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Comment by michaelochurch | Hacker News Reader

I moved back into a conservative industry and have started wearing a jacket and tie. Honestly, I quite like it. It's a couple hundred bucks worth of clothing to have the image of being "serious" about my job, and to get the benefit of the doubt in all sorts of social interactions. With the rewards considered, it's extremely cheap.

I don't know that I'll continue to wear a tie for the rest of my life, and I certainly won't expect other people to do so when I become a "higher-up", but I'm not going to dress like a college student for work anymore, no matter what I do. When you go to work the unfortunate reality is that you need to subtly tell other people what they think of you, and dressing well is one of the most time- and energy-efficient ways to do it.

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I guess we, in our youthful arrogance, dismiss our seniors as enterprise relics of a lost age, without considering what led them to that place before. Things don't seem to change that much, after all. Sadly. Which is coincidentally the theme of this article.

I guess we, in our youthful arrogance, dismiss our seniors as enterprise relics of a lost age, without considering what led them to that place before.

This is a maddeningly vague statement. It sounds like something I'm supposed to agree with, but without at least one concrete example, it could be total bullshit and still sound wise.

What's sad is the conformist turn this thread has taken. What happened to the rebelious spirit of the internet generation? People shouldn't make judgments based on somebody's clothing. We are supposed to be beyond the point where one needs to be "pleasurable to everyone" in order to be respected. Also, if anything, shirt-and-tie clothing is quite impractical, how about putting some brains to work to come up with self-cleaning/self-healing clothes?

Another thing: by creating a strong impression of seriousness, jacket-and-tie creates a false , narcissistic sense of self-worth that can limit the true drive to succeed and that's a sad, sad thing when it happens. It's just an appearance after all.

Taleb may have been referring to certain "conference-whores" [1] who dress up like geeks to fit into the crowd. Hopefully, in science and technology, actions matter more than words and dress up, and that's one of the reasons we like it.

[1]http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/10/13/be-careful-not...

So, I like wearing the suit and tie and you probably think I'm "conformist". I also tend not to judge people based on how they dress or look. I make active efforts to be as non-biased by peoples' physical appearances as possible. Yet I know (from experience) that it's an unreasonable expectation of other people to hold them to this same status and that, in the real world, appearance matters.

What I've learned, the hard way, is that you have to spend a considerable amount of your work time deciding for other people how they perceive you, and this is a subtle art. If you don't manage your image actively, others will manage it for you. This is as true, if not moreso, in a startup than in a big company. At least the social status rules of large companies (as broken and antiquated as they may be) are documented. In a startup, you often have situations where there are 20 employees who all think they're the alpha dog.

Wearing a suit and tie is a very cheap, efficient way to manage other peoples' impressions of you. Sure, it's silly, but the reward-to-cost ratio is very high. It's a lot cheaper and better than, say, sticking around the office till 9:30 when you finished productive work 5 hours ago.

I didn't make a personal remark, but yes, what you describe perpetuates a certain conformity.

Suits are one of the many well-known ways to get (certain) people to like you and respect you. If you've ever failed to reach your goals due to other people's suboptimal reception of your presentation, consider this:

"Your business suit will probably cost about as much as a computer monitor. You only need it once in a blue moon, but when you need it you’ll be really, really, really glad that you have it. Take my word for it, if I wear everyday casual when I visit e.g. City Hall I get treated like a hapless awkward twenty-something, if I wear the suit I get treated like the CEO of a multinational company. I’m actually the awkward twenty-something CEO of a multinational company, but I get to pick which side to emphasize when I want favorable treatment from a bureaucrat." [1]

Now, obligatory suit-and-tie-wearing can certainly be seen as a form of workplace oppression, but the motivation to positively impress business associates is perfectly valid. On the flip side, dressing down and cursing like a sailor can also be a form of calculated personal branding that conveys the desired impression (confident, powerful outsider) to certain prospective clients in certain situations. [2]

[1] http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/

[2] http://500hats.com

The tie is a sword. Now, you don't wear a sword to threaten violence. It's a social status symbol because only free people were allowed to have swords, much less wear them prominently, in the time that such was fashionable. Decorative rapiers were pitiful in comparison to battle weapons, but they made a point: high social class or (alternatively) the freedom (from typical aristocratic structures) of mercenary soldiers. In fact, the reason ties are called cravats is because they evolved from the cloth "knives" worn about the neck by Croatian mercenaries.

The suit is, as one might imagine, armor.

I don't see these as bad things. Unlike real swords, ties aren't hurting anyone. But yes, they go a long way back. There's a lot of legacy, for sure.

Programmers are unfairly biased against suits; even the word is a symbol of evil. Hysterical raisins and all that.

But fundamentally, a suit is exactly what the modern hacker wants: a uniform. I suspect more than a few HN posters have nothing but jeans and monochromatic T-shirts in their closets. A suit is a uniform with four extra pockets and social bonuses.

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