For the people whoâve really made it in the tech industry itâs a weird status symbol to be a complete fucking slob about something. Some guys with a big fancy title make a point to wear dirty old white T-shirts riddled with holes because they can or not wear shoes or not trim their facial hair ever, or some shit like that.
Itâs not uncommon to see some homeless looking guy hop into his Tesla at the Whole Foods. There used to be this joke on google campus (where there are Google owned bicycles lying around for employees to use) that it was impossible to tell if you spotted a homeless guy stealing a gbike or if it was a distinguished engineer going to a meeting.
Last tech company I worked at, had a meeting with clients in SF, my boss purposefully made me dress down so I would be respected more.
People are weird about that shit.
Can confirm. I'm a senior software engineer who regularly gives talks and the best I ever dressed for work was the day of my interview (for a junior engineer position).
You don't want to impress them with your looks, you want to impress them with your p o i n t e r s k i l l s
Youâd be amazed how many new engineers donât really grasp pointer arithmetic.
Weâve had some big problems where I am, when a contractor (self?) titled as âsenior engineerâ didnât understand that adding one to a pointer yields a different address depending on the type to which it points.
Iâm new to coding and am doing mostly C. What are the advantages to pointers? Iâve written a few programs and while I could have used pointers, it was easy to avoid them all together. I get what they do with memory addresses but why is it important?
Say you want to write a function that processes elements in an array (e.g.: find the sum of all numbers in an array). If you already had already created the array somewhere, would you want to, somehow, make a copy of the array to give to the function, or would you want to simply tell the function, "hey, the array is located at the following memory address," and give it a single pointer?
Another example would be linked lists. If you watch that video, you'll also start to understand the nature of problems where you need to dynamically create things in memory, rather than statically-declaring everything at the top of your code.
Instead of using a pointer to the array, could you not also just give the array name?
Yep, the array name is already a pointer (at least in C).
That works only if you know how many things you want when you write the code, and then write a separate copy of the code that works with those things. However, if you're, say, making a game, you don't want to have to manually name enemy0 through enemy4500, and then write 4500 copies of any code that works on enemies. If you use a pointer, you write your code once, and give it a pointer to the structures representing different enemies.
(noob here also)
Isn't that basically what instantiating is? It creates a unique enemy with properties and then you can pass each enemy through other functions based on its properties? So the instanced enemy gets its own pointer and when condition whatever happens, that would call the pointer for the enemy that met the condition.
Sorry for talking in abstracts, I've only dealt with this in Python and Unity, both of which kind of limit your ability to directly interact with an instanced enemy (since at time of code you don't actually know what the instanced enemy's pointer would be), you'd have to create a trigger or condition that says "the thing that hit me..." calling the pointer for the instance.
Is any of that close to right? I'm really working on my understanding of things.
Both python and unity are using pointers internally to refer to specific instances of things. C exposes them directly, in their raw form; it's this low-level nature that makes C and C++ well suited for writing things like Python and Unity themselves in.
Edit: To be more specific, pointers are just a number that specify a particular byte in memory. The CPU, when accessing memory, always, in the end, calculates a number that specifies an address in memory, and one option for doing so is to just grab a number out of a CPU register (a kind of really low-level variable). Other options include doing simple math based on a register, or based on the memory address of the code currently running. In the end, at the hardware level, even accessing named variables is a sort of pointer operation.
C gives you direct access to pointer variables, which is both powerful and dangerous. Powerful, because you can do fancy things like controlling precisely where things are in memory, which can be useful for squeezing out a little bit more performance, and dangerous, because nothing is stopping you from telling the CPU to access memory in a nonsensical way.
ahh gotcha.
I knew Python was an interpreted language and had more overhead because of it. Interesting to see ways that that makes a difference.
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Does re-implementing pointers myself count (basically pointing to an index within my privately allocated memory space)?
If not, I can't think of any way of making any data-structure with a "next element" pointer at all.
...how are you referencing that memory if not with a pointer?
In the realm of embedded computing, think the microcontroller found in your washing machine, we have what is called memory mapped IO. If you write a value to a specific address, then the chip does something particular to that address, like changing the behavior of a pin or initiating an asynchronous data transfer. The pointer lets your program remember exactly where those special addresses are at.
