C'mon, an AT&T underling is handing along advice on what Steve Jobs should wear? I work for a MegaSlowGiantNotWithItCorp, and the people on top aren't stupid. They pretend to be when they can get away with it, but they aren't really. Plus, matters of personality, protocol, and diplomacy are where they shine. The people attending to the AT&T executives probably memorized the names, ages, and favorite sports of Steve Jobs' kids just in case they had a chance to chat with him. They would have, um, kind of known that he was a notoriously finicky control freak and narcissist with an aversion to suits. (You know this, yet you assume that someone whose job it is to know this, and who has finagled themselves into a position working with high-level executives at one of the biggest companies in the world, would somehow not know this?)

Perhaps as a matter of diplomacy, just to get under his skin, they decided to insult him or pull rank on him ("my market cap is bigger than yours"), but they certainly didn't do it on accident. And honestly I can't imagine them needing to invent ways to get under his skin when there are so many contentious issues on the table.

Even back at Dell in the early 1990s there was some friction between sales/marketing managers and engineers

That's the difference between being an engineer and being one of the most powerful and respected CEOs in the industry.

Plus, the 1990s were a lonnnggggg time ago. The bestsellers about the casual tech company culture of the early 2000s are already in the remainder bin, because they've achieved cliché status. If you think the executives at AT&T missed all that, well, it would have been impossible for them to miss it, because they were shopping at Barnes and Noble and watching CNN just like the rest of us.

Do you realise how clueless some MBAs really are. Ok, these days everyone has heard of Steve Jobs and Apple, but 3 or 4 years ago it was less common. They only heard of BillG because he has so much cash. Still most do not know who Larry Ellison is, even with the cash, and can you guess how many know who Linux Torvalds is?

And yes, these are MBAs who work in the IT field, since large companies have the philosophy that management is interchangeable, and you don't need expertise in a particular area to be able to run it.

I worked at a company that I shall not name that had a shirt / tie / coat dress code. They even had a dress code committee. The excuse was that we might bump into a client. The joke was that if a client was ever in our area, it would have been a violation of policy and federal law. They probably wouldn't care how I was dressed when I called security.

It's worth linking to Don Burleson's famous dress code for Oracle consultants:

http://www.dba-oracle.com/dress_code.htm

The idea being that banks and that expect "professional appearance and behavior".

from that link: "If you have been working all night and have an early morning meeting, you can use an anti-inflammatory hemorrhoid cream (e.g. Preparation H) to quickly shrink those unsightly puffy bags under your eyes. Just carefully dab the roid cream on your lower eyelids (being careful not to get any in your eyes) and you will look fresh and well-rested."

well, I guess you learn something new everyday.

Hired consultants and business partners are different. Consultants work for you. Business partners are theoretically equals, and your sartorial standards are no more important than theirs. In a case like AT&T and Apple, where the balance of power isn't clearly tilted one way or the other, I would say they're equals practically as well as theoretically. It's insulting for one to dictate standards of professionalism to the other.

He has some really interesting points. However, Oracle has a high corporate culture and is usually dealing with Fortune 500 companies with similar values. I think the dress code would be a lot different for hacker startups.

I do agree with his point about first impressions. It's better to wear a suit and have them tell you jeans and a t-shirt are ok than show up in jeans and a t-shirt and everyone else is wearing suits!

Wow, that page reads like viral marketing for an American Psycho sequel.

"Very nice, Mr. Bateman, but while you were over at the Marine base getting your Florsheims shined, our load balancer went China Syndrome. We'll let your agency know if we need any more help, thanks."