Image is Everything
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gcopeland (1/9/2009)
Joshua Perry (1/9/2009)
You obviously weren't involved in any way with getting VC money over the past decade or so. (snip)In 2000, I was worth $8.5 M on paper after I excercised my options. We had investors from all over the world. Of course it was all a mirage, and that was because the VC's listened to droopy guys on Razors instead of people with good business judgement. Those days are over, and thank god for that.
Thanks for making my point. Because the "experienced business professionals" used image to evaluate technical skills instead of using a thorough interview process including seeing a sound business plan, they ended up looking foolish. The point is that my resume gets me the interview, and once I have the interview it doesn't matter what I dress like when I show a CIO how I can save him a billion dollars in a year.
If the interview isn't what made the difference, then I don't want to work there because the place will be a miserable failure since the hiring authority is to stupid to evaluate the potential employee on what really matters. If you don't want to hire me just because I'm wearing denim, you might as well get in line behind all of the other businesses that are currently failing.
Joshua Perry
http://www.greenarrow.net -
Joshua Perry (1/9/2009)
Thanks for making my point. Because the "experienced business professionals" used image to evaluate technical skills instead of using a thorough interview process including seeing a sound business plan, they ended up looking foolish. The point is that my resume gets me the interview, and once I have the interview it doesn't matter what I dress like when I show a CIO how I can save him a billion dollars in a year.Mr. Perry, I take your point, and you obviously know what you are talking about. However, I will point out to you that your level of expertise is extremely high, and your advise is not suitable for most technical employees. I would highly advise most people to ignore your advice, despite the underlying truth of it. Except for the part about learning how to bring value to an enterprise, which is good advice for everyone.
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gcopeland (1/9/2009)
As the resident HR guy, I note a few pretty vicious posts. That is ok, I have been dispensing unsolicited advice to my fellow techies for decades, and many don't listen to me, either. Please let me try again. Sometimes you have to club some people, especially technical performers, over the head.Criticism of Balmer and Gates is sheer idiocy. The way they dress just screams, "I am a terrific technical performer with excellent business judgement, and I know what I am doing." Otherwise, these two billionaires would be wearing something different. Please adjust for seasonal requirements and stop being obtuse.
I suggest that anyone who advocates non-professional dress for technical performers has absolutely no evidence to back that up. Your technical skills are so good that you don't have to display good business judgement? How on Earth do you justify such an irresponsible statement, when there is an ocean of social science research to shut you up? How do you know what opportunities you have missed because people did not trust your judgement, because you looked like some hacker on a Warcraft tour?
My purpose in posting here is much the same as posting on any other thread. Run your own database any way you want, but do not give crappy advice to newbies. Same same on business attire. Tell technical professionals that their business attire doesn't matter, and I will call you on that straightaway. Crappy advice is crappy advice, and please keep it to yourself.
I am a business application developer, not a DBA, and I have an MS in HRM. I read this forum to learn from experts. I suspect that all of you do the same.
Have a great day!
Couple of fallacies:
The way that Gates and Ballmer dress is considered socially appropriate for executives. It says nothing whatsoever about technical skill. You're concatenating two thoughts into one conclusion.
To make this very, very clear: I know lots of executives who wear very sharp suits and ties, they always have well-polished shoes, they drive beautiful cars and have expensive wives, they belong to the right clubs, they play golf and have expensive gear, they eat at the right restaurants. They also have no technical skills at all, nor (in most cases) do they need them.
If you need sugar to bake with, do you buy Tide laundry detergent because it's got a good looking container, and then bake with that? How about Clorox bleach? Great container, good advertising, makes lousy cookies.
Given a choice, in an HR situation or as a department manager, would you rather hire a cute guy with an expensive haircut, shiny white teeth, tailored silk suit, polished leather shoes, drives a brand new BMW, and isn't quite sure what the words "database" or "code" mean, or some ugly bastard with bad breath, a red shirt and neon-pink pants held up by sky blue suspenders, wearing sandles, with a junker 1960s VW bug that looks like a living advertisement for Bondo, who has been working with relational databases since the 70s, has an intimate knowledge not only of T-SQL, and .NET, but also SSIS, SSRS, and SSAS, HTML, IIS, XML, normal forms, and execution plans? Really, which one would you hire?
Those are both the same thing. Buying Clorox to put in your cookies because of a good-looking, shiny package, is the same as hiring someone because of their dress and looks. Or, more to the point, NOT hiring someone because of the way they dress is the same as refusing to buy sugar because it comes in boring white bags.
At the same time, you do have one point right: The opposite also holds true. Telling someone they should dress down if they're good at what they do is just as poor a judgement as telling someone to dress up to show their skills.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
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GSquared (1/9/2009)
Couple of fallacies:The way that Gates and Ballmer dress is considered socially appropriate for executives. It says nothing whatsoever about technical skill. You're concatenating two thoughts into one conclusion.
Do you really mean to say that what Bill Gates wears says nothing whatsoever about his technical skill? You mean to say this about a programmer with unlimited resources and who wrote the first couple of versions of Excel in assembler?
Fallacies indeed.
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gcopeland (1/9/2009)
GSquared (1/9/2009)
Couple of fallacies:The way that Gates and Ballmer dress is considered socially appropriate for executives. It says nothing whatsoever about technical skill. You're concatenating two thoughts into one conclusion.
Do you really mean to say that what Bill Gates wears says nothing whatsoever about his technical skill? You mean to say this about a programmer with unlimited resources and who wrote the first couple of versions of Excel in assembler?
Fallacies indeed.
