> I’m not advocating for it being an absolute state, but you certainly have to give some consideration to the fact that dressing up far more than is needed implies you don’t culturally understand. It’s as simple as that.
I'm not saying you immediately throw a candidate out for wearing a suit. It's entirely possible I'm wrong and my mind can be changed by their performance, but it is something that would make me take a closer look.
I'll give you another example I experienced recently: a candidate who would not stop drumming their fingers on the table throughout the interview. Is that specifically related to their performance? No, not really. Is it annoying, a bit disrespectful, and shows a lack of restraint? Yeah, it is. This candidate had other flaws that made them disqualifying, but their finger drumming didn't help them at all.
But I would like to point out that a rule that allows someone to openly state they discriminate during interviews but forbids a strong reaction to that statement might require some examination.
You could just as easily argue that people “discriminate” against candidates by making them do leetcode, when leetcode is unrelated to performance at the job. Leetcode is a performance some people look at during interviews, just like how you socially meld in an interview is a performance people look at during interviews.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stimming
I have no idea since I wasn’t there when you interviewed that person but it is something that came to mind.
Replace “wearing a suit” with literally anything else unrelated to programming skills. Wearing a dress. Having a particular speech pattern. Being old.
As soon as you start judging people for anything other than their performance you fucked up. People’s personality comes through in the interview process. By the end of an hour working with someone you should have a pretty good idea of what working with them is like, suit or no suit.