I am sure this is not a literal "going out for a beer", but still it bothers me that it exists and is called that way. I am 40yo (still junior though as I started learning to code at 37) and I don't drink.
I like to work on startups because I like to be generalist and solve problems that impact the fate of the company. So I always work with a lot of young people that like to go out. It is always a mismatch that I rarely go out with the team, and sad that this "go-out-for-q-beer test" is considered normal in some places.
“Let's be clear, I will turn down a beer any day of the week!”
— https://web.archive.org/web/20130413021020/http://ryanfunduk...
Where I work, when we interview someone on-site the team they'll be working with takes the person out for lunch somewhere and spends an hour or two getting to know them.
I think this is a good rule. You look good, but not awkwardly out of place. Perhaps it's an unfortunate social rule that we shouldn't have to follow, but I've learned to shrug my shoulder to a lot of such rules and just go with it.
If all else fails or you still aren't sure just ask the recruiter.
In the case of tech, generally you can just dress how you normally dress. Or watch Silicon Valley if you're unsure.
Maybe if it's 50° F indoors. I agree that there shouldn't be a pointless stigma against some outfit, but there also shouldn't be a pointless requirement to adhere to useless standards.
Most people get button up shirts with the neck size a bit small so buttoning them for a tie and it really is unpleasant.
I personally find suits uncomfortable, even when they fit well.
But it doesn't matter. Wear what you want. I've worked at a bunch of places where people would wear suits to work sometimes, despite most of the people wearing jeans and a t-shirt. You'll just have to put up with the occasional "Oh, are you interviewing somewhere today?" jokes.
It happened that my interview was on Halloween so I joked that it was that once I realized what was going on but still, extremely awkward and set the tone of each interview poorly.
Every time I go to Defcon or similar conferences, though, I think of that interview and imagine the hilarious counterculture opportunities of showing up in something other than the black t-shirt uniform.
> Don’t overdress, don’t underdress.
That's the kind of ultra generic advice bordering on truism. Without knowledge of exactly what that startup expects, it looks like (and the rest of the article enforces this) the only generically safe choice is jeans and sneakers. Suit is clearly defined as overdressing.
I can assume flip-flops would be a case of underdressing but I think that would be a bit ridiculous for any kind of interview regardless. So honestly, what's underdressing when it comes to such a startup interview?
Flip-flops, jorts, and a cutoff tee that says "GTL" in a neon font of your choice.
That's what I said in my comment but would anyone reasonably show up like that in an interview? A suit may or may not be overdressing but flip-flops or anything like that would definitely fall below just "underdressing". It would just be unreasonable and offensive if you ask me (and you could give any number of such examples that may be even worse).
For all intents and purposes jeans and sneakers already is the lowest reasonably acceptable way to dress for an interview, right?
I would think so.
As for jacket/tie (or even suit) I take it as signaling that this is a professional interaction that they take seriously and have gone to the trouble of dressing up for. I know I'm not part of SV culture but I can't imagine dinging someone in an interview for dressing up, especially when that would still expected in quite a few places.
I also know a number of people who dress up for speaking engagements and it's just sort of part of their style.
FWIW, last time I interviewed (and took the offer), I wore a jacket and tie to my interviews even though I knew that would be a step up from the business casual or business casual with jeans that the people I'd be talking with would be wearing. I didn't need to and it didn't matter one way or the other but it made sense to me.
(Disclosure: speaking only for myself)
Of course this doesn't say anything about their technical abilities. But showing you care about the interview matters and flip-flops don't send that message. It's basically as close to no effort as it gets while still being allowed in public. I'm sure you'd find the same as a sign of unprofessionalism in many other fields even if the clothes have no effect on performance.
I'm not looking for candidates to show that they care about the interview, or that they have put effort into preparing for it. I'm looking for them to show that they can take a verbal description of a problem and turn it into something concrete enough that they can solve, that they can think about algorithms, that they can code.
I'm sure gut-punching you also doesn't change the fact that they can think about algorithms and code. But it does say something about them as people and their character. Showing they put effort in preparing for the interview suggests they put effort in preparing [period]. I've seen plenty of exceptionally qualified people that were a net loss for any team due their attitude. I imagined that as an interviewer you already saw that interviews consist of more than just technical skills (there were probably other people in that panel looking at those other things specifically).
In life, and interviews, it's not just what you say but also how you say it. ;)
Similarly, if the candidate brings their own water bottle vs asks for a drink you could say that this is good because it shows them being prepared, but I think all of this is just too noisy to read anything into.