This applies to pretty much every CPU, but the OS (when present) handles it for you, in many cases, so you don't see it too much when programming a PC or for a mobile phone.
Optimization. Using pointers well will make your code a lot faster, since you won't have to make copies of everything.
NB most newer languages that lack pointers can also avoid that problem by using references to objects, which are simpler, much easier to use correctly, allow garbage collection etc but avoid unnecessary copies. Surprisingly, as a result its actually much easier to have an near-ideal compromise between runtime speed and code maintainability.
References themselves are pointers internally, if I'm not mistaken ... And if you're referring to Java with that, man, I doubt that runtime speed part, a lot :p
Everything is something else internally. And in the hardest language (assembler) you can do absolutely anything, so what matters to users of the language is what it stops them from doing. References are an advance over pointers because they remove the ability to do certain things that mostly lead to trouble.
Iâm not referring specifically to Java, but you may have missed the part about compromise. With low-level programming you can make it run fast, but youâll have to sacrifice maintainability. 99% of applications need to be able to grow and adapt, and that quality matters more to them than micro-optimisation.
I'd doubt that 99%; 80%, maybe, there's a lot of analytical software, games, software for hardware with limited capabilities, graphical design/CAD/rendering ... Sure, high-level languages are easier to write and maintain, but it's silly to act like doing things the hard way would be not necessary anymore. That's like saying you don't need excavators anymore because you developed shovels.
I think we have the opposite problem: people doing it the hard way for no reason, and so we have buffer overrun bugs in critical software that is doing network comms and hence is spending most of its time waiting for responses.
One of my favorite professors would always say: âif you know where something lives (the address), then you can mess with it (change itâs data).â
For example, passing variables into a function that swaps their values, or manipulating nodes in a linked list.
There are no advantages. You use pointers because you're coding in a language without memory management and now your life sucks. You use them because you need to.
That's the correct path.
Exactly. Many responses here are like âWithout pointers you couldnât do Xâ, where X is something all languages can do, whether or not they have pointers. A gc reference is not a pointer, people!
Itâs an obvious sign of inexperience when someone says âreferences are just pointers really.â Advances in software engineering are mostly about discovering capabilities that are not needed. Removing flexibility, shutting down unnecessary degrees of freedom. A reference is more than a pointer because it can do less.
Pointers allow you to communicate with things from other places. Let's say you have a variable that you would like to edit in a function, but you don't want to have to return the value. What you do is you pass a reference to the variable (it's address in the memory) and then set up a pointer in the function to that variable.
In practice, it's like packing up a variable and moving it somewhere else.
In Object Oriented languages like Java, C#, Javascript, etc. you've probably used them without even knowing it. Objects (classes) are always passed by reference instead of value, only primitive types (ints, floats and chars) are passed by value.
Yeah, but why would you use pointers directly instead of references?
Pointers are for things that don't pass by reference automatically, like primitives and stack-allocated datatypes, since they pass values by default.
Nice to know, thanks.
Note that all of this is language-specific. Even primitives (where they exist) can be passed by reference. Passing data allocated on stack outside of that function isn't even supported in modern languages, and for a good reason.
Among other things, it means you don't have to use fancy automatic memory management. For performance-critical code, it can sometimes be important that your program be both fast and predictably so. For example, maybe it should not be interrupted randomly to run the garbage collector (which can take many thousands of cycles to run). But you still need to be able to store things on the heap, and pointers are how you do that.
Although in a typical OS (since the 90s) accessing different locations in âraw memoryâ can differ in speed by a factor of 1000s, because there are several levels of caching in the CPU, and thereâs virtual memory that can be swapped out to disk and then has to be read back in. The flat memory model is itself a high-level abstraction over tons of complexity, and unfortunately it often hides performance problems rather than clarifying them.
The biggest thing is speed and space limitation really. I work in the embedded world which others mentioned about the speed and limitation. We have to point to memory registers to read sensor values and write values in registers to do things like turn on LEDa. We're implementing the functions to easily do those tasks, it's how you actually interact with computer chips on a low level.
