The White House vows to let programmers dress informally
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
I've worked with quite a few people who didn't bother to finish college, or never went to begin with. There doesn't seem to be a correlation between "great engineer" and "got a BS in CS" -- let me re-state that; you can be a great engineer without the paper, or a lousy one with the degree.
So the question is: Is it a meritocracy, or is it a meritocracy?
[also: sandals? :-) ]
Also having worked in government before, not the White House, they didn't expect the engineers to wear suits. Shorts and sandals were acceptable.
Note that I didn't just say software engineer. In my book, technical skills are only part of the equation, but the ability to communicate well, operate well within a team, etc. are also very important and in my experience, going to school helps prepare people for this kind of work.
In the end, a degree or lack thereof only becomes a significant signal if there isn't enough real-world experience on the resume.
Is there some specific teamwork that goes on in a CS degree? Can't teamwork skills be picked up in the previous 14 years of schooling?
It's not the only way to get that experience though. As I mentioned, if someone has several years of real-world experience working in industry, with positive recommendations to back up that they're good at what they do, then degree or no degree becomes more of a moot point.
It's the cases when there is not enough work experience, or diversity of experience, to paint a full picture, that one might factor in the presence of a degree.
I worked on group geography project in 12th grade. Did I gain skills that would help me be a productive member of a software development team? Maybe a little, but we mostly goofed off and begrudgingly did enough to pass. My senior capstone in college on the other hand definitely did help me gain some of those skills.
Having a degree doesn't make a good engineer or a programmer: it just doesn't prevent that either.
You learn technical skills in college, yes, but I disagree that hiring a software engineer team purely based on having a CS degree will result in the best hires.
I would hire entirely based on real world experience. If you have none, I don't care if you don't have a degree too me you are about as useful as someone applying with experience as an accountant.
If you sit in school and then go home and spend the rest of the night reading a text book and don't code any open source projects or make something for your portfolio, you really shouldn't be part of a software team. You should either be in a lab somewhere or a teacher, as you are only interested in learning about the topic, not applying it. Anyone who is actually interested in the topic will come out of school with experience in something (internship, hobby, etc).
I am not talking about "social skills" in terms of hello, please, thank you, etc.. I am talking about the soft skills of working in a team with other technical people to achieve a common goal, working under tight timelines, with pressure, and thriving under such situations. This is not an innate skill that you learn at a young age. I'm nearing my mid-thirties and still coming across new team dynamics.
By no means did I say that a degree means someone will perform well in such a situation, but in the absence of all other information, I consider a degree a positive signal in this regard.
Put another way, you are chosen to hire an engineer to work on your team. I give you two "buckets" filled with millions of people from which you can randomly select one person to join your team. You know nothing about these people except that in Bucket 1, everyone has a CS degree and in bucket 2, no one does. You know nothing else.
Which bucket do you pick from?
p.s. statments like this "If you sit in school and then go home and spend the rest of the night reading a text book and don't code any open source projects or make something for your portfolio" make it sound like you didn't go through the degree experience, because that sounds nothing like what most undergraduate-level educations are like. Sure there is theory, but it's a lot more hands-on than you're making it sound.
It can, for less savory reasons, be used to pre-screen people who fit in demographics that do not have high graduation rates.
I'm not against screening for college grads as a policy, though I think that it could limit you from finding amazing underrated candidates. I just think that popular argument about 'seeing out a long term goal' is simply not true a lot of the time, though I benefit a lot from it.
If you're preprogrammed for success by your parents and it comes naturally, that doesn't make success illegitimate. Just count your blessings.
Want to be a tech writer? Samples aren't good enough. Gotta have a degree - any degree. But you have to have a degree.
So who ever made that rule had a reason at the time: expediency, prejudice, ignorance. But it's a widespread practice, and describing it does equate with condoning it.
What's the turnover rate in Silicon valley, or for that of high-skilled IT design and ops? I'd rather have a savant of a coder/engineer for 18 months than a mediocrity for 36.
I'd venture to say that going to school and getting a degree in CS would increase the likelihood of one becoming a better engineer. That is not to say everybody that has a degree is a great engineer or the other way around.
