Dress codes: Suitable disruption | Hacker News Reader

Dress codes: Suitable disruption

economist.com

43 pointswyclif93 comments

The amusing part about not doing business with people wearing suits is that it's the exact same attitude as those who only do business with suits.

This is really age old - people want to work/invest/befriend people similar to themselves.

What someone wears or looks like should be a bad predictor for anything over any meaningful stretch of time. Whether that becomes reality is up to us.

> not doing business with people wearing suits is that it's the exact same attitude as those who only do business with suits

If you mean it's prejudicial, then yes. Thiel said as much.

But it's not exactly the same. The brand that goes along with a suit is, "I want to impress you by doing things excellently in the traditional way." I can see how that would be off-putting for someone trying to invest in disruptive start-ups.

> What someone wears or looks like should be a bad predictor for anything

There are entire fields of study that disagree with you, including http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory

But when Thiel says "I will not do business with people who dress in a suit, no matter what their idea is" the response from entrepreneurs will be always dressing in hoodies. Now that Thiel said this, in fact the non-conformists are the ones dressing in suits. Otherwise, they're just conforming to Thiel's preferred aesthetic in order to pass his bogus filter.

It's like reading all of (say) pg's essays to see what he says he likes, and then adapting to it. 'pg, to his credit, has bemoaned that everything he says seems to get parsed to hell by people who want him to invest.

Occasionally after I didn't get a job offer I would later stumble across a blog post by someone at the company that says "candidates must obviously do X" and I didn't do X. I could have fixed this by reading everything written by every principal at the company ever before an interview. Maybe that's how they find people who are "really interested."

I'm pretty sure that by the time hoodies are as traditional as suits are now, Thiel will be dead. Or at least he'll have a new heuristic (if he doesn't already).

Conforming to preferred aesthetics to pass bogus filters is an integral part of our lives. Otherwise, we wouldn't have and use euphemisms.

It's debatable whether Signalling Theory really applies to creatures who have enough coginitive ability to model thought processes in their peers.

As soon as you make it publicly known that a particular selection criteria is in effect, the same salespeople you are trying to avoid will learn the new behaviour they need to adopt to meet those criteria.

So now slick salesguys know not to wear suits when they pitch to Thiel.

I realize the desire to develop "clever hacks" to arrive at truths, but in reality they are heuristics, and heuristics can and will be defeated by interested parties.

In the long term, there is simply no substitute for doing the work of honest, stringent evaluation on the actual qualities you are looking for. This "don't take pitches from suits" is limited, temporary advice at best.

It still has value as a "brown M&M" filter [1] where you're testing for whether they were thorough enough to follow your stated criteria, regardless of whether it has any other predictive power.

Of course, even then, it's not the (non)suit per se but the fact of having done your research.

[1] from the story about the band that checked whether the venue manager followed such detailed specs as not having brown M&Ms in the bowl

The brown M&M filter is good because you want people to read every single instruction in regards to something critical to crew and audience safety.

On the other hand, reading every single Peter Thiel has ever written doesn't seem like a good use of an entrepreneur's time.

On the other other hand, if you are Peter Thiel you can make people ask "how high?" when you say "jump." I can see the heady appeal of that.

An interesting point. Then there's the question of whether people who research their potential funding sources to such a level are more or less likely to be good investments. That's a lot less clear than in the Van Halen case - here, I see plenty of arguments in both directions.

What would be an argument for dis-correlation? I have a hard time seeing how someone better at startups would be less likely to do their homework on a potential investor, given that they'd think ahead in numerous other ways. It would have to be a situation in which think ahead for everything but this, or in which their happy-go-lucky style is miraculously good at making the right choices everywhere but here.

It's not that they would be less likely to be good relative to themselves-but-did-research. It's that someone focused on the sale is what Thiel is purportedly trying to avoid in dismissing those in suits. Someone focused on the sale of the company to investors more than on the company might be even more likely to do that research than the best bets, and that might cause dis-correlation.

Who is most likely to be doing through homework: somebody who is having great success and can expect multiple competing offers or somebody who isn't having much success and has a really hard time raising money?