(I do think in other fields things are different. I'm just talking about programming here.)
> but wearing informal clothing is not much of a signal at all
You just moved the goalposts. I didn't say "informal is a problem". I said "jeans and sneakers already is the lowest reasonably acceptable way to dress for an interview" and "flip-flops or anything like that would definitely fall below just underdressing". This signals that you may believe you are too good to wear for an interview anything more than you'd wear when taking out the trash. And believe it or not that's exactly what myself and so many others noticed in practice. Many of those people do actually turn out to be very good, maybe even some of the best in the team. But as I said above they were finally a net loss for any team specifically due to this attitude.
And yes, bringing your own bottle of water would be the norm if asking for one was seen the same as asking the interviewer for a pair of decent footwear ;). Is it the same?
> they could think dressing up for an interview is cheating
Wearing jeans and sneakers instead of flip-flops and trunks is not "dressing up" in anyone's book.
You're taking the most unreasonable interpretation of everything (not just as hyperbole like my gut-punching example) and moving the goalposts just to make your point.
Yes, in the summer I wear flip flops when I interview people. Flip flops and shorts are within the range of regular informal clothing at my workplace, and people don't dress differently on days when they're interviewing people.
> Do you tell them in advance to feel free to wear flip-flops?
I don't talk to them in advance of the interview. I'm not sure what recruiters/friends/etc tell candidates about what's customary, but I do think many people get advice like "you don't have to dress up, wear whatever you normally do".
> You just moved the goalposts.
I'm not trying to move the goal posts. I'm still talking about flip flops and shorts.
The casual look is as low a hurdle as you can make it. Complaining that you don’t walk in like it’s Goldman Sachs is a bit silly. What a deprivation.
Tailored suit? Seriously? Does that not smell like luxury? Why is that part of the discussion for workplace uniform?
A college student wearing a hoodie given for free by TripleByte doesn't look bad at the world's largest software firm. If you wear a t-shirt I cannot tell if you graduated from Stanford. But if you're a young man aiming for the Big 5 accounting world, your friends would advise you to own a battle wardrobe.
Wearing a bad suit is embarrassing, and people at the upper echelons of the company almost always have better suits. It is a smell of class.
You can get a suit off the rack for $200 and have it tailored at the time of purchase for maybe $20. Your mileage may vary, but that doesn’t smell like luxury at all to me. It sounds like a reasonable thing to own for people in office jobs. It is de rigueur in many parts of the world, including certain software engineering jobs in the US.
The suit will last longer than your $500 phone, too.
> Wearing a bad suit is embarrassing, and people at the upper echelons of the company almost always have better suits. It is a smell of class.
It doesn’t take much effort or cash to escape from “bad suit” category. I don’t begrudge people wearing better suits, it’s just one of a million ways people use to suss out money or class. Wearing a suit doesn’t make you more of a participant in class warfare than you already are.
Some people also use the suit to escape racial profiling. A white dude can get away with wearing a hoodie and jeans to work, but even though it’s acceptable at work, darker-skinned folk can run into problems with the hoodie-and-jeans outfit on their way to and from the office. Now, you can lay blame for those problems how you like, but think of the suit and tie as:
// FIXME: Temporary, remove suit when problems
// with racial profiling are addressed.Thus any symbol of class will always be a suit of armor for race in the way you describe, including Apple hardware. But the reason why Apple hardware is as much the same armor is because of thoughts around race and its connections to poverty, desperation, and crime.
You can wear Apple watch in and out of the office. But why shouldn't t-shirt be the status quo culture of the office? Because those who are judged by race need extra symbols of wealth to wear so they don't end up wronged? So let us band together and create sufficient distinctions of class so that those who make it out can show how they've made it out? How else do we know the Trayvon Martin from the thug?
Any response to this question shorter than a hundred pages is going to do a disservice.
Because you asked: Because people are judged unequally for wearing a T-shirt. Because this fails to delineate between work attire (and spaces, modes) and personal attire (spaces, modes). The delineation is important. Because attire communicates, among other things, what you think about the people around you, and I dislike the message sent by wearing a T-shirt. Because the T-shirt is a symbol of Silicon Valley technology culture, privilege, and entitlement which I reject.
This kind of communication is not denotative, but it is full of information and intent, and interpreted differently by different people. Yes, it also encodes class, but so does every other form of communication, and attire communicates so many other things.