So, in a sense, it makes sense to take that into consideration when hiring someone, but much like everything else in an interview process, it should be taken with a grain of salt.
What you said after "let me re-state that" is not a restatement. The first statement (there doesn't seem to be a correlation) is much stronger.
However, in my experience generally people who obtain a college degree are more well-rounded than people who don't. A consequence of this is that such people, again in general, tend to be able to think about problems in a more mature, broader, and deeper sense than those who don't "finish" (or complete most of) a degree.
This has nothing to do with whether the software industry is a meritocracy or not, or whether a dress code has anything to do with whether it's a meritocracy or not. My opinion: almost no job in this industry--or any other--is completely, or even mostly, meritocratic.
I do agree though, although I'd say it's very positive thing going to a place like MIT, it really doesn't impact my decisions for hiring. I'd rather hear about your real story. When did you find out you wanted to code? How did you truly learn? What hurdles did you overcome? What kind of things have you actually done? Even college grads are expected to have some kind of experiences that relate to the job.
I guess it depends on the sub-specialty of programming though.
In addition, it's hilarious that you point this out specifically for a job at the White House. There are so many non-engineering factors that go into succeeding at such a job, most of which are learned in college.
In summary, while I would never make such a degree an absolute requirement, I would be shocked to find someone who could work at the US Digital Service who doesn't have a college degree.
The New Yorker did a piece on that same issue last year: http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-power-of-the-...
At the end of the day I am torn on this issue. The idea that competence counts makes sense and that is all that should be judged. However there is something to be said about shared cultural displays and how they fit into a larger team effort. The modern suit is a pretty benign display in the larger scheme of things. Especially if you look at the rumpled messes that check the "suit" block, roaming around government agencies.
All that said, I fucking despise having to wear a suit.
My suit cost me around 150$ though. I have several outfits which are comparable in cost and designed specifically to be informal.
It's quite possible to be a hacker and appreciate fashion and good quality tailoring
I think what he's saying is even though they look dressed down the price of the clothing is typically high. I have no idea if that's true. I just love sneakers.
I'm always comfortable, which is difficult for me with any other off-the-shelf clothing.
So tell me, how much more am I spending than DC staffers in what would have to be custom-tailored suits to match the comfort level?
True story: I worked for a while in the office of a Midwestern Senator who felt very strongly about this rule. He'd actually fired people in the past over it, apparently. But at one point my boss (his communications director) needed someone to help with a press conference he was holding in the Capitol, and I, who was not wearing a suit, was the only one available. My boss decided I would do because the Senator wasn't going to be at this particular press conference, so he'd never know. So off we go to the Capitol.
Then, halfway through the press conference, the Senator ambles into the room, unannounced and unexpected. My boss' faces turns white as he realizes that if the Senator realizes I'm from his office -- I was too far down the totem pole for him to recognize me immediately, thank God -- we're both screwed. So to protect us both, he does the only thing he can do: he physically grabs me, pushes me into a wiring closet, and closes the door.
This was surprising, but at least I was smart enough to stay in there and keep quiet until he opened the door and let me know the coast was clear...
A big part of this job is interfacing with other government agencies, which means you're going to visit their offices.
Not to mention most tshirts don't fit female bodies in an ideal way anyway...
Personally I never understood the "dress down" culture in programming. I dress up (sports coats, shirts, nice jeans) because I like it.
Likewise, though I trade out the jeans for slacks. I don't like jeans with a sport coat (on me - you can wear what you want).
And then there are suits and non-suits who care strongly about whatever brand of etiquette they adopted.
Now guess who will also put up a fight over harmless technical/business/political/you-name-it minutiae.
There's lots of different contexts that programmers work in. In some of them, that's true, in others its not. Plenty of places, khakis and sports/polo shirts is a lot more common than jeans and t-shirts. And in others, its suits.
I worked in the headquarters of a bulge bracket investment bank in Midtown and in my experience it is uncommon for people to wear ties even there.
Further, in my estimation, for most groups, it is socially unacceptable to wear a tie every day unless you are a certified BSD executive.