Now by no means is it a given that amount of success now tells anything about amount of success tomorrow, but if they aren't at least positively correlated then VC have no business being in business.

>>It's debatable whether Signalling Theory really applies to creatures who have enough coginitive ability to model thought processes in their peers.

I don't think it's debatable at all, because in this particular case, it is not about cognitive ability, but meta-cognitive ability. You need to first recognize the signal and process it, and then be self-aware enough to understand why you processed it the way you did.

Whereas the fact of the matter is that people are on auto-pilot most of the time. This is why we put so much emphasis on things like first impressions, which are also a form of signaling.

Don't fool yourself. Humans are not "above" signalling theory. For example, explain to me how diamond wedding rings are not a perfect example of Costly Signalling. Our signalling arms races just tend to move more quickly.

If one is using the ability to procure diamond rings as an evaluation of suitability as a partner, as opposed to an evaluation of whether they can afford a diamond ring (which may well be a proxy for one of the criteria for partnership - wealth - but not sufficient), then it can and will be gamed.

If you're using a diamond ring as a proxy for whether someone truly loves you, I'd suggest you're opening yourself up to be taken advantage of.

If you're using a diamond ring as a criteria for evaluating the wealth of a potential partner, I suppose that's a bit better.

I wasn't suggesting that humans were above signalling theory. Just questioning whether it had any real utility for complex evaluations like "is this person reliable and trustworthy" or "is this person going to make a good partner".

it can and will be gamed

Yes, there is cubic zirconia and things like that. But notice how society reacts, and rejects cubic zirconia? It isn't because cubic zirconia is inferior. It is because it is not expensive, so it makes for a poor costly signal!

Not gamed in that sense. Gamed in the sense that a diamond ring is purchased not as a show of commitment, but with the intent that it will be perceived as a show of commitment by the receiver.

If the giver knows that the receiver is treating the ring as a sign of commitment, they can decide "well I'm not really committed to this person, but I can help convince them that I am by buying them a diamond ring."

At that point, the metric has been gamed.

How much is a pawnshops spread, anyway?

Because you could buy a suitable ring there (it will have an icky feeling to most people, so it will be cheaper than a "new" ring) and then sell it back when you now longer needed her to think you were committed.

Diamond ring is purchased as a show of both wealth and commitment. The recipient is left to judge- if the giver is very wealthy, it is clearly not a strong sign of commitment. If the giver is very poor, it is clearly a strong sign of commitment.

The ring is a symbol of commitment (sunk a month's pay into it) from a person whom you have already done a pretty good screening on. Its not the only criterion; disingenuous.

Then a months worth of pay, given cash in hand to the partner, or given to a charity in the name of the partner, should be an equivalent signal.

Once again, I question the utility of screening based on this, even screening out on the basis of "not giving a diamond ring".

No, that's the neat thing about Costly Signalling. Giving the partner a month's worth of pay in cash is not equivalent, because in Costly Signalling the resource is wasted on purpose to demonstrate how inconsequential that resource is to the signaler. Giving the partner cash or giving to charity both have utility. A ring has no utility. Thus a ring is the only one of the three which can be a costly signal.

If you had a hundred billion dollars to your name, you wouldn't care an ounce about spending ten thousand on a diamond ring. Ten thousand dollars just doesn't matter. But a minimum wage worker cannot say the same. The ring is a socially established demonstration of this.

I am not sure I buy that reasoning. The ring certainly has utility from the perspective of the giver: the giver knows that it is going to elicit a positive response. A donation to charity cannot be worn, cannot be accessorized, cannot be shown off. I disagree with your assessment - in today's society, a ring has far more social value than a charitable donation.

The ring is shiny, and pretty, and can be socially displayed to elicit the attention of others.

The example you provide re-affirms my point. The evaluation criteria you are reverting to is wealth. And as a heuristic for wealth, the ability to purchase an expensive ring is a reasonable metric.

As a heuristic for a good partner, it is next to useless. As a screening criteria for the complex quality of "goodness" in partner, it is likely less than useless.

If you are evaluating partners purely on their wealth and willingness to waste that wealth to enter into a partnership with you, then a ring is a more reasonable criteria.

