All the ones who wear suits?

I used to work for a engineering consulting firm. Kevin, the star engineer would wear polo shirts, blue jeans, and sneakers. Everyone one else at his level and above wore suit and tie.

One day the new boss told Kevin that he needed to wear a button down shirt, suit and tie to meet with the client. Kevin told him "You can't make me wear a suit and tie. My clients don't care what I wear." The simple moral of the story was clear: "if you make it rain, you make the rules."

OTOH, he wore jeans, sneakers, and a polo shirt every day. He was hardly a rebel.

Some workplaces are so strict about dress codes, they just won't change for any reason. Especially large corporate bureaucracies. They have a crazy like beliefs that dressing in some way will help their business more than actual work will.

And going against those norms actually will work against you.

"IBM officials often tried to accomodate Apple and vice versa so that both could comfortably work in unison. One popular anecdote talks of one of the first meetings between the two computer giants. IBM engineers dressed in blue jeans for the meeting, while Apple engineers dressed in suits. They both tried to make each other feel compfortable by conforming to what they thought the other was like."

But I wouldn't be surprised if it happened a lot.

I applaud that, but it hardly makes anyone unique. More than a few people have decided that, for example, a white t-shirt and blue jeans every day is a simple solution to a ultimately unimportant decision. Lots of people , OTOH, just wear whatever is nearest because they really don't give a crap about their appearance and they're happy that way.

There are real reasons to consider Jobs special. Hyperventilating over what amounts to a not-uncommon solution to dressing oneself trivializes him.

It does, at the very least, put Steve Jobs on a level no lower than that of Ernest P. Worrell.

He made a dedicated effort to create a fashion "brand" to the point that people know what kind of sneakers he wore.

Jobs might not have been a great engineer or techie, but he was a great visionary, designer, and marketer. He created (and recreated) one of the greatest brands in America. I don't doubt he applied the same principles to his wardrobe as he did to his company.

Paul Barnett, who was a lead video game designer for Warhammer Online. He wore the same clothes everyday for convenience (going out and purchasing a set of shirts/jeans/shoes in a single stroke) - which he would then change on a yearly/6monthly basis.