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Comment by boop | Hacker News Reader

The point of the article is not the turtlenecks or who Steve Jobs knew. The point is that Steve Jobs was unique and followed his own path. Which other CEO or person do you know which would wear the same clothes every day?? Most people wouldn't and would fear they would get laughed at for doing so.

But Steve was unique. Wearing the same clothes every day made sense for Steve and that is why Steve did that, period. He wasn't concerned about fashion or trends or what others thought - he did what he felt was right. Period.

That is the lesson of the article.

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Which other CEO or person do you know which would wear the same clothes every day??

All the ones who wear suits?

That's the answer. At some point in our career, most of us end up wearing some kind of "uniform."

I used to work for a engineering consulting firm. Kevin, the star engineer would wear polo shirts, blue jeans, and sneakers. Everyone one else at his level and above wore suit and tie.

One day the new boss told Kevin that he needed to wear a button down shirt, suit and tie to meet with the client. Kevin told him "You can't make me wear a suit and tie. My clients don't care what I wear." The simple moral of the story was clear: "if you make it rain, you make the rules."

OTOH, he wore jeans, sneakers, and a polo shirt every day. He was hardly a rebel.

Well, Sorry at some places. Making it rain won't change anything. Heck, you may make it storm, or cause a earth quake to to happen or even a make Volcano to explode.

Some workplaces are so strict about dress codes, they just won't change for any reason. Especially large corporate bureaucracies. They have a crazy like beliefs that dressing in some way will help their business more than actual work will.

And going against those norms actually will work against you.

Surprisingly, most large corporate bureaucracies, except for finance, don't have a dress code. I've seen more dress codes in the medium sized companies.

Those are typically the places you don't ever want to work at.

Scott McNealy did wear Jeans and a white button down shirt almost all the time.

I used to do that when I was ceo of a company. I had a blue jeans and white button down shirt uniform, but, I didn't even know it - I was just so focused on the products. I must of had 20 of each. One day we had a company meeting and everyone came to the meeting in my uniform. It was hilarious and awesome. And that's when I found out.

Reminds me of how one first visit between teams at Apple and IBM had both showing up in each other's "uniforms".

That was Microsoft and IBM AFAIK.

From http://applemuseum.bott.org/sections/ppc.html

"IBM officials often tried to accomodate Apple and vice versa so that both could comfortably work in unison. One popular anecdote talks of one of the first meetings between the two computer giants. IBM engineers dressed in blue jeans for the meeting, while Apple engineers dressed in suits. They both tried to make each other feel compfortable by conforming to what they thought the other was like."

But I wouldn't be surprised if it happened a lot.

I applaud that, but it hardly makes anyone unique. More than a few people have decided that, for example, a white t-shirt and blue jeans every day is a simple solution to a ultimately unimportant decision. Lots of people , OTOH, just wear whatever is nearest because they really don't give a crap about their appearance and they're happy that way.

There are real reasons to consider Jobs special. Hyperventilating over what amounts to a not-uncommon solution to dressing oneself trivializes him.

> I applaud that, but it hardly makes anyone unique.

It does, at the very least, put Steve Jobs on a level no lower than that of Ernest P. Worrell.

Uh... there are plenty of techies who wear the same clothes every day (sometimes literally), who do it because it feels right for them, and who aren't concerned about fashion or trends. Jobs is hardly unique in the 'I don't care' fashion stakes among techies. Period.

Jobs wasn't unconcerned with fashion. If he was, then he would wear any damn thing that was in his closet.

He made a dedicated effort to create a fashion "brand" to the point that people know what kind of sneakers he wore.

Jobs might not have been a great engineer or techie, but he was a great visionary, designer, and marketer. He created (and recreated) one of the greatest brands in America. I don't doubt he applied the same principles to his wardrobe as he did to his company.

Exactly. It is a mistake to think that Jobs had not thought carefully about the clothes he wore - it's just that his approach to clothing was the same as his approach to technology - he seems to have believed that there was an optimal set of clothes for him, and that any deviation would simply mean that he wasn't wearing the best clothes for his purposes. Much like the discussions raging over the fact that the iPhone screen size hasn't varied at all - one size has been deemed optimal, and deviations from that size mean that the product must by definition be suboptimal.

perhaps you should respond that Jobs did actually care to the guy I was responding to? :)

>> person do you know which would wear the same clothes every day??

Paul Barnett, who was a lead video game designer for Warhammer Online. He wore the same clothes everyday for convenience (going out and purchasing a set of shirts/jeans/shoes in a single stroke) - which he would then change on a yearly/6monthly basis.

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