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Comment by sheer_audacity | Hacker News Reader

Okay, but if an office is so cold that people are putting scarves and jackets on, that’s a problem. It’s also a huge waste of energy.

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> Okay, but if an office is so cold that people are putting scarves and jackets on, that’s a problem. It’s also a huge waste of energy.

Depends where and when you are! Where I live and in this season cold is saving energy and heating is a huge waste of energy.

Aye, I used to live somewhere like that as well. It’s still ridiculous when outside is 40C and inside is 16C, there’s no need for that.

I worked in an office that was cooled to a temperature of 62 F year round. There were no thermostats, the AC was simply on all the time. The solution was to wear jackets (even in August) and run space heaters in the rooms to keep them at a more manageable temperature.

Traditionally, "business culture" has required men to wear jackets (or similarly heavy garments). The thermostat can't go up until we're allowed to take them off. It's a problem, but there's a necessary order of operations at play.

I've never been to a tech company where this was the dress code but obviously I haven't been to all of the tech companies

Which businesses still adhere to that attire culture?

Lots of banks and law offices, a lot of bigger name accounting/auditing/consultancy firms, and a substantial amount of government/quasi-non governmental organizations. When I started at my current government position, the only department exempt from wearing suits were Admin and IT Services, and even we had to wear polished black leather shoes, dress socks, pressed pants (trousers for you brits), and button-down long-sleeved shirts. When we won the right to wear polo shirts it was a big deal.

Fortunately, a new CEO came in and revised down our 4 page dress code to a single common-sense paragraph: "Employees are prohibited from wearing sweatpants and offensive t-shirts in the office. Personnel who are meeting with clients or presenting at court should wear business-formal attire for those meetings/events. Use common sense for all other times."

banks/law offices

OP obviously meant people should wear a cardigan or jumper to keep themselves warm if they're not already. I swear at least 70% the comments on HN are just lazy straw man arguments and people like me wasting their time to point them out as such.

It'd help if they made cardigans/jumpers that were acceptable professional wear for women that were thicker than tissue paper + weren't over a hundred dollars. I just froze EVERYWHERE until I gave in and started buying men's tops, but that isn't an option for workplaces with dress codes.

What do you mean they are not acceptable? Not being snarky, I live in cold climate and want to understand

So in my experience sweaters that need to be worn in offices that care about that sort of thing need to a.) be women's sweaters (because male clothes look 'sloppy') and b.) need to have some level of design/fit thought having gone into it. The reason for this is that women in the workplace can't be over or under sexual, so there's a limited range for how the clothes can interact with your body. (This also varies from person to person: I can wear short skirts and still look professional because my legs are shorter than my sister's, but she can wear tops I can't because my breasts are much larger than hers).

Oh, and at the cheaper places, 60% of stuff is for teenagers or college students. Literally.

So, for example, let's take Target as one of the cheaper brands since I was there earlier. For female clothes here are some examples:

[0]https://www.target.com/p/women-s-cropped-turtleneck-pullover... = sweater that looks great until you pick it up and it's a crop top because that's what the kids are into. This is about 30% of what you find.

[1]https://www.target.com/p/women-s-crafted-chunky-knit-cardiga... = looks decent until you check the fabric content and, like any woman's sweater under 80 dollars, it's all plastic so it won't insulate you for shit.

[2] https://www.target.com/p/women-s-crewneck-pullover-sweater-k... = looks fine, but hover over and check o out the sleeve. Look how thin that is; making thin sweaters saves fabric. And again, this is 100% synthetic (and not fleece or other warm polyester; it's acrylic)

So it's basically all that until you spend at least 80 bucks on a single sweater.

There are cheaper things that keep you warm, but you can't wear them to an office:

[3]https://www.target.com/p/women-s-fleece-quarter-zip-sweatshi... [4]https://www.target.com/p/women-s-sherpa-longline-1-2-zip-tun...

Does this make sense?

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