For an assessment on more nuanced basis (e.g. does the potential partner truly love me?), it is not a very good indicator, and may even be a contra-indicator precisely because it can be gamed easily.

And as a heuristic for wealth, the ability to purchase an expensive ring is a reasonable metric.

And that is what it is.

As a heuristic for a good partner, it is next to useless.

On its own? Certainly. But wealth is an aspect to a good partner. All else being equal, the wealthy one is better.

Again, its not any of those things. You've already decided they're a good partner. The ring is a social contract in addition to that.

> The brand that goes along with a suit is, "I want to impress you by doing things excellently in the traditional way."

The brand that goes along with a suit is: "I respect your time enough to have gotten dressed this morning before our meeting."

What does dressing up in a suit have anything to do with respecting someone's time?

I'd say that respecting someone's time is actually about, you know, their time. Not being late to the meeting, not letting it run late, and so on. How much time I spend getting dressed in fancy clothing is utterly irrelevant - or at least should be.

We're talking about signaling, right? Dressing in a suit is a signal that you thought about and planned ahead for the meeting. It's certainly more of a signal of that than it is: "I'm trying to impress you by doing things the traditional way."

>>Dressing in a suit is a signal that you thought about and planned ahead for the meeting.

I don't see how that equates to respecting someone's time though. It can mean you respect them, as a person, but respecting their time is a different thing, in my opinion, because, again, it is not related to their time, but yours (in the form of spending your time to get ready and look good, etc.).

"I have prepared for the time that we're going to spend together" is respecting their time. I don't have a strong opinion on the degree to which a suit is a good signal of this.

Eh not really. It doesn't take very long to put on a suit, once you have done so a couple times - especially not with wrinkle free shirts and clip on ties.

What a suit really does is make you look more manly (broader shoulders) and there is a certain impression by wearing the same clothing powerful people wear.

In fact, the original purpose of the business suit was to call attention away from the clothes. Fancy people in the UK call them "lounge suits", because they were originally for lounging with ones' friends.

The 'interview suit' with its charcoal grey and boring stripey tie is the most business-appropriate item of clothing I can think of. The lines of the lapel, tie and collar call attention to your face, and the plainness of the suit calls attention away from the clothes. The primary reason it's uncool to wear it is because good, comfortable tailored suits are expensive and require a few minutes' preparation. (Yet it is still cool to wear designer jeans, drive expensive cars, &c.)

I don't like the trend of streetwear becoming effectively businesswear, because it gives room for a fashion-conscious person to choose more coordinated and expressive clothes to create a greater impression, which seems inappropriate for business. Streetwear is also more distracting, the lines are less clean, and so on.

> I don't like the trend of streetwear becoming effectively businesswear, because it gives room for a fashion-conscious person to choose more coordinated and expressive clothes to create a greater impression, which seems inappropriate for business. Streetwear is also more distracting, the lines are less clean, and so on.

My wife dislikes the trend because womens' streetwear also tends to be more form-fitting and sexier than what is appropriate for work. Grabbing a suit-skirt with white blouse and pearl earrings is easy. Grabbing streetwear that looks nice but doesn't draw too much attention to your body is harder.

The "red sneakers effect" itself is a much more interesting reading to understand this new dress code.

http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/The%20Red%20S...

The title pretty much sums up the conclusion: "The Red Sneakers Effect: Inferring Status and Competence from Signals of Nonconformity". One important point is that is important to realize that the individual is aware of the dress code and decide to nonconformity.

I wonder... if I ever have a meeting with Peter Thiel, I might appear in a suit, but opening with the line "I am aware that you disregard suits, but I just prefer to use it, i like to be elegant, sorry". Just to check if nonconformity to the nonconfirmity causes the same effect.

What the article pointed out that I think a lot of people are missing here is the potential value of being perceived as unique.

To use an analogy that a lot of people here might understand, unique design works. Whether you're designing a product page or an ad, you can get by with standard and unsurprising design (the suit), especially with a great product, but you'll catch attention more quickly with something different.

