
Silicon Valley has a dress code - Varcht
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/tech/silicon-valley-has-dress-code-you-better-believe-it
======
tikhonj
No, there is still no dress code. Sure, there are trends and there is fashion,
but it's all optional! Most programmers dress like other programmers, most
designers dress like other designers and so on because most _people_ dress
like other _people_. It's just easier, and that's how fashion works.

But _you don 't have to_!

There is no actual dress code. There are no actual rules¹. And most people in
the industry won't look down at you for dressing differently (except maybe
subconsciously). And people take advantage of this: I know plenty of engineers
who wear button-down shirts, nice sweaters and blazers because the _can_
\--not everybody goes for jeans and a t-shirt.

What people actually wear is not important. The dress code--or the lack
thereof--is only important because it illustrates a deep principle that I
think is very important to the SV culture: departing from petty rules and
embracing as much individual freedom as possible.

After all, individual freedom includes the freedom to conform! It's the
freedom that's actually important, not what people do with it.

¹ Well, there are some ground rules--you can't just walk around naked all of
the time--but they're very limited.

~~~
overgard
Just for fun, try wearing a suit to a programming job. Nothing ostentatious,
just a well fitted medium priced conservative suit. You'll quickly learn there
isn't an explicit code, but there is certainly an implicit one. You'll get
about the same reaction as if you wore parachute pants with a neon shirt.

~~~
tomhallett
I'm a ruby engineer and I was applying for a job at a 30+ employee startup in
Brooklyn. I wore a nice grey pinstripe suit for the interview - nothing crazy,
just a classic looking suit. When I got declined, I asked for feedback and he
said "Well, some people thought you were here todo our taxes" and "You just
aren't the right fit". Haha.

~~~
hnriot
and then you sued.

no hiring manager would ever give you this feedback. I call BS.

~~~
mikeash
What would you sue over? I don't believe clothing choice is a protected class
for employment discrimination.

~~~
groovy2shoes
A suit suit would be interesting, though.

~~~
hueving
A suit suit would be a riot! :-)

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jamesdutc
Not at all surprised.

I work in NYC, and the last time few times I was out in SV to speak at
conferences and such, I was attired in my standard suit & tie. (I'm the guy
with the dopey photo and name-in-bold on
[http://nycpython.org/](http://nycpython.org/) which I run.)

This ends up working to my advantage. No one expects the guy in the suit to go
up on stage and show off a Tweetable FFT in Python or give an in-depth talk on
CPython internals.

~~~
noinsight
On that site it says you've attended PyCon Finland. What was it like, any
good? (Obviously, I'm from Finland and I'm curious about what you think of the
Python scene in Finland, I don't hear about Python much generally.)

~~~
jamesdutc
PyCon Finland was great!
[http://fi.pycon.org/2013/](http://fi.pycon.org/2013/)

I believe it was the first time they held the event; everything was well-
organised and went smoothly. I gave my Generators talk, which went over pretty
well.

I met a lot of really cool Python programmers, and I'm looking forward to
attending and speaking if they hold it again this year!

(By the way, swing by #python.fi on IRCNet!)

~~~
jyrki
2013 was actually the fourth time (I've been one of the orgs before) :)

edit: And glad to hear you liked it!

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jmduke
As a general rule of thumb: judgmental people exist regardless of hobby,
profession, or city of residence. Software people aren't some mystical species
immune to bad personality traits, but I'm confident that the majority (if not
the vast majority) of them won't particularly care what you're wearing as long
as you're not an asshole.

I'm not in Silicon Valley, but in Seattle, and I don't dress the part of an
engineer -- lots of Ralph Lauren button downs and 511s -- and yet nobody has
revoked my license to write code yet. Wear what you want to wear.

------
overgard
More proof that refusing to make a fashion statement is just as much of a
statement as wearing something bold.

(I'm not some crazy fashion person, I just think it's funny the way nerd
culture shuns those that actually try)

~~~
bowlofpetunias
I don't see anybody in that story refusing to make a fashion statement, quite
the opposite.

This is especially true for "nerd culture". Very few subcultures are less
tolerant of people dressing differently.

~~~
klipt
> Very few subcultures are less tolerant of people dressing differently.

Are you saying nerds are intolerant, or did you mean few cultures are _more_
tolerant?

~~~
blueskin_
That could logically only mean the latter.

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slvv
I'd love to hear whether there are equivalent trends among women in the field,
or what the challenges of dressing to be taken seriously as a woman in the
valley are.

~~~
Varcht
I'd find that interesting too. I was kind of shocked to see the majority of
comments on tfa to be attacking the author for not doing that. To me it seems
like it would be much more civil and productive to nicely request a follow up
on women's fashion or (horrors) write it themselves.

~~~
seanhandley
Agreed - the response was rather rabid.

Frankly, men are easy to taxonomise into dressing habits. Female fashion is
_much_ more diverse!

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steffan
Besides the obvious omissions of women, it's always hard for me to take an
article seriously when there are obvious spelling errors.

~~~
overgard
Oh jesus, not this. If you included the subtleties of women's fashion you'd
make the article about 4x longer. There's just way more going on there.

~~~
wyclif
Agreed. I thought, "Great, more political correctness juking on HN, _exactly_
what it needs." What percentage of VCs, engineers, and coders are men again?
To write an article like this isn't sexist. It's describing fashion for 90+%
of the field as it exists now.

~~~
steffan
Also, I'm surprised at the response to my OP since my original complaint was
about the misspellings.

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pbreit
Article doesn't support the headline very strongly.

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crapshoot101
To this day, one of my greatest fish out of water experience is walking
through the Mission in a suit and tie on my way to a formal dinner - I think I
would have been less conspicuous if naked.

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jinushaun
So true. I got so tired of dressing down all the time that I actually dress up
instead. No one suspects I'm a programmer when I do.

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spaceborn
Good god, the comments on this article. You'd think the author went
deliberately out of her way to not photograph women, and that she did so as a
personal affront to the commenters.

~~~
stefan_kendall
A convenience sample is going to exclude women when you're targeting
entrepreneurs, VCs, and engineers in the wild.

It could also be that the author was just less intimidated by approaching men
than women.

I would feel awkward walking up to strange women and asking them if I could
photograph them for an article I was writing.

Maybe the article should be titled "Men's fashion in Silicon Valley", which
would be more accurate.

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te_chris
The author reads (or maybe doesn't know enough about clothes/fit) too much
into the engineers choices: you can normally tell by awful fit of the clothes
on people who just aren't that into fashion and don't need to be outwardly
presentable. It's not that difficult and hardly a general rule, but
anecdotally if the clothes don't fit that well then likely an engineer.

To the author: read a few fashion blogs (hell even complex) and compare to
your photos, those who had to be presentable were in clothes that fitted
nicely.

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slvv
It looks like the author has added a short piece explaining why she didn't
cover women. I'm not really sure why she wouldn't have just included the one
or two relevant sentences here in her original article.

[http://www.marketplace.org/topics/tech/why-no-women-story-
si...](http://www.marketplace.org/topics/tech/why-no-women-story-silicon-
valley-fashion)

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cromwellian
I wear collared pull-over shirts and shorts with sandals practically everyday
except when very cold. I don't own a single pair of jeans, when I need pants,
I wear business casual.

Among Googlers I don't think the t-shirt + jeans model fits engineers. I think
it correlates more with what state your office is in and what your age is.

------
tomkinson
Silly.

