The history and role of fashion in the software industry
deprogrammaticaipsum.com
deprogrammaticaipsum.com
That and loafers. I'd been slipping on my (tied) sneakers for years, while all that time I could have had a shoe designed for that and that looks way nicer and lasts far longer! In America, you can dress those all the way up to business formal and down to going-to-the-grocery-store! So versatile. What a fool I was.
Incidentally, we in (at least certain segments of) this industry definitely have a look. I've got a pretty good record of spotting tech workers in non-tech-heavy areas and settings based solely on clothes & affect taken in from a distance, and I don't just mean when one's wearing legible clothing with some tech slogans or logos on them.
> Incidentally, we in (at least certain segments of) this industry definitely have a look. I've got a pretty good record of spotting tech workers in non-tech-heavy areas and settings based solely on clothes & affect taken in from a distance, and I don't just mean when one's wearing legible clothing with some tech slogans or logos on them.
IMO, for men, there's a handful of main looks, and they're all pretty different for each other. "Nerd", "scruffy hacker", "fitness bro" are the ones I see most frequently.
Oh, for sure, some are easy-mode, though. Conference T and cargo shorts with sandals (possibly including white socks). Rumpled, slouchy shirt and pants outfit parts of which surely date back to a goth phase, but softened by the rest of the ensemble (how do you tell the difference between that and rural-town convenience store clerk? Some combo of age, other grooming, and various details—more feel than science). That kind of thing.
Ivy-league/MIT 2-year-veteran FAANG is a look, but about half that's body language rather than clothes.
My fellow nerds, I would appreciate some more wardrobe diversity.
I'm also curious what your look/style is such that people don't believe you when you tell them your occupation.
I'd argue for most people <30 even wearing a button up shirt is a little 'weird' in an informal setting, so from my perspective blazers/sports coats in informal settings are already 'too weird'.
I also feel like outside of formal settings men have a lot more options for dress than people seem to think, they're just a bit more subtle.
I think that's a big loss, because beauty is an important part of the human spirit, and clothing is something we all have to wear every day, even if only for protection from the elements. A world where clothes are purely functional is a world where we're all dressed like Roman peasants.
Beauty in men's dress has always been a part of culture until very recently. Sure, not everyone could afford to dress beautifully, but the aspiration for men was there. We seem to have lost that aspiration of late, and I think that's kinda sad. I would call the state of men's dress aspirations today a lot of things, but "aesthetically compelling" is not one of them.
I do find your statement
>Congresswomen get to wear these colorful and streamlined Star Trek getups, but all the men have to be in suits and ties
incredibly compelling however, your critique of the suit and the expected range of formal mens wear has struck a chord with me.
I'd recommend that style to someone who's only getting one of the two types. Some folks also notice the difference and will regard wearing boat shoes away from water, and especially wearing them with socks, as gauche, while camp mocs may "properly" be worn in almost any causal setting, with or without socks. Which, on the one hand, who gives a shit, but on the other, if you don't want the shoes for nautical purposes, no harm in getting the style that's a bit lighter & simpler-looking and won't draw ill judgement from anyone, socks or no socks, ocean-breeze or mountain cabin.
In other words, try showing up to your job as a programmer at your typical west coast startup wearing a fine suit and tie, just because you like the look. (Like I do!) I think you'll quickly find that the de facto dress code is, in fact, old jeans plus graphic t-shirt/hoodie, or flat-front chinos plus gingham shirt, and that your coworkers are going to sneer at you for your choice to buck this unspoken dress code.
Wearing a suit and tie for pleasure to your basic programming job might even limit your career, because it might signal to your coworkers and bosses that you're not a team player. So much for no more dress codes!
Fashions don't deserve to last forever - suits and ties are inevitably fading away even as we might hand-wring about the continuing destruction of fine dress in American society. But to suggest that dress codes are disappearing is not correct. Dress codes are as alive as they ever were, now they're just unspoken.
You can dress up in Goth fashion and play it Cyberpunk if you want, people will whole fully accept it. And it's also not unspoken at all, startup culture is straight pitched as disrupting traditional business, which makes suits a faux pas.
I'd compare it to wearing a Jonny Walker cosplay at a Anonymous Alcoholics meeting. It's not the dress code, it's what you're trying to convey.
Kind of like the idea of "leaderless" or "structureless" groups, in which the leadership hierarchy practically always ends up being obscured but no less real. Here's a really good old essay about this phenomenon in early feminism.
https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
IMX the "Silicon Valley uniform" doesn't really have anything to do with being more casual or relaxed. It's just another kind of conformity, comforting for those who do like to conform and stressful for those who don't or can't.
I wonder if any company has ever issued a uniform, said you can just wear this, but made it optional.
Perhaps it's not explicitly a uniform per se, but you could build a fashionable psuedo-uniform out of only a few garments relatively cheaply and without getting looks like you mentioned. That kind of fashion isn't for everyone, but neither is the color and fit maximalism that seem to dominate today's outfits.
It was great for a bit! I felt more well dressed, I was always comfortable, and it was incredibly functional.
Now I realize I like fun clothes too much to stick to the uniform always. But it's nice to have it around to fall back on.
I'm one of them, but perhaps not for the reason you'd expect. People tend to forget that uniforms offer a form of protection.
When I was in the military, my commanding officer was an extremely competent man, the likes of which I had never seen before and only rarely seen since. One day, I saw him leaving the base in his civilian clothes, and did a double-take. Here was a man in his early 40's dressed like an overgrown teenager: bleach-faded jeans, an oversized branded tee, flat brimmed hat (labels & holographic stickers still attached), etc. To put it bluntly, he looked like a punk. Had he shown up to work in that attire, and given me orders, it would have been an uphill battle for him to earn my respect.
I exercise a lot of caution when judging people's appearance, and I've long understood that each of us also harbors a degree of unconscious judgement. But this episode forced me to come to terms with the sheer magnitude of that unconscious influence, and with the fantasy that we can rid ourselves of it without sacrificing some amount of individuality. I've come to the conclusion that some degree of uniformity--perhaps just a dress code--can serve to facilitate the upward mobility of the disadvantaged. It's not perfect, but I think it's a whole lot better than today's "anything goes" standards.
It was quite the nightmare climbing inside a 3890 check sorter with suit and tie on. The machines were literally puiled high with oily paper dust due to the millions of checks that fired through them continuously and you aways emerged filthy and dusty. I constantly fielded questions from the computer operators as to why I had to wear a monkey suit when I was obviously more of a mechanic (sidenote: I married one so perhaps the suit had some sartorial impact after all).
At that time there was apparently only one IBM office in the world where the dress code was relaxed which was Darwin Australia due to the extreme heat. The dress code there was dress shorts and long socks, something like a safari suit.
As with most things, both extremes are probably undesirable at the scale of a society. I also think it’s hard to deny that the needle has tipped very far in a particular direction.
You guessed it: we couldn't even make it to the interview round, she moved to CA and is now a successful director at Instacart, and I’m here reminiscing on a late lunch break.
Should have hold on to that domain, though, just checked and it’s for sale for $3000+.