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Comment by albertzeyer | Hacker News Reader

It depends maybe on the circles you interact with, but in some circles, people are not taken seriously which try too much to adhere to the conservative business dress code by wearing a suite with tie.

This is actually a common meme:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/fbwnd0/im_...

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/ajthjb/thi...

https://www.quora.com/What-do-people-think-good-programmers-...

How developers dress really depends on the company and the culture there. E.g. in Germany in many of the conservative older companies, wearing a suite is mandatory, and esp also in all those consulting companies. Also in many of the privatized companies like Deutsche Post, Deutsche Bahn, etc. But then, in other more modern software companies, people would make fun of that.

The idea that you must adhere to some clothing dress code rules is really against the open-minded principles of software developers.

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I mean if they are trying to make someone else like me wear formal clothes, yeah I wouldn't take them seriously. I wouldn't work for a company which polices what I decide to wear like that.

But if an individual just wear one themselves by choice, it's silly to judge them for that choice. Interviewing is hard, maybe they feel more confident in a suit.

I feel company culture should be less about someone's personal style/clothing/hobbies than if someone, for example, berates and yells at fellow employees who make a mistake or talks calmly through issues without treating others like they are the problem.

Right leaning software developer here. What are you talking about? Why do you think this has anything to do with political alignment? I find a suit as uncomfortable as anybody else. Dress code is more about public image in my experience than political alignment.

The use of "conservative" here doesn't seem to refer to political alignment. It is common to talk about "conservative business culture" and "conservative dress" to refer to cultural factors — exactly around things like expecting suits and ties. The parent post does not appear to be talking about politics.

Fair enough. Maybe be more specific next time in this highly politicized world?

In a thread on about a chinese vlogger and techie, in a comment about a german company, maybe your perspective could be a bit more cosmopolitan?

Because the general idea of conservatism doesn’t exist in either of these countries? Try again.

There is no general idea of conservatism though. What's conservative in China, or Germany, or the US, it's radically different.

There are only specific cultural understandings, each of which almost always map poorly when applied cross culturally.

> There is no general idea of conservatism though.

That’s just untrue and shows a misunderstanding of what conservatism is, which is about small gov and a return to the roots of said gov. While individual beliefs of how this should be achieved will very between the different nations, the general concept is the same.

See, that's the point. That's only _American_ conservatism. It's not what a CDU represents in Germany, nor what Die Mitte represents in Switzerland - both of which are decidedly conservative parties.

And Chinese politics seems to be even more difficult to talk about than Europe, and that's not even accounting for the fact it doesn't have democratic elections and has a one party system.

From the little I understand, it's complex and dynamic and opaque to the point that current scholars and US government entities studying China have difficulty explaining it; I'm not even going to try.

Look at Hong Kong, not just mainland China

The CDU isn’t a conservative group, they’re listed as liberal-conservative, or center-right. So not the same.

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