However when it comes to speed and space, the time I ran into the issue was in school actually. We wrote a compression algorithm for a book. It was a simple library lookup and take the most common words and represent each as a single byte integer that could be replaced by the word later. Passing the array carrying all the words in the book takes forever, passing around the pointer to the array is fast. This is basically THE example of why to use pass by reference vs. pass by value.
On the low level, a computer has to take the time and space to make two copies of something when it's unnecessary, especially when you try to go between functions and you do it thousands of times.
if you're programming in C, you basically need pointers and manual memory management to do dynamically sized arrays. in C++ the STL can handle most of that for you.
Pointers are specifically found in languages that let you directly manipulate memory as if it was one big flat array of bytes. You can get the address of an object that takes up 16 bytes, and then you can âcastâ (reinterpret) it as an array of 2-byte numbers. It will be a load of junk, but you can do this. Also you can overwrite one of the numbers. What effect will this have? Depends on how the object is structured; most likely will corrupt it. You can also write past the end (or start) of the object: pointers donât care where âobjectsâ begin or end. A pointer is little more than a memory address, identifying a location in a vast address space that stretches from zero to wherever. A pointer can point to a location where you havenât created an object. Or where you did create an object but you since destroyed it. Pointers are dumb.
Most modern languages have something more helpful (references and garbage collection) that lets you do all the useful stuff but renders the bad stuff impossible.
As someone who understood only the fact that this was written in English, I respect what you do and the effort you went to, to learn about computer programming so it could benefit us all.
Imagine a shelf full of DVDs and suppose in their cases they are one centimetre wide. If you want to get the 9th movie from the shelf, you can move along 8 centimetres from the end and youâll be in the right place (skipping the first 8 movies).
Now try the same with a shelf of VHS tapes and suppose they are each 2 centimetres wide. To skip past 8 tapes, youâd need to move by 16 centimetres.
Pointers take care of this for you (itâs about the only thing they do take care of). So a pointer to DVDs can be moved back and forth in 1-cm increments, where as a pointer to VHS tapes can only move in 2-cm increments.
The contractor thought it would be necessary to multiply everything by 2 when dealing with tapes instead of DVDs, when in fact the programming language takes care of that for you. It knows the size of the items being pointed to.
Thanks for the ELI5, it's appreciated
Beeing a dev for xx years but not had to deal with pointers I might have a little struggle too.
This is more about knowledge than understanding. The behavior you're describing is a choice C developers made, not an illogical choice, but not something fundamental about pointers either.
It is defined in the C standard and is something that, if you donât understand, you should not be using pointers.
Thatâs about as fundamental as it gets.
Again, you're discussing this from a specific language standpoint, in the context of a thread on pointers in general. The fact that incrementing a pointer in C adjusts the value by the sizeof of the type of the target is incidental to the concept of pointers in general, not some core fundamental part thereof.
Distinguished engineer here
Miss me with that gay shit
Pointers will have no bearing on your life whatsoever. C developers and closer to the hardware has very thin applicability for what anybody wants right now. You have to go waaaaay out of your way to get into that situation. I know all the pedantic engineers are getting themselves into that situation right now just so they can say they proved me wrong
Sure, in some industries. Flight qualified (and more importantly, rad hard) single board computers are still C and C++.
Iâm glad you are âdistinguishedâ in your field. But if you think manual manipulation of complex data structures, and using pointers to access them, is âwaaaaay out of your wayâ, then you have a lot to learn.
Not saying you arenât good at what you do, but you have to understand that flight qualified hardware is about 20 years behind the modern stuff in some respects.
Hell, a lot of banking software still runs on Fortran because itâs too expensive to port, and it still works.
Last point...a âdistinguishedâ engineer doesnât follow his assertion of distinguished with âgay shitâ. Grow up.
Anyone saying that is both too young and too aware of slang to be a distinguished engineer.
Yes thats the way to tell /s
Miss me with that casual homophobia. Pointers too, but mostly the homophobia.
snowflake
Asswipe
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The reason people don't understand the equivalence of array indexing and pointer arithmetic is because the abstraction is there, so they aren't forced to look under the covers.