We found that intro videos worked, so we implemented them. Then we found that the effectiveness was declining as absolutely everyone used them. We were no longer cutting through the clutter.

Fashion is very similar. If you cut through the clutter of what everyone else is doing, you look innovative. It won't help if you're dull and boring, but it could help you get someone's attention so that you'll at least be considered.

That's not to say that all different is good. I could design a very "different" page, but that's not to say it would work. The idea is to look different in a way that isn't completely crazy.

> The evidence suggests that Thiel’s bias worked: the fund was an early investor in companies like Napster, Facebook and Spotify. 'Maybe we still would have avoided these bad investments if we had taken the time to evaluate each company’s technology in detail,' he writes. 'But the team insight—never invest in a tech CEO that wears a suit—got us to the truth a lot faster.'

Or, maybe Peter Thiel just has a good intuition for investments and could tell the potential success of these companies without digging too deep into the technology? Go back a generation: do you think the founders of Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon, Apple, etc, went into pitches looking like hipsters? Heck, Jeff Bezos still wears a suit.[1] What kind of results would this filter have had when the prevailing fashion trend wasn't to dress down?

[1] And frankly, I think he styles all over most tech CEO's: http://images.politico.com/global/2013/09/04/130904_jeff_bez...

For Apple, quite possibly.

https://www.google.com/search?q=woz+jobs&espv=2&tbm=isch&tbo...

Was going to say definitely, but there are actually some pictures in there with Woz in a tie. Jobs bow tie, though, in those pictures, is definitely a sartorial mark of non-conformity for that era.

This guy in the vest? http://snakkle.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/20....

I don't know about that B&W bowtie pic, but that color pic is from the Apple IIc launch in 1984. Apple IPO'ed in 1980, and was already making over a billion dollars in revenue by 1984. And the bowtie is a bit non-conformist, but Jobs wasn't exactly dressed like a hipster even in 1984: http://everystevejobsvideo.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/St.... And I don't know how non-conformist that bow-tie really is. Here's Justice John Paul Stevens at his Senate confirmation hearing in 1975: http://media.npr.org/assets/news/2010/04/09/stevens1-3a512da....

Peter Thiel wears suits as well: https://www.google.com/search?q=Peter+Thiel&es_sm=119&source...

Peter Thiel also spent the better part of a decade in higher education, but tells you not to go to college.

I'm going to add this to my list of coin flip 'rules' I don't really care about. Coin flip in the sense that you might as well flip a coin, or perhaps a roll a die to determine the 'correct' answer for any given person you meet.

One person doesn't do business with suits. Another is a self-styled fashionista who reads all sorts of things into whatever your choice of clothes. A third is ready to show you the door because you you took your jacket off.

One person thinks saying 'I don't know.' is sign of humility and intelligence. Another wants to hear you try to triangulate a solution based on what you do know. A third thinks either of the first two answers is pure garbage and wants you to be able to recite tricky code by rote.

In general, I find these these sort of 'rules' to be lazy bullshit.

Therefore, I can only imagine that this is merely a catchy side note among the actual strategies of someone as successful and by all accounts as smart as Peter Thiel.

Even in a business setting, there are ways to "stand out" in how you dress. As I'm typing this now, working at my 9-5 business casual job, I'm wearing a bright pink collared shirt with a striped bow tie. Why? Because I look damn good in it, and people notice. Just because I'm not wearing a tee-shirt and jeans doesn't mean I'm "conforming". Absolutely stupid.

Right? In another couple of years it'll be "disruptive" to wear a suit instead of looking like a slob. Congrats! You're ahead of the curve, not behind it.

This is the very definition of fashion: it has to do with trends and popularity rather than utility or fundamental reasoning.

"Right? In another couple of years it'll be "disruptive" to wear a suit instead of looking like a slob."

This might be true already.

I've never understood valuing the choice of costume... if this is really an important signal, doesn't the hoodie just become the new suit?

Yup, followed by an article titled "don't do business with hoodies"

Oh Sneetches, my name is Sylvester McMonkey McBean,

And what you need is a trip through my Hoodie-Off Machine.

