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Comment by a4isms | Hacker News Reader

Dress codes have never had anything to do with treating people like children, they have to do with cultural adhesion.

We laugh at pictures of managers wearing near-identical suits and ties, and then we can look at a bunch of techies wearing near-identical tee shirts and hoodies and somehow not see a culture using clothes to signal belonging to the tribe.

There will always be tribal signals. It's clothes whether suits or plaid flannel, it's drinking bourbon or craft IPAs, it's playing golf or ultimate, it's being clean-shaven or bearded, it's driving a Tesla or a Caddy.

Some of us are not "joiners" and chafe at the idea of carefully selecting our clothes, grooming, music, possessions, and neighbourhood to signal that we want to fit in. But we should at least understand and empathize with why others may find these things comforting.

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I totally understand the reasons people want to dress a certain way and don't care at all if one coworker wants to wear a suit to work and another prefers a hoodie.

The issue is when people want to impose their dress code on others, especially for non-client/customer facing roles.

Putting a large emphasis on the dress code has downsides as well. The more focus people spend worrying about their attire and judging others, the less focus they have for more substantive matters. It's an easy crutch to dismiss someone for dressing "wrong", a crutch which plenty of lazy employees and managers are happy to latch onto.

I think de-emphasizing dress codes encourages a more productive workplace.

Out of college, I interviewed at a finance firm where it was made clear to me that the junior people wore blue dress shirts and only the senior people wore white.

I didn't end up getting the job but I consider it a bullet dodged. It was like a white-collar McDonalds where you had to "earn" the white collar.

It may amuse you to know that in some prisons, the guards wear dark-coloured shirts, and their supervisors wear white. The nickname “white shirt” is used for supervisors. Think of that the next time someone says their dress code is for managers to wear white shirts!

——

There is a historical reason for dark-coloured clothes being associated with people of lower social status/rank. In earlier times, poor fabrics didn’t dye bery well, so the only way to get an even tone was to use a dark colour.

To get a white fabric or pastel shade (like cream), you needed to start with better fabrics, higher-quality dyes, and have the dying done by experienced craftspeople.

The result was that light-coloured clothes became associated with wealth and prestige. This has carried through to this day, even if the rationale for it has been obsolete for a century or more.

I personally favour not having a dress code. It’s just that I don’t dismiss dress codes as having no purpose. They have a purpose, it’s just not one I agree with.

In a related area, PayPal once no-hired an otherwise qualified engineer because when asked what they do for fun, the candidate replied “shoot hoops,” and PayPal’s cultural belief was that “No PayPal engineer shoots hoops.”

I would never work for a company with cultural filters like this, but I can understand their reasoning even if I deeply believe such workplaces are toxic monocultures with a side of racism.

But at the same time, having a dress code could let people worry less about their attire and be able to focus on other matters.

Here I'm thinking specifically of school uniforms. It can be easier to be able to just wear the uniform rather than having to choose what to wear every day.

That said, I probably wouldn't like to work at a place with an overly stringent dress code.

> It can be easier to be able to just wear the uniform rather than having to choose what to wear every day.

If someone really has so much trouble deciding what to wear ... just get a bunch of gray t-shirts and sweatpants/blue jeans. You (or the parents for a young child) are free to make your own uniform. However, if someone feels the need to express themselves through clothing, they are free to do so.

I have 9 identical black tee shirts. I have 4 identical pairs of jeans. Roughly half the week I wear this. So easy to not think about it, and I’ve never had a coworker mention it to me, and only one even noticed it.

That said, if you’re not a school girl and it’s not the first week of work, I hope you’re not so focused on your clothes that you can’t focus enough on work.

A long time ago, we had a meeting with a Head Architect. He would be accompanied by a server tech.

We sit in the meeting room, and 2 people enter. A distinctive gentlemen wearing a suit and tie, talking in a calm, authoritative voice. Next to him, a hyperactive tshirt wearing creature, think Adam from Mythbuster, talking excitedly about all sorts of tech, while making excessive arm gestures. My colleague whispers a joke comparing him to a monkey swinging from tree to tree. We both immediately knew who was the architect and who was the lowly tech.

Wrong, it turns out. Gentlemen spends his time in floor crawlspaces pulling cables between servers, and had dressed up for the meeting. Monkey Head Architect was just his manic normal self.

Both were incredibly competent, BTW.

Maybe I've just read too many stories like this, but when you said "We both immediately knew who was the architect" I assumed that you meant the t-shirt guy!

When I started at CurrentCompany, the dress code was described to me as "business casual." So after accepting the job offer, I emailed my contact in HR about what constituted "business casual." They gave vague instructions that basically said it was up to my boss. My boss didn't really care much except that we couldn't wear jeans or t-shirts, unless we were working in the datacenter.

Now we're midwest through and through. In the Before Times, the women tended to wear out of fashion clothing, while most of the men wore golf shirts and slacks. And if you wore something slightly out of the norm, people would sniff and tut-tut you.

Then COVID happened, and CurrentCompany went 100% remote. Then vaccines came out, cases dropped, and the whole RTO movement started up. And CurrentCompany realized that everyone was used to working in WhateverTheFuckWeWantToWear. And actually made a good decision. We could now wear jeans. Or shorts! OMG shorts! That was previously treated as if you were coming to work naked. And t-shirts were allowed. Sneakers/tennis shoes too! Anything to get people back in the office.

I'm 100% remote, but every now and then I need to pick up something, or PushLargeButtonInDataCenter, so I go visit those who are hybrid. And what do the majority wear? Jeans, golf shirts, out of fashion women's clothing, and very rarely, t-shirts.

It takes a long time to turn around a company that has been operating for a century.

> we can look at a bunch of techies wearing near-identical tee shirts and hoodies and somehow not see a culture using clothes to signal belonging to the tribe.

No, casual dresscode allows for a much wider variety of clothing and goes in the opposite direction than "signal belonging to the tribe".

In some cultures, perhaps. But I assure you, my n=1 experience is with plenty of companies that switched from a typical jacket-and-tie dress code to business causual, and ended up with a “huge amount of variety:”

All of the men wore golf/polo shirts, khakis, and tasseled loafers, but some wore oxblood loafers while others wore black or even brown loafers. And some wore plain leather belts, others wore woven leather belts.

</sarcasm>

Some cultures value conformance, and even if the rule is “wear whatever you like, as long as it’s not jeans or tee shirts,” they’ll self-organize around an unwritten rule of what to wear.

I'm afraid that's more of a reflection of people's taste in clothing where you live than anything else.

We'll have to disagree on this. What you call a bunch of people having the same taste in clothing, I call social signalling.

For n=1 that might be true.

How do you figure that? If there is no dress code, people can wear everything in the set you’re describing, plus the no dress code set.

> We laugh at pictures of managers wearing near-identical suits and ties, and then we can look at a bunch of techies wearing near-identical tee shirts and hoodies and somehow not see a culture using clothes to signal belonging to the tribe.

Who is "we" here?

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