[beachstartup]

at my startup, the dress code is casual/sandals-ok except when meeting with clients.

as a rule, you never want to be under-dressed when meeting with people who you want to give you money. being wrong on this even once could cost you money, possibly a great deal of it.

if you show up in a suit and tie and everyone else is wearing sandals, the proper etiquette is to say "mind if i remove my tie?" and then remove your tie and jacket and unbutton your first shirt button.

instant business casual, which mixes fine with sandals. this also demonstrates social competence which may or may not be a factor in your hiring.

[brc]

The obvious solution is to enquire about dress code at the company at the time of setting the interview. It doesn't have to be awkward at all - 'what do people wear to the office?' is a perfectly reasonable question. If they say 'business casual', then you can go +1 and wear a suit. If they say 'casual' then turn up in business casual. If they laugh and say 'whatever' then just turn up looking smart and confident.

Thinking that you always have to wear a suit is some type of throwback where the interviewer had all the power - I don't see interviews like that. Interviews should be a mutual meeting of people where they work out if they should work together. An inability to even work out what the dress culture is like before the meeting betrays, to me, an inability to get basic background research in place before any meeting.

So just ask, and then dress appropriately based on the answer given.

[beachstartup]

yeah, this works, until the boss's boss is also there unannounced, in a suit. meeting of equals? not anymore. it happens in both technical and executive interviews.

the point is not to fit in, the point is to minimize the risk of sartorial faux pas to zero. ZERO.

[argonaut]

At many tech companies in SV (not even startups - tech companies like Amazon, Google, etc), it would be a sartorial faux pas to wear a suit to an engineering interview.

[beachstartup]

this is not true.

you have this impression because your typical engineer will wear a cheap, ill-fitting suit he bought the day before. this will make him look like a schlubby teenager trying to make a good impression among his cooler peers, instead of a manicured professional.

also, the suit isn't going to make you any smarter. you have to be competent. engineers also shy away from suits because they see morons wearing suits. correlation != causation.

show up looking like vint cerf, and the story is different. if you don't know who vint cerf is, look it up. he happens to work for google at this point in time.

http://pseudodoctor.com/2012/06/vint-cerf-is-the-architect/

scroll to the bottom.

[argonaut]

That is completely false.

I know who Vint Cerf is. One of my friends met Vint Cerf at Google, and I hope you see the irony in citing Vint Cerf. Vint Cerf is viewed within Google as a highly eccentric (aka weird), albeit brilliant, individual. If you come in looking like Vint Cerf for a standard engineering interview, you will look very weird and out of place.

A suit, even a well-tailored, modern cut suit, will be very weird in a software interview at Google.

Don't believe me? Spend a few hours at Google's Mountain View office to get a (admittedly superficial) sense of the culture there.

[beachstartup]

unfortunately, google hasn't been a good place to work for about 5 years now.