If that's hard to accept, why not go ahead and explain how an address in program space is resolved in to a physical address on the machine. It's also fundamental to how memory and storage work.
Grow past this nerd bragging.
This guy gets it
I deleted it because I wasn't trying to "nerd brag" (which I don't think I was, arrays are first year CS stuff), but I still think that "senior developers" should understand how arrays work because the're so simple at the memory level and every-day to software development (physical addresses less so.)
What you're saying is that you don't have to understand the basics of something when you have a tool that does it for you, whereas I believe it's important to understand what the tool does (at least at a fundamental level, you don't need to know the specifics off-hand, though you should be able to understand the specifics if presented to you).
Over relying on tools is how you make shitty software that you don't know how to fix because your app is a mess of spaghetti and libraries you didn't even read the docs for. It's simply bad CS.
Now, am I saying that I know everything? Of course not, but does that mean that I can throw my hands in the air and settle on knowing nothing or cede that I won't even try to understand? Fuck no.
Remove that ampersand and you'd be right. array is already a pointer.
I swear, I've made this mistake a million times and I'll never learn.
At first glimpse I expected to see succinct and complicated program similar to "Hello world!". Then I looked at it more closely. Jesus, man, what a let down. Screw you!
It kind of bothers me that your brackets are on the same line on your last bit of code.
that would have required me to press the space bar an additional 12 times and the enter button an additional 2 times, fuck that
Get the interns to do that shit for you.
I am the interns that do that shit for you.
Oh...well... this awkward... i'm just joking! Now go and clean my Tesla.
If I polish it up real nice, will you pay me minimum wage?
Best I can do is "resume work experience" and college credit that doesn't xfer anywhere..
You want %c, not %d if you want letters.
MAYBE I WANTED NUMBERS, OKAY?
Any reason why Z isn't used in the array? 25 just looks better for numbers at a glance?
Sure, let's go with that.
Wait what happened to 'z'?????
You post one line of code and everyone becomes a compiler, lmao
*beep boop*
Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
*bzzzzt*
Commenting on this so I can digest later.
Ever tried clicking the little save link under a comment? Itâs neat.
If this is C, can't you initialise the array as a string and it'll work the same as the char notation?
You can, but then you have to deal with the null terminator which wouldn't have made a difference here, but... meh
Huehue
We could also do
Edit: should print backwards now i think
Edit2: printf("%c", arp); --> printf("%c", *arp); (thanks to /u/-Reddit_Account-)
Edit3: char arp = &arr[25]; --> char arp = &arr[24]; (thanks to /u/RuntySmog)
holy shit
edit: I think you might need
arp[0]on that last line, otherwise you would just spam the memory address if I'm not mistakenOh yeah oops i meant to type "*arp" to dereference it
As others have pointed out, arr is only 25 elements long, so first time round your loop you print junk. Could use
sizeof(arr).The subtle difference between post and pre increment behaviour is crucial to understanding this snippet, and hence Iâd probably rewrite it to be longer but more obvious. Otherwise a junior will try and change it in 6 months and fuck it up.
Oh crap yeah, i brain farted and forgot that the largest element is arr[24] and not arr[25]
This kinda hurts my head. I give up. What does this print?
The alphabet, but the array is indexed from -25 to 0
Lol I see it now
Did a cs degree over 10years ago. Never understood this.
I now get it. Thanks!
Wait holy shit I just realised what you did with this. What the fuck. I thought you were just printing from arr[24] to arr[0] (z-a) but you're actually printing forwards and you've inverted it twice.
Don't ever actually do this in real life though
That's how you get a maintenance or refactoring dev to kill you at night
Donât you mean *arp
what does the second line do?
There is a really interesting gender component to this conversation that is somehow missing in this discussion. That sucks, because I think bringing that analysis would be really fruitful here.
You're right. Actually, from my experience the difference in interview vs everyday outfit is much smaller among female engineers than male engineers. It would be interesting to see if that's just my experience or do others notice the same.
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You need to get in to the gaming/mobile sectors.
