A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics
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A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics | |
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December 13, 2007Programmers And Clothing, er, ?Style?Justin Etheridge posted on elements of computer programmer "style," but doesn't explain what he shows us. I'll connect the dots a bit. Hat tip, and an interesting post in its own right from Virginia Postrel. The big thing to keep in mind is that many of us consciously like to look as different from expectation about the way management and people who sell our programs look. There were probably several independent reasons this developed, but now it's the way it is. Interestingly, the greater the computer programmer or scientist, the slacker he's likely to look. Indeed, dressing up conventionally is likely to drop expectations about a programmer. There are really two schools within that above observation. One school tries to be comfortable - e.g., flannel in cold air conditioning and cold places. The other mirrors ideas of formal work dress by dressing as badly as possible (e.g., holes in shirts and shorts). Posted by Jon Kay at December 13, 2007 03:41 AMComments
if you want the more serious(?) version: dfof.wordpress.com. it even has the bitchy irony you've come to expect from fashion sites. Posted by: mr chippy at December 13, 2007 08:00 AMAnother way to look at it is: why do (especially big) businesses expect their employees to wear suits? The answer (I asked, back when I was working for a big bank) is "the customers expect us to look professional; like business people." Otherwise, why would anyone wear a vestigal Serbian neck scarf, over a century after they were the big thing in upper class British fashion? What I'm saying is, the coat and tie, the short hair, etc. are the artificial dress. Started, I suspect, by attempting to look like upper class, rather than the lower class that so many middle class people came from. (The upper class had the money and time to dress for fashion, rather than comfort.) And then it became a matter of self-reinforcing expectations. When computer people pointed out that they never saw the customers, the suits went away. And eventually the slacks got replaced by the jeans most of us found more comfortable (not to mention more practical in terms of durability). I speak from having lived thru the whole transition - and helped push it in a couple of companies. And the heads of 90s high tech companies were mostly lucky enough to have started after the transition. So when they became executives, they probably didn't even own a suit -- a sports coat (which one of the linked articles decries) was actually a big concession to the expectations of the wider culture. Posted by: wj at December 13, 2007 11:19 AM |
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