It's not weird, it's controlling. Needing everyone to wear mono-colored shirts with buttons on it to feel tidy is a you problem.

A company I worked for (that I did generally like working for) implemented a suit and tie policy for management and above. It didn't affect me but I started looking for the door immediately and left a few months after.

Don't want to be in a company that is still clinging to 19th century values.

I always wear a collared shirt to work because I like them and they do look neat, but I cannot stand people that demand it from others.

Hygiene is pretty important in the business I work since some of our devices come in contact with drinking water. But I can assure you that hygiene often does not correlate with outside appearances.

Still, we have rules for people that have customer contact because people are still judgemental, even if they are often demonstrably wrong.

To underscore, I would bet that washing hands frequently, wearing gloves when touching food and masks/hood when working near food is much more important than the difference between wearing a fresh white-collar shirt vs a sweat shirt you change every other day.

That is vastly more important. It is mandatory to wash your hands before visiting production as well as changing clothes. Regardless of how clean they look, they will contain foreign matter. The cafeteria is pretty much declared a hazard zone, not only because of that one colleague who has a weird cheese experiment going on in the fridge.

Downside for management is that we are only allowed to drink water in our offices and are not allowed to eat outside the cafeteria. With time I have grown to like it that way, even if I am a coffee junkie. But it never smells bad in the office in exchange.

There is still some strange association with cleanliness and neat shirts.

The problem is, that alot of humanity still relies on cliches to communicate "base-truth". Suite and tie looks professional in movies, so you get more credit and respect for superficial looks on the job.

One must not support such a ridiculous look based culture by heart, its instead more a - "I want to reap the benefits & rewards from idiots in awed reference to work uniforms"

Ironically the same happened to the hoodie, after various hackermovies. Wear a hoodie and sit with a laptop, obviously improves your coding ability.

It’s not a ‘you’ problem per se, but just accepting that people are different, and that one size never fits all.

Nice clothes have a reason to exist, determining where that fits in your life or your teams’s life may be worth thinking about:)

But buttons, collars, ties, and other artefacts of 1500s tailoring technology have such respectability and gravitas!

I, as many of my colleagues, certainly dressed up for the office, carefully selecting only the most witty but understated T-shirts.

I've often wondered about dress code for programmers. From a quick poll conducted at lunchtime, we concluded that there definitely is a way to dress for acceptance among devs, it's just hoodies and witty T-shirts instead of suits and ties.

Several people confirmed that they would probably be biased against applicants for dev positions coming in for an interview in a full on business suit with tie and slicked back hair (think "slick salesman" look). Perhaps not justified or fair, but interesting as a data point nonetheless. N=4 though, so don't take it too seriously.

I remember going to a meeting with fellow students I never met before.

It was at a time I applied for jobs after university and so I thought, I might wear a collars shirt to the meeting, to get in the mood.

All of my fellow CS students (aged 25-50) were wearing tshirts and generally more casual attire.

The first thing I was asked: Oh, do you study management?

Personally, I consider it a mark of professionalism if people aren't blinded by trivial external markers (like what clothes their colleagues wear)

And I say that as somebody who likes dressing up for work.

I think it is relative, and mostly a question of balance. Every workplace has its culture and norms.

Making a little effort to blend in is a question about showing respect for your co-workers. But on the other hand, how you dress is self-expression.

If you're going to spend 8 hours per day with your butt in a chair facing a monitor you may as well dress for comfort rather than for looks.

Precisely this.

If you meet clients have a shirt. For daily coding, dress in what you like.

I wished that people would stop focusing on exteriors so much and dealt with others based on merit rather than looks, age, height, weight.

There is a notable difference between those characteristics and the sartorial. That will be left as an exercise for the reader.

Nobody said anything about looks, age, height or weight.

> "I wish people dressed up at least a little bit more for the office. It makes the work environment feel a bit tidier and more professional to me."

That's very specifically about looks.

No, it's about what people wear.

Which is all about what they look like, really you're being pedantic beyond irritation.

The distinction, and its relevance, are obvious. If you're going to feign ignorance I have better things to do with my day than argue with you about it.

Then why do you argue about it?

Yes, there is a distinction, no it is not relevant. Just like to a blind person it would not matter what you wore so therefore 'looks' and 'what you are wearing' are closely related, related enough to both be used in this context.

So you say that what someone wears does not contribute to how someone looks.

That's quite the impressive opinion. Do you eat soup with a fork?

"Everybody in this room is wearing a uniform. Don't kid yourself." - Frank Zappa

Go ahead, dress up if that floats your boat. But don't force it on others!

you can wear whatever you like in your home office. go ahead and dress up for yourself

One of the funniest things I've ever seen was behind the scenes at TGIF at Google. Sundar was wearing some nice bay area gear (ie, ready to climb a mountain or meeting a corporate board room) and there were a couple PMs nearby wondering what brand he was wearing and how they could buy it.

I agree. But I’m old fashioned. I would never dream of going into the office without a collared shirt.