Hoodie: $20-$40

Suit: $200-$2000

I'm pretty sure you can find a suit for $40 and a hoodie for $200. Put the hoodie on a pedestal as the symbol of "hacker cred" and you'll inevitably see hoodies for far more than even that as designers capitalize on founders with more money than sense.

http://www.bbcicecream.eu/billionaireboysclub/billionaire+bo...

£135, or $227.

http://store.y-3.com/us/y3store/cardigan_cod39402247tg.html

Same price, now that it's "50% off".

Steve Jobs was noted for his perpetual black turtleneck and blue jeans.

Thing is, the "simple" black turtleneck was the result of commissioning a top Japanese designer to research and develop an optimal outfit (with intent that it actually become the company uniform). Jobs then bought a closetful of them. ...so a prime example of the subject bought something on par with a "hoodie", but paid way more than $20-40.

If I'm gonna look for a hoodie for work attire, it would be a properly embroidered "Jack Frost" one - which ain't going for $40.

Once you make any style standard business attire, prices for "respectable" quality will fast move into good-suit prices.

Jobs' black turtleneck and blue jeans was only his trademark after the comeback

Before that, Steve Jobs wore suits.

http://obamapacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Steve-Jobs... http://www.maclife.com/files/u220907/SteveJobsSuit.jpg

http://www.itworld.com/cloud-computing/292262/watch-steve-jo...

http://www.globalnerdy.com/2014/01/26/the-original-stevenote...

Also, hoodies are cheaper to clean and easier to pack.

It's not necessarily a step forwards.

If you want to look good in a suit you can go get a $200 suit at any menswear store and if you want to look really good in a suit go spend $1500 for a tailored suit.

You can do either of these and get something acceptable without knowing anything about fashion.

If you want to look like a cultivated hipster, however, you have to work hard at it.

Disagree. I've been into Men's Fashion for about a year now and most menswear stores dress men like shit.

It's really hard to figure out your style, fit, and the items that compliment it but a man that has done that work communicates a lot IMHO. It's a holistic picture.

If it's clear you've put thought into something whether it's your body, your written or spoken words, your "costume", your app design, or your code design; that communicates far more than just selecting for anyone not wearing something casual.

I used to use a similar process for finding employees: cast my net for Haskell / Scala / Erlang and I'll find the best programmers. While that bias held true to a degree it also excludes a large swath of people that might actually be a better fit, my failing there is not developing a multi-dimensional and rigorous process for finding and vetting.

Point of fact: if I want to look good in a suit, I also have to spend at least six months strictly following a diet and exercise regime.

Other forms of apparel are much more forgiving.

Well, there are a lot of 'larger' men that look good in a suit. But they probably go for a double breasted one and tailor it right.

But even when I wasn't at my best, most suits are very forgiving in that area, it just needs to be tailored to your build (and not off the rack where they expect your shoulders, chest, hip be a certain generic proportion).

I'm about as anti-suit as they come but this is patently false. A well tailored suit is about as forgiving as they come.

Adding "well-tailored" as a qualifying adjective is effectively begging the question. A well-tailored anything will make you look better than its off-the-shelf equivalent.

If we're just throwing free tailoring around, I'll also have my polo and khakis tailored, and then we can compare between them on the runway. It may well be that no style of clothing makes me look better than a suit, and that I still don't look good in one.

I've found that a suit disguises my doughy physique better than anything short of a winter coat.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Vint_Cerf...

Indeed. At least on the West Coast, the better your job, the less likely you are to be wearing a suit. Your CEO will wear a turtleneck and sneakers around the office. The guy who tears your movie ticket in half? He's wearing a suit.

I had a fun job interview experience early in my dev career. I rocked up to the first interview in my "Developer" costume, and was shocked to find everybody dressed like bankers in crisp new suits. Yikes! Thinking about it, I guess these guys do do a bunch of work for banking clients. Better suit up for interview number two.

But no. It just happened that that was the day the client happened to be in town, so the entire company had done its Serious Business impression for the day. Thus leading to the day later that week where Jason showed up for an interview in his best suit, and walked into a room full of guys in shorts and t-shirts.

