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Comment by freshhawk | Hacker News Reader

You aren't Steve Jobs.

I would give the opposite advice. The easiest thing you can do to make people like you more, trust you more and respect your opinion more is to dress well and appropriately.

Job's outfit and Zuckerberg's hoodies work the same way (whether that was the intention or not, I think not). The same part of human brains that stupidly subconsciously judges people by the way they are dressed is doing the same thing with them. They show status by being able to openly reject the standard social expectations around clothes.

So call it a psychology hack or a life hack or whatever but if you are a founder of a startup then you are meeting and needing to impress a fair number of people. You can handicap yourself because you are convinced that it "shouldn't matter" or "this is the startup uniform" or you can be pragmatic about it and gain an edge for relatively minor effort.

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Along these lines, Steve Jobs didn't wear his iconic turtle neck and jeans when he was just a startup. Markula impressed upon him early that if he didn't dress well, people wouldn't trust him. So steve Jobs wore suits. An bowties. And looked really nice.

[1] Early days: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2_JFL5szJk4/To0Tl8nuP2I/AAAAAAAADq... [2] Jobs and the Mac: https://s3.amazonaws.com/hackedu/jobs1984.jpg

Those pictures say goofball to me, not Serious Business.

Those bow ties seem like the hoodies of the 80s.

Our Lt. Governor likes his bowties. http://governor.mt.gov/ltgov/images/ltg_400.jpg

I have found a shirt that fits me perfectly so I bought a couple more of these. As long as it's a good fit, you enjoy wearing it, people don't scratch their heads looking at you, why not wear the same thing all the time?

Of course not looking sloppy is important (hair, fingernails, showers, clean clothes, etc.), but other things are much much more important. Integrity, getting things done, an inspiring and/or knowledgable personality..

Also: I don't know why Steve Jobs has to mentioned in every second blog post on HN. Yes, he wore the same clothes all the time. But you don't need his permission to do so. You should be your own boss, and your own fashion consultant. (When in doubt, ask your wife or girlfriend though. ;))

"why not wear the same thing all the time?"

Most of your fashion cohorts are cartoon characters?

Or a Power Ranger.

> why not wear the same thing all the time?

Because it's not considered to be "normal". If you wear the same clothes every time, people will notice and think you are weird. You don't want people to think you are weird if you startup.

> people will notice and think you are weird. You don't want people to think you are weird if you startup.

What a terrible reason not to do something that makes sense to you. If your success in the startup world is so strongly linked with how others perceive your superficialities, that's not a healthy environment to be in. You might as well add "don't be ugly" too, because everyone knows that beautiful people tend to have more success, and you want to maximize your chances of succeeding.

"Well, even ugliness can be corrected with plastic surgery, so there's no excuse for that."

Having a few copies of something that fits you well is a great idea, find something great and buy a couple in a couple different colors as well. But have a couple sets of shirts so people don't notice and, as you said, scratch their heads looking at you.

> but other things are much much more important. Integrity, getting things done, an inspiring and/or knowledgable personality..

Absolutely. I didn't mean to imply that dressing well was actually important in that sense. It's an easy way to have people think you have more integrity, are more knowledgeable/inspiring/interesting, get more things done. Do with that what you will, your competition will.

He's not doing this because he's Steve Jobs, he's doing it because he has a reason for doing it that Steve Jobs had first. Cue joke about "A system and method for dressing a human being."

And man, I just don't know about the rest of that. If you can't wear what you want to because you're doing a startup...

"he has a reason for doing it that Steve Jobs had first" come on. He's an icon but lately people seem to get confused and sounding like he invented half of what the world is today. He did not invent the single shirt behaviour at all. Even my grand grand mother always told us she used to have a bunch of copies of here favourite skirt around, hand made and all, because it was so easy. And she lived already half a century before Jobs was even born.

> he has a reason for doing it that Steve Jobs had first

My point was that the reason only works for steve jobs, mere mortals will be judged for that behaviour. You still "save time" but that's a post-rationalization from someone who dislikes the pressure of dressing themselves if I've ever heard one.

> And man, I just don't know about the rest of that. If you can't wear what you want to because you're doing a startup...

Hey, do whatever you want. I was just pointing out the tradeoff. Also because I find it funny that the same people who would recognize a joke about a "shirt of +2 charisma" are the most least likely to be wearing them or even recognize they exist in the real world.

That reminds me a story which mr. Lukacovic (founder of czech search engine seznam.cz) told cs students several years ago. When he was dealing with investors, he tries to show himself in a "nerdy light" (wearing old t-shirt and jeans) to actually get a better deal. The reasoning behind this was that this would make his partners beleive that they have an advantage, while the opposite was actually true because he indeed has some good fried who advised him in this matter.

So the "phychology hack" can work in both cases. Dressing yourself properly is a good default though.

Haha, that's true for sure. Back when I was young and a freelancer I went to a networking group with mostly non-technical people where the dress code called for a suit. I wore bright red skate shoes with my suit.

I came across as "that young technical wizard" before I even opened my mouth. You should totally use those stereotypes to your advantage when you can.

I thought about adding my thoughts about not overdressing when you need to come across as technically proficient because of the stereotype but thought that would have muddled my point.

This habit is on DidThis action wiki (with other ref. links): https://www.didthis.com/same%20clothes%20every%20day and yes I practice it for my own startup regularly. SoundCloud Alexander Ljung CEO CoFounder was wearing over and over his black leather jacket with SoundCloud logo on it. He did not try to be Steve Jobs, he was showing his total determination to make his company big.

I agree with you. There's a point where you can get away with wearing the same thing over and over and sure if you are famous like Steve Jobs was, hell that'll become a thing of its own. Hell once you reach the Steve Jobs level celebrity status, no matter what you do will make news. OMG Steve's diet is like this? He must have figured some dark magic. He dresses like that? There must something to it, let us all try... I think a lot of these visionary founders, etc... are very much closer to the normal every day person, it is the obsession of the public that makes them look more clever than they really are and it just snowballs from there. Once you get past a certain level, you can do anything and there will be a big enough group of people who would make a big deal out of it and praise you for whatever it is that you are doing.

You aren't Steve Jobs.

- So what, who says he can't emulate Steve Jobs?

I say it. People don't like emulations of other people, especially if the "emulators" consider some superficial thing like this part of their success.

- I call that BS. That is your small thinking and so you should limit yourself to it. I say go emulate successful people and do what you want to do.

This is cargo cultism. Aping dress habits isn't going to imbue you with the attributes that led to success for Jobs.

The lesson a would-be successful person should learn from Jobs is to focus on what's essential. If you become so distracted with trying to copy minor habits, you've missed the point. And Steve Jobs was successful far before he started wearing the same thing all the time, anyway.

That wasn't the reason given though. He didn't say he did it just because Steve Jobs did it. He said that he did it for the same reason that Steve Jobs did it...which is that he doesn't have to think about what to wear.

atlast someone got it, thanks WayneDB

>I call that BS. That is your small thinking and so you should limit yourself to it. I say go emulate successful people and do what you want to do.

Right, go emulate the dressing habits of successful people, that's so much better advice than my "small thinking".

Wearing the same outfit over and over to emulate Steve Jobs is like cutting off your ear to emulate Van Gogh.

Nothing, but there are probably many who see him and think "cargo cult"

Mimicking a famous person's eccentricity isn't exactly popular - the folks who idolize SJ will think you're an ass while the folks who hate him will think you're a cultist.

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