People are not only allowed to wear full pajamas, at one company I worked for HR had to send out a letter reminding people of the difference between pajamas and straight up lingerie.
Was it because the pajamas were covering too much?
-Uber HR
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I'm a new Yorker with experience working in publishing who interned at a gaming company. My boss literally pulled me aside once and asked if I was "trying to impress anyone" because I wore long jeans and sneakers to work. Everyone else wore shorts and sandals.
Did you compromise by wearing jorts?
No but I did stop putting my hair in a ponytail after a while and let it hang out.
Yeah, and I don't really care.
You're right, but it's yet another double standard. If a female engineer came to work with her hair messy or whatever, I'm sure people would notice it more than a male engineer coming with an untrimmed beard or hair. And it sucks, even from a males perspective.
As a female dev, I definitely take advantage of the standard set by men by not bothering to style my hair post-shower. Itâs a frizzy crazy mess I normally wouldnât be seen in public with, but hey, I can get away with it. Easy to tell when Iâve got post-work plans because my hair looks nice those days.
It's actually great to know this! There's one engineer in a team I work closely with that shares the same view, but the majority just doesn't.
Haha every time my hair is done straight my team knows Iâm either going on a date after work or I was on one the night before.
I dont know where you work, but I've been in the software industry for 20+ years and never heard anybody take issue with someone else's outfit or messy look.
Male or female.
I imagine I would have a tough time taking anyone at work in pajamas too seriously, hasn't happened yet though
ÂŻ\_(ă)_/ÂŻ
Part of the fun of engineering school was I could show up to class in the same jeans and tshirt without a bra for a few days before Iâd be judged too harshly. I canât see that going over well once I get a job
In my experience in office environments women can wear whatever the fuck they want whilst men have to wear shirt and trousers (sometimes a tie and full suit).
Not in tech. Men often wear jeans and a company-branded t-shirt. Maybe a Patagonia sweater. Some guys prefer to wear a button down shirt.
Women usually wear nicer business casual clothing or high end athletic clothes (eg lululemon).
In my job, engineers wear t-shirts mostly, with ancient pop culture references on them. Both men and women. Occasionally a guy wears a check shirt or something.
Yup. This is a big reason why I'm in the tech field.
In the office environments I've been in, women seem to be able to wear more but it's just because women's dress clothes come in a wider variety of styles. Women don't get to come in in tshirts, sweatpants, jeans, or any other comfy clothing.
Men pretty much only get one outfit per dress level. Business casual means polo or button down and slacks, business professional means a suit. They just don't sell anything else.
Explain
If women tried that shit you know exactly how it would go.
I mean, it would be pretty gross if female engineers started growing out their beards for work...
But why?
I mean I get the joke that you're making, but in a thread about how men and women are held to different standards, I don't think it goes over great. I mean, yes, if a man is allowed to let his facial hair grow in whatever way it naturally does, then why shouldn't a woman's facial hair be allowed to grow in whatever way it wants?
Maybe this is better for an askwomen thread or something, but do a lot of women shave their faces? My wife doesnât shave and she has a little fuzz I guess you could call a âmustacheâ but it is transparent and thin hair.
Same deal with armpit and leg hair.
lol, no, women grow armpit, leg, and pubic hair just as much as men
Girl, (I assume) yes. I've been a bit lazy about doing my pits lately, and now I'm kinda almost waiting for one of my coworkers to comment on it so I can tell him I'll shave mine when he shaves his. ;)
How the fuck did that guy's comment get upvoted? Do men seriously believe that women have barely any hair on their bodies? Jesus Christ. I suppose some women don't, but most of us have noticeable amounts of hair at peak length. Still less than most men, but definitely visible!
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OH THE JOYS OF WOMANHOOD
Why would a female with a moustache be gross? Hard to describe, but it is. Masculinity is not a high value trait for a females, tough to explain but the reality is that most men will find that unattractive.
You both missed and made my point. Good job.
Why does a woman have to be attractive to be taken seriously at work?
