utter lack of respect because this industry is a cockroach infested nest of groupthink if you ask me with everyone copying everyone's signals until only clones remain. Then we argue about diversity and scratch our heads as to why none of the girls want to play with us.
The reference to man boobs is in relation to grown men signalling like middleschoolers wearing printed T's from guardians of the galaxy and star trek while they get progressively more corpulent on a diet of chicken wings and lunch specials and pints of shock top. Oh and pizza. Always the dry pizza left over from those two pizza meetings.