Guess this is what causes culture clash :)
I kind of take exception to the idea that "act like grown-ups" means "prefer engaging in ritual displays of conformance to getting real work done". I mean, I associate the former more with acting like exceptionally image-conscious high-school students rather than acting like grownups.
That's not to say that dress rules can't have something to do with acting like grownups; even if it was miguided, the one place I worked that prohibited technical staff from wearing ties on the basis of published research showing that wearing ties reduced the output of technical workers had a grown-up reason.
Here's an example. The top hat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_hat) was a standard part of formal dress in the latter part of the 19th century, but it had mostly fallen out of everyday use by the mid-1910s. Diplomats and statesmen kept on wearing them at official occasions, though, all the way into the 1950s (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_hat#20th_century).
Why? Because they had become part of the definition of "what you wear to an occasion of state." That type of distinction, once reached, takes a long time to fall away; no diplomat wants to be the first person to cause offense by ditching the top hat. So it had to be dead in the everyday culture for decades before leaders felt safe enough to stop wearing it.
Suits are probably on a similar trajectory: once an item of everyday wear; now mostly a way to signal that you're on your way to a Serious Event (like a wedding or funeral or meeting with a head of state); eventually just something people wear to Serious Events only because that's what you wear to Serious Events; then finally (long after they became obsolete everywhere else) left behind even for that.
You know what grown-ups see as demonstrating respect for an institution? Devoting a substantial portion of your waking hours to performing quality work on behalf of the institution.
If you prefer ritual displays of conformance as a mark of respect, that's a choice with consequences, and either not recognizing or preferring those consequences is not a sign of being "grown-up".
I say this as a non-conformist in many areas. But I conform in many that bring me no pleasure. For instance, I don't meet clients in shorts or pajamas, though either would be more comfortable.
What's the difference between that rule and wearing a suit at the White House?
Respect doesn't have to be an exclusive either/or between ritual and quality work.
I was a non-conformist in high school and much of my undergrad, but you'd probably never have known it, as I wore things which were comfortable (and happened to be inoffensive) rather than going out of my way to dress in the same uncomfortable things that all the other "non-conformists" wore to show society they didn't care, man.
FREEMAN: Oh, you wanna know why? I'll tell you why. It's symbolic. The management wants you to know that you're their dog, so you're wearing their leash. You don't see me wearing a tie, do you?
Even above the comfortable clothing aspect of it, inflexibility in a comparatively minor thing like "dress code in non-customer-facing positions" indicates potential inflexibility in far more important things (sick/maternity/bereavement time, butt-in-chair time, informal 1-on-1s with higher-ups, merit-based raises, etc) and would greatly negatively influence the likelihood of taking a job for me.
He often had visitors come in to the office to see him, and he'd give a short tour on the way to his office. He'd stop by the sales area and introduce whoever was around and then he'd bring the visitor to the entry of the open office style room that had 4 of us software developers and say something like "And this is the bigger room, with a couple programmers" in such a way that it was as if he was showing off exotic pets or automated machinery. As if we were literally sitting there punching in the correct sequence of buttons in order to program a VCR.
"Programmers" are low status, and now when we are at the White House it'll be easier to tell who we are.
It's a suit. It's simple. It's not hard to wear. It's not uncomfortable. Being afraid of wearing suits makes programmers look petty, juvenile, and unprofessional.
Yes, it doesn't have direct practical value, but human behaviour and codes of conduct are full of things with minimal practical value that we still go along with. Culture is complex.
I even got reprimanded by my manager's manager because my dress shoes did not match my dress pants.
I'd wear a clown suit if the work was steady, interesting and well paid.
I love when I see CEO/CTO's dressing whatever they like (e.g. Mark Zuckerberg, Werner Vogels, etc.).
The only time I can accept this "dress up" thing with no contest is when you go to meet someone and you want to be respectful to this person, so you dress better to show respect/appreciation... like he did for the President. Now, the dress up for the sake of dressing up because this gives you status and then people will treat you better, I can't stand it.
That's interesting.
I know half a dozen people who have a separate work phone they turn off when they get home.
(edit: wow, this is what becomes my first down voted comment on hn?! apologies to the blackberry crowd I offended)
Edit: Ok, we changed it from "The White House vows to let programmers dress like ones do".