[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.

[argonaut]

What I said about Google applies to other SV tech firms (or the SV offices of tech firms not based in SV).