All I'm arguing is moustaches on females are in fact gross. Not that they wouldn't be taken seriously at work with one, frankly I would consider a woman with a moustache someone to take very seriously at work because that's a lady that knows her way around HR. Still a gross feature, however.
Well if a man wore a drag to work in a tech company, I don't think he would be very popular and would probably be told to stop.
And then you have the shipping company whose male employees decided to wear the skirts that female employees were issued because no one was allowed to wear shorts. And it was decided that they were allowed to wear the skirts because to do otherwise would be sexist.
Good for that company. I don't understand the pertinence of the discussion. I was just saying that both men and women would be reprimanded in a workplace setting if they dressed way different from social expectations. Anyway sure socially men and women should be treated equally. But equality does not mean equivalency. Biologically, genetically, and phenotypically, men and women are different. There's nothing wrong with celebrating and accentuating some of differences between genders while maintaining equality in others.
Depends on the tech company. When I lived in Portland, lots of the men cross-dressed at tech events and to work.
Now if you're talking about a conservative place like Salt Lake City, or somewhere with lots of Trump supporters, then yeah, you're probably right.
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Wearing skirts, corsets, pink leggings, blouses, makeup. Whatever they felt like. Lots of guys in kilts too (I know, not crossdressing, but visually similar to a skirt)
No I don't. How would it go?
Iâve always wondered if people on Reddit refused to engage in bad-faith arguments
Dressing appropriately as a woman in tech is difficult. You can't dress up, but you can't look ordinary or sloppy, either. It would be so much easier to just wear trousers and a button-down, or a skirt and top. You have to look hipster, casual, tailored, and polished, young, trim, creative, and feminine. When it's 50 F in the morning but 75F at noon, you walk 3 miles a day (according to my fitbit) to the train and back, and homeless people harass you on the train.
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Yoga pants are comfortable... youâre supposed to exercise in them.
I wear them to work
That's the point they were making. Both are comfortable, but yoga pants are also very.. form-flattering. Guys in tech tend to dress comfortably, but not in a way that flatters their form.
He said women wear leisure clothes that arenât actually comfortable, unlike men. But yoga pants are comfortable.
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Yeah they are pretty damn comfortable and easy to style with other clothes. Besides you can be cold in sweatpants or whatever.
Yoga pants are super comfortable, which is why you see so many ladies wearing them. Itâs not to be sexy, theyâre just the pants I wish I could wear all the time because of how comfy they are.
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Iâve never brought a space heater in, but I always have a hoodie with me at work. The temperature settings in offices are usually not very female friendly. You clearly donât buy yoga pants and must be a dude. My yoga pants are as expensive as those $20 sweat pants. I donât know what those ladies are buying, but if theyâre spending $100 and the pants are ripping, theyâre dumb. Itâs interesting that you think yoga pants are worn to be sexy. Theyâre my comfy lounge around the house pants.
I hate the sexualisation of yoga pants to the point that men think we're wearing them to be sexy. We wear them because they're comfy, we had no part in the "sexy yoga pants" thing, that's all on you.
How do you sexualise the look of skin tight thin pants? It's already as sexual as it gets.
You have a low bar for "sexy"
Of course. I'm a guy.
I think you underestimate how good an ass looks in yoga pants.
Thatâs why I go out in menâs adidas pants and unflattering t-shirts. So I ainât gotta wear that damn bra!
Know, i may just be talking out of my ass here, but people can only draw on personal experience when giving input. So when men, at least me, see yoga pants, i cant help but think how uncomfortable that would fucking be considering i have 3 things dangling between my legs. So i think thats where other guys are coming from. I dont know, take what i say with a grain of salt.
If the dangly bits are what you think would make yoga pants uncomfortable, why would you extrapolate the discomfort to people that obviously, visibly, do not have those dangly bits.
Youre hung up on the wrong part of my comment. I dont feel that way. Im making an educated guess as to why other guys feel that way.
I thought only drug cartels allowed women to wear lingerie at work.
Holy fuck do you listen to yourself as you type this shit?
Seek help.
Pics or it didn't happen
"I don't need their respect. I have self-respect, and it prevents me from being a fucking slob."
Why? Why is dressing in a particular way somehow integral to having self respect?