"Meet the team."

Somehow, I still landed the gig.

I always ask what I should wear.

Good tech founders need to be innovative, not encumbered by "the way things ought to be." It's reasonable that dress would be a valid signal of that quality, but I don't know if I'd make a rule around it.

Men's Warehouse needs their PR firm to inject one of those "suits are back" stories to counteract this one.

Nice. http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

If I ever pitch something someplace that's known to follow that rule, I'm showing up in a tuxedo.

Nah, man, you've got it all wrong:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoot_suit

Only if it's evening, please...

Scottish Highland dress may apparently be worn in daytime formal events and in the evening - and usefully contains a dagger (a sgian-dubh).

Correct, if it's a daytime interview he should wear a morning coat with a matching waistcoat, striped trousers, and a long tie or optionally an Ascot.

And a top hat!

That's daytime formal, but it's arguably closer to white tie (tailcoat). Another option is the stroller - charcoal coat with peak lapels, waist coat, striped or check trousers.

Also, just a 1980s power suit could be a fun approach.

Also, just a 1980s power suit could be a fun approach.

The bigger the shoulder pads, the better!

Not a real 1980s suit otherwise!

According to Cringely's "Accidental Empires", Andy Bechtolsheim did that very thing when pitching the fledgling S.U.N. Workstation to IBM :

http://www.cringely.com/2013/03/28/accidental-empires-chapte...

I've previously summarised this as "never trust a techie in a suit."

Another way to look at this has nothing to do with conformism. Whereas a suit says "I feel the need to dress to impress you", casual wear says "I don't need to dress to impress you, that's not why you're going to hire me".

I have noticed a recent trend towards a sort of hipster dress code, but I'm hoping that's just a transient thing that doesn't catch on. Traditionally, the hacker dress code has been more about not caring what anyone thinks than either trying to stand out, or to fit in.

I tend to follow that principle, and will perhaps go with smart jeans and a jacket for more formal meetings. There are however, environments where you're just expected to wear a suit. You have a choice of either avoiding those environments altogether, or just bite the bullet and wear a suit. Unless you are specifically trying to be non-conformist.

The book "The Bluffer's Guide to Consultancy" advises that a consultant should always wear the opposite of the established dress code, so people will fear and respect you. Therefore if you are going to an office where everyone wears suits, you should dress casually. If you are going somewhere casual, you should wear a suit. It further suggests that if you are going to both types of office on the same day, you should dress as a farmer :)

> Another way to look at this has nothing to do with conformism. Whereas a suit says "I feel the need to dress to impress you", casual wear says "I don't need to dress to impress you, that's not why you're going to hire me".

Except that, in any community where the maxim you state is broadly known to be applied, the actual meaning is reversed, since anyone who is aware of the maxim and wishes to dress to impress will wear casual clothes, wherease anyone aware of the maxim who continues to wear business clothes will be doing flying in the face of the maxim in the same way that someone wearing casual clothes to an interview in a more traditional environment would be.

I think this comment from articles comments is worth discussing more:

> I am one of the few people in my office that wears a suit to work (because I like the simplicity of it and I think they are comfortable and look nice). I just wonder if I'm the conformist or non-conformist in my company?

Wearing suit doesn't necessarily imply conformism or that the wearer is trying to signal wealthiness. Sure, there might be correlation, but maybe the guy just likes wearing a suit?

One piece I think was missing from this article is how dressing in a suit vs dressing casually affects the culture within a company.

I have to wear a full suit every day to work, and I hate it. In offline conversations with co-workers, they hate it too. The formal business requirement came straight from the CEO who is of the traditional belief that our suits set us apart (whatever that means). What has resulted (along with our open office plan) is a culture that is artificially stilted, both in conversation and relationally between employees. The reason I believe this to be true is comparing "normal" formal business days with the random, once a year day where we all go on a team building exercise or have to do some physical "outside" activity and we can wear jeans and shirts. The office moral, attitude, and conversation are completely different. I don't know if there is a way to quantify exactly what I am talking about, but have noticed a distinct change in our behaviors that seem directly tied to how we dress.