Do NOT confuse technical ability with attire. Because a person who is a technical wiz dresses nicely does not imply the reverse. I can wear scrubs, but that doesn't make me a brain surgeon!!
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sqlrv
Website: https://www.sqlrv.com -
gcopeland (1/9/2009)
GSquared (1/9/2009)
Couple of fallacies:The way that Gates and Ballmer dress is considered socially appropriate for executives. It says nothing whatsoever about technical skill. You're concatenating two thoughts into one conclusion.
Do you really mean to say that what Bill Gates wears says nothing whatsoever about his technical skill? You mean to say this about a programmer with unlimited resources and who wrote the first couple of versions of Excel in assembler?
Fallacies indeed.
He also supposedly wrote 4K BASIC in one sitting using punchards - way more impressive then writing Excel in Assembler. We also know for a fact that when he wrote 4K BASIC, old uncle Bill didn't even own a dress shirt.
Joshua Perry
http://www.greenarrow.net -
Aaron N. Cutshall (1/9/2009)
Do NOT confuse technical ability with attire. Because a person who is a technical wiz dresses nicely does not imply the reverse. I can wear scrubs, but that doesn't make me a brain surgeon!!
I will say again for the n-th time that business and technical skills are concurrent. If you don't like this fact of business, then get yourself into academic research. The rest of us will contend with business realities as we find them, rather than click our heels and wish on a star for something different.
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Stop the flame. My eyes hurt....
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Joshua Perry (1/9/2009)
He also supposedly wrote 4K BASIC in one sitting using punchards - way more impressive then writing Excel in Assembler. We also know for a fact that when he wrote 4K BASIC, old uncle Bill didn't even own a dress shirt.The history is much more interesting than that, but I can't imagine a persuasive argument that Bill Gates does not possess the most innovative business mind on the planet right now. If Bill Gates were wearing Warcraft t-shirts, I would be wearing one, too. But he is not, and there are good business reasons why.
Have a great day!
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gcopeland (1/9/2009)
I will say again for the n-th time that business and technical skills are concurrent. If you don't like this fact of business, then get yourself into academic research. The rest of us will contend with business realities as we find them, rather than click our heels and wish on a star for something different.The problem is that business and technical skills are NOT necessarily concurrent. I've worked with some fantastically astute business people who cannot even set their own watch. Conversely, I've worked with some very talented technical people who have trouble with their own checkbook let alone have any business acumen. You cannot draw a definitive conclusion about anyone based upon only a few characteristics. To do so otherwise is rather myopic. Fallacies indeed!!
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sqlrv
Website: https://www.sqlrv.com -
gcopeland (1/9/2009)
Lynn Pettis (1/9/2009)
I have a question for you, do you judge the quality of the advice given by the way the indivdual providing it is dressed, or by the technical soundness of the advice itself?In the waterfall design model, there are two phases of system design: business design and technical design. The two phases run concurrently, although technical design starts earlier than business design, due to the fact that it is usually harder to obtain business rules from functional experts.
And so, by analogy, the answer to your question: If you are developing on the MS platform, it is generally for a business solution. Therefore, business acumen will be part of the solution. A brilliant technical solution that is too expensive is useless. Business is business. Technology serves business to bring value. Otherwise, it is nothing more than a mental exercise.
Have a great day!
Okay, now try answering my original question. Nothing you said even remotely addresses what I asked you.
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Bill's amazing fashion sense at the time he started Microsoft:
Enough said. 😀
Joshua Perry
http://www.greenarrow.net -
Lynn Pettis (1/9/2009)
gcopeland (1/9/2009)
Lynn Pettis (1/9/2009)
I have a question for you, do you judge the quality of the advice given by the way the indivdual providing it is dressed, or by the technical soundness of the advice itself?After a technical performer proves his value and expertise, of course I trust his judgement. However, why would any good performer want to saddle himself or herself with a poor business facade, especially when it is so easily overcome? Wear a pair of nice couderois to work, show that you are ready to substitute for your boss, be ready to provide sales support, what is the possible rational objection to that?
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I have worn suits as required, business smart and business casual. But one of the few things I like about where I work now is that I simply dress appropriate for the weather. My typical attire is khakis or jeans and a think Hawaiian print shirt. Frankly, I do not like to wear t-shirts. I even get to wear shorts in the summer if I want to. I work with a bunch of wildlife biologists, and to fit in, we IT folks get to go ultra relaxed. I have helped out biologists a couple of times as I was walking in or out of the building, once to include moving orphaned moose calves to better crates for transport. You can bet that if I was in anything from business casual and up, I would have passed on helping in those situations. (Wild animals tend to relieve themselves in these situations)
Now, when I have to meet with folks way up the food chain, I dress pretty much the same, but put on a button up shirt and tuck in my shirt and I do wear long pants.
When I want to let people panic a little, I will dress up a bit and have a tie on (loosely) or at least tucked in my shirt pocket and make sure to take a lunch outside of my normal times.
All of that being said, I do believe there is a time and a place (work wise) for dressing in a suit and tie, or at least business smart. I have worked for companies, for contract companies, and as an independent. There is nothing wrong with sprucing up the cover to sell the contents. I typically let the one paying the bill dictate the type of clothes I wear. In the terms of seeking contract work, they will let me know to dress down or not.
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Getting back to the original subject of the T-shirt, I just looked at our company manual, and it specifically bans wearing T-shirts, along with sweat suits, hats, tank tops, stretch pants, cut-offs, revealing clothing, and graphic clothing containing inappropriate images or language.
I guess the HR people here wouldn’t like Steve.
As for me, I’m all for she-BAs wearing revealing clothing.
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