It's possible for clothing to be dirty or non-functional, but beyond that it just comes down to vanity. Whether on an individual level or a societal level.
Sure, too much is bad. Is it wrong to care about how you look though?
I don't think it's wrong to care about how you, yourself, look. But if purely due to aesthetics you would see another person and think they were "a fucking slob", then that is a problem. If you think that someone doesn't have self respect because they don't dress the way you like, then that is a problem.
I'm always a little disappointed at how controversial this view is.
No. And it's also okay to not care how you look.
While we're at it, let's stop taking showers, stop brushing our teeth etc. Because fuck it.
Eh, theres a difference between hygiene and appearance. Just like things can be clean but not tidy - and vice versa.
Dirty and non functional is the definition of a slob.
That said, pretending like your appearance doesn't affect other people's perception of you in a professional environment is demonstrating impressive ignorance of human behavior.
You completely misread what he/she said.
They said as long as it's functional and not dirty, there's no other purpose than vanity.
No. I understand; it just turns out to be wrong. Managing the perceptions that others have of you has a great deal of utility.
Attempting to reduce a person taking care of their image down to nothing but vanity is the ignorant part.
So you didn't understand what I was saying, or at least you completely ignored the second sentence. Vanity operates at not just an individual but also a societal level. Non-conformance to any social expectation can cause problems for the person not conforming, but this does not imply that the social expectation itself is in any way good.
If a person expends effort taking care of their image so that other people won't think less of them, they are not doing a bad thing. The problem lies in the people who think less of them if they did not.
I'm not reducing an individual taking care of their image down to their personal vanity necessarily. Nor do I think a moderate amount of vanity applied to oneself is even a problem at all. But societal vanity - expecting other people to make themselves look the way you want them to look - I do think that's a harmful kind of vanity. People are not objects to be arranged in a way pleasing to your eye.
Who's pretending that? In fact, I specifically said something that implies I do understand that - "...vanity. Whether on an individual level or a societal level.
If it's operating on a societal scale then yes, any given individual will see benefit by conforming to the cultural expectation of a certain level of practicing vanity. But that doesn't make that societal expectation good, or provide any justification for why these views should continue to be held by anyone.
The smartest guy I know interviewed with egg on his rumpled shirt.
... from the day before.
I think I got a tech job at a university because I dressed down at my interview. At some point post-interview, I heard someone say "I guess we better get used to these tech guys dressing down."
When I interview engineers I subconsciously think less of them if they are dressed too nice.
That's fucked up man
Thats so fucking sad as someone who is a coder and likes to dress well.
That's fucked up. But as long as they don't look like businessman from wall street, then I guess it's okay.
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heh me too.
Yes when I was an engineer
No when I was running a tech company. I definitely wanted to be taken more seriously than a âknow it allâ hobo dev
I'm mostly impressed that you stayed at the same company long enough to work up from junior to senior. Feel like that's rare nowadays, especially as a dev.
Not to mention I didn't even change teams. :) Well, part of it is the fact that it took me a bit more than 4 years, and the other part is that I really love the culture and have a good relationship with my manager. But yeah, it's very rare, I agree.
The best I ever dressed was when I defended my phd. That day my tshirt had no holes let me tell ya. It had a hatori hanzo logo too!
So yeah can confirm too.
Junior software developer here. Same. Got told that I was overdressed at my interview. Came to work on the first day with a collar and was told not to for the next day so that I'd fit in...
I'm used to it now, but my parents instilled in me, a fear of being underdressed.
Yeah, it's common for parents to do that. Whenever we interview interns, I make a point of asking the recruiter to specifically tell them that they don't need to worry about the outfit and just wear something comfortable. I've once had a few show up in suits, and I felt sorry for them as there were now double nervous, because of the interview and because they weren't used to the outfit.
I wish I could wear suits to software interviews. Mine is comfy and well fitted and instills a feeling of preparation in me.
I shouldn't complain though, my job is nice and relaxing.
You can. I don't think anyone will take it against you if you're dressed well for the interview, at least I know I wouldn't, especially if I see the candidate is comfortable.
If