Why don’t they wear suits? And how do other businesspeople take them seriously when they don’t wear suits? It seems super unprofessional.
Blame Steve Jobs.
Not having to is a status symbol.
This is true. If you’re good at a tech job you don’t need to wear a suit because you’re valuable to the company. Most programmers don’t like to wear suits and don’t wear them if they can get away with not wearing them. Also as a way of setting them apart from sales/legal/management people. Tech bros mostly started out as programmers and kept that habit.“In Silicon Valley, wearing a full business suit marked you as unsophisticated and not ‘with it’ in terms of tech and innovation. This caused the dress code requiring a suit to be inverted and it eventually reached the point where you can’t wear a suit and be taken seriously in Silicon Valley.”
Suits are just asshole uniforms.
Know who I take seriously? Someone who speaks competently.
An entire class of BS artists exists that specialize in the ability to sound competent, regardless of their lack of any real competence. Talking heads like news anchors, political pundits, podcast hosts, etc. base their success mostly on the ability to fake authority on subjects because most people can’t tell the difference.
Suits are a lot less common in the professional world than they used to be.
I tend to find through my work experience that it depends on a couple of factors, which industry, which department, and how senior they are.
For example when jumping on calls or attending client meetings, the IT peoples, Engineers, anyone technical really is pretty much never in a suit. I don’t have much to do with HR departments, but I to find their 50/50, could be the “chill” HR department where the HR lady is passing off active wear as work clothes, or the strict HR department where they are 100% in suits.
The more senior you get, especially in sales and marketing roles, C-Suite, etc. the far more common suits become again, the only industry I don’t see this so prevalent in is the tech industry, however I don’t work with tech companies too often as they typically have their own people lol.
I know in my role, I only wear a suit or a blazer 3 times a year, and that’s my companies conferences where we have a dress code for the first day.
The word professional is so ambiguous as to be effectively meaningless, bearing no resemblance whatsoever to its original definition.
No one but the most shallow and superficial among us cares what you’re wearing. Thinking a suit does anything but make you look self-important and pretentious is an anachronism.
That’s the most “normal” thing about them.
I find people that enjoy suits (not the status of them, but the actual physicality of them) to be unhinged.
I hate EVERYTHING about them. Unless I’m going to a sibling’s wedding, there is no reason I will ever wear one again in my life. I’ve hated every second of every time I’ve done so, and cannot imagine someone in their right mind looking it at all.
If I had to do it for work, I’d better consistently be getting $100s of millions a day. And even then I would quit after a week.
I guess you don’t have a tailored suit.
Granted, but that’s not my problem with them.
For one, I’m the weirdo wearing shorts in winter. Dunno if if call it a sensory issue, but I hate the feeling of long pants on my lower legs. I only tolerate it if I’m going to be outside more than a few minutes at a time.
Secondly, I have almost a religious level of intolerance for ties of any kind. This one I’m more apt to call a sensory issue. I HATE feeling anything on my throat, and buttoning that top button will result in me complaining about it. And the tie itself reinforces that strangling feeling, and I just absolutely hate how they look on top of it. Ties of all kinds are one of the things on the top of my personal list of instant red button issues. (And by that I mean the list of things that will send me from chilling straight into actual rage mode)
Also the cuffs give me a smaller dose of that same problem.
No judgement for others wearing em, but if you expect me to then your on my shit list immediately.
Thirdly, they feel more delicate than “normal” clothes, so I feel like I have to be hypervigilant at all times about damaging them or them getting dirty. And the material is so thin I can’t stand it.
Everything else I wear is boring and all goes in the same laundry loads (no sorting lights and darks- even saying that feels racist). But it means paying attention how it’s washed and shit. I don’t got time to learn or care about that.
All the ones I’ve written had white shirts, and that annoys tf outta me, but wouldn’t be a problem if they were more regular attire.
I hate the jacket as well. The squareness of the shoulders really skeeves me out. The only jackets I ever wear are hoodies. If it’s cold enough to wear pants I might upgrade to a heavier one, but it’s so rare that I can’t remember the last time I had to do that. I also hate the look of dress pants and dress shirt without the jacket, so it’s just bad no matter what. But my jack needs to be kinda amorphous. (Not sure that’s the right word, but you get the idea I hope)
The last 3 of 4 times I had to dress up were so rentals, so the shoes were a problem for me too. The socks were annoying, but just a small part. But given the shoes not being mine, they’re never broken in to my feet, so there’s that.
I also almost always wear sandals, so having socks or any does on is less than optimal.
Sure, maybe I dress like a slob, but I’m comfortable and until you can find a reason to give af, I’ll stay like that. I live in absolute terror of having a job with a uniform.
So it’s not the lack of tailoring that’s the problem. That might make it 3% better.
I do have a tailored suit. I rather kick a rock and break my foot then wear it.
They fucking suck absolutely and people who enjoy them are fucked in the head.
Why are you calling them your bro?
The real boss wears a Hawaiian shirt and rolls into the office once a quarter.
Trend set by Steve Jobs.
Wearing a suit isn’t the only way to show power.
Tech used to dress up to the same standards as other professions in the 60’s, with their rules for conformity. Some engineers realized that they were too good to need to conform, so they dressed down, daring their bosses to fire them. Given how valuable the good engineers were, they got to keep their jobs even though they didn’t fully conform to the dress code.
It became a statement of power. Meetings would often be decided on the person worst dressed because they were the valuable tech decision maker.
Fast forward to when Facebook is trying to get its IPO and Mark Zuckerberg is going into meetings with financiers dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. The financiers were all wearing suits, but Zuckerberg didn’t need to because they needed him more than he needed them. Zuckerberg didn’t need to dress up for bankers, bankers needed to dress up for him.
The only time Mark Zuckerberg wore a suit as part of his work was when he was testifying in front of Congress. Why? Because Congress had power over him and that power made Mark dress up.
Suits are not very common in the professional world anymore.
