[loftyai]

I never understood the bias on work attire from both sides. It's silly to judge people's abilities based on what they like to wear period. The whole point of casual dressing in Tech was that it made some people perform better, because it took them less time to get dressed in the morning, and they were physically more comfortable at work. But people are different, some people might genuinely code better or perform better if they wear a suit. The point is to let people wear whatever they're comfortable with, so they can perform at their personal best, within reason of course. We wouldn't want crazy people to show up to work in underwear or naked haha.

[brahmwg]

On the topic of work attire, one interesting argument/explanation in favor of professional (read: suit) clothing is for the compartmentalization; like Peter Parker becoming spiderman, you only do work in that set of clothing. When the suit is on, you're in work mode. When the suit is removed, you're in non-work mode. This way you don't associate work with your casual clothes. I thought it was an interesting point in favor of a specific set of work clothing.

[perl4ever]

I like the look of ties, accumulate colorful ones, but I hate wearing them. So I prefer to wear a suit and tie to an interview, and then never again. It's a costume, for particular occasions.

And if you (as a man) don't wear a suit and tie to an interview, you have the problem women complain about - there's too large a spectrum of possibilities for clothing that someone might judge you for unfairly.

But I also like work clothing that isn't expressive; it just has to be comfortable.

[loftyai]

This is a pretty interesting point of view. I had always thought that it's just something that was passed down as tradition since it seemed that back in the days, men always wore suits, even when they're not at work.

[Kalium]

Like a lot of things, it started as comfort and quickly became a vehicle for social signaling of group membership, status, and conformity.

[loftyai]

Yeah, very true. But it's kind of sad that people like me, who still dress according to comfort get grouped in with the status and conformity faction.