I once worked at a place where the dress code mandated that all employees wear clothing bearing the company logo every day. This, of course, was widely reviled by anyone that did any actual work. The software developers analyzed a loophole and published the exploit to the local branch office. From then on, people wore whatever they liked, and just kept a logo-embroidered fleece jacket draped over their work chairs. A few bolder individuals purchased a company-logo lab coat and wore it around the office.

The branch manager never reported any violation of the dress code--because technically there were no violations--but did take care to inform everyone ahead of time whenever employees from headquarters were scheduled to visit.

At another job, the dress code was to wear clothing when customers were in the office.

The actual median daily apparel worn in those two different offices were virtually identical. The latter simply showed greater variance in styles of dress.

If I had to maintain an entire closet filled with garments that I would never want to wear anywhere outside of work, that would severely irritate me, to the extent that I would almost certainly become well acquainted with a pearl wholesaler, despite the apparent physical impossibilities involved.

But it is a perfect indicator that management is willing to impose arbitrary, capricious, top-down working requirements on employees, without respect to consequences, intended or otherwise.

So not only do I endorse the prejudicial maxim to not do business with suits, I extend it to teams whose dress appears suspiciously homogenous, uniform-like, or logo-emblazoned. I want to deal with people, not mooks, peons, toadies, or serfs. If I see one person on a team in a t-shirt, and another in a pinstriped dress shirt with polka-dotted bow tie, I can be reasonably certain that no one told either of those two what to wear. Especially their mothers.

The last, and best paragraph:

At the end of the day, the trend toward informality doesn’t actually get away from the traditional business emphasis on appearance and presentation. It just replaces one standard with another that is, in its own way, just as obsessed with appearance. Still, insofar as this new bias emphasises—at least for some time—originality, independence, and substance over style, it serves a purpose, as Mr Thiel's anecdote highlights. The irony is that it still has to go through style to get there.

When it comes to dress code, slide deck preparation, demo length vs. pitch length, and what questions to expect, the answer is always the same: know who you are pitching to.

The best entrepreneur isn't the one who always wears a hoodie or always wears a suit. The best entrepreneur is the one who picks one or the other out based on who they're going to meet that day.

> "...by stripping away the artificial appearances of showmanship, you can get to the truth about a product, person, or business."

Hah! In this case we have formality being replaced with yet a more juvenile form of showmanship.

I learned this at the interview of my first programmer job as a summer intern back in school. I wore full suit into an outdoor interview on a hot summer day. The interviewer laughed and said you don't have to be this formal, who happened to be the president of the development studio. The interview was short, which felt uncomfortable. I went back to dorm and changed into T-shirt and jeans, and then went back to meet him again to show some sample code I wrote. This apparently had impressed him and he decided to hire me.

Wearing T shirts and jeans impressed him, or the code you wrote? I would hope it was the latter.

Later in his words, it's the enthusiasm he saw in me to take the initiative to rectify a problem.

I suspect it was that he showed the ability to judge a situation and to adapt to it.

Everyone having uniforms (and then as contractors, having effectively a similar uniform of basically a company polo shirt or a long-sleeved safari shirt) was a huge time/effort/thought saver when working with the military. Even better, having name and organization clearly marked on the clothing, near the face, and strong indicators of levels of seniority/authority (not strictly rank/grade, but rank in specific contexts).

> "you’re showing you can afford to spend your social capital… You’re saying, I’m so autonomous and successful that I can afford to dress in a non-conforming way."

That's the most interesting take-away for me. Obviously the pendulum of fashion swings back and forth -- but the nonconformist signaling is an interesting phenomenon that spans it.

I am going to bring my peacock with a 30 foot plume. I hope Peter Thiel can handle my attitude, dude. Cowabunga!

Napster died long before founders fund existed. Perhaps they're just referring to Seans presence

Meta: Another good example of a title change being less descriptive. Original title was much better.

On the red sneaker effect:

I'm a sys admin by trade. Every new job that I've started I've made a concerted effort to hunt down the other tech people around the company who are the most obviously "non-conformist". I have a near 100% success rate of quickly finding out who the most knowledgeable staff members are.

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