Why is this that solid of a fact to you? If you had to imagine the best way to scale a workforce, and you were worried about artificial barriers, why is not the suit which reeks of gate-keeping? How is it the t-shirt, which just about every young American owns, the culprit of privilege and entitlement?
I agree that the signals of money or power is an armor against racial judgments about criminal risk. I just don't agree to sustaining the gate-keeping as the necessary moral price to pay. In fact, if this armor is to be depended on, then its quality depends on the degree of gatekeeping. We are after all saying it is problematic if there isn't a visible symbol to show you're not one of the bad ones.
Have you been to an office where the dress culture is divided into two? I find it happens even to startups the size of 30. When the executive business class meets together for lunch or causal conversations between the hours, the concentrated signal of high quality suit is really loud to me.
In such mixed dynamics I have found the suit to be the signal of executive power, and the same to be true when the company is large enough for in-house legal. That is why I question why you are so confident that it's the t-shirt that's so elite.
In such mixed dynamics, you're never going to find it's the programmers who wear suits and the executive class look like young teenagers in hoodies. Who has the power here?
It’s not.
> That is why I question why you are so confident that it's the t-shirt that's so elite.
I don’t say that, at least not in that sense.
> In such mixed dynamics, you're never going to find it's the programmers who wear suits and the executive class look like young teenagers in hoodies. Who has the power here?
This conversation loses too much insight when we flatten things down into a single more power / less power dimension.
I will say that the programmers I see wearing T-shirts are earning $100k+, and they can work remotely, have a flexible schedule, and often ditch meetings which they don’t feel like attending. They go to a café and order coffee from a barista who wears a uniform and may not dye their hair an “unnatural” color, who earns $25k and doesn’t learn their work schedule until the last minute.
The suit, at least, if you wear it every day, can communicate “this is kind of uncomfortable and ridiculous, and as soon as permissible, I will take it off.” I can understand why some people would see it as a conceit, at the same time, to the people who must wear suits, it is generally annoying or inconvenient more than anything else.
> In such mixed dynamics, you're never going to find it's the programmers who wear suits and the executive class look like young teenagers in hoodies. Who has the power here?
“Never” is certainly too strong an assertion here, I’m going to interpret it as hyperbole because there are plenty of exceptions.
Some alternative comparisons that are very informative are to compare different departments within an institution. In tech companies, take a tour of where the developers sit, the QA department (if it’s not contracted out!), customer support, sales, marketing, communications, and HR.
There are also strong regional differences at play here. West coast casual attire is fairly unusual even compared to other parts of the US.
So I’ve come to have a pretty dark opinion of the T-shirt dress code. To me, it symbolizes the entitlement of the west-coast tech elite.
2. Right. Luxury bad. Class bad. But what you are wearing has no bearing on your skills. Even if you are wearing a suit.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/05/suits-and-ties-now-optional-...
Also, you have too much faith in programmers being able to eyeball the quality of a suit.
Obviously nobody else there was wearing one so I did feel a bit out of place.
Unless perhaps that's genuinely how you like to dress and how you go to work. Then just make that clear at the start of the interview. Otherwise interviewers will be wondering why you're wearing a suit and are unlikely to assume it's merely an aesthetic choice (as it's rare that's the case - usually it's simply that they didn't know it was ok to be casual).
Nah. Let's keep ourselves honest. It was the suit; or, at the very least, it was what the suit represented--professionalism that separates private, personal life from work life. Yuck. Who has time for that when you're trying to get rich off the next big exit? /s
Startup culture (and many tech cultures for that matter) is one of the most obnoxious, cringe-inducing things. I remember starting out in the culture, earning my stripes. It's like high school / college culture, transplanted into a professional work environment. Same toxicity and egos, just with bigger dollar figures. I don't personally wear suits, and I'm not saying you have to call me Mr. Lastname, but let's not fool ourselves: we're business partners, not bros, and this bro behavior is also the hostility that drives gender diversity away from our company. There are two things I swore to never do again: 1) never work in an office; 2) never work for a for-profit startup (i.e. a business that isn't profitable) unless I created it. I've only ever found one private startup that has been amazing to work for, and the CEO used to work directly for Melinda Gates in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Go figure!
In the enterprise world you are at least free to acknowledge that making profit for hyperwealthy private investors isn't your life's greatest calling.
That is so very well stated I want to highlight it! Thanks for putting it so succinctly.
Indeed: http://web.archive.org/web/20140618142018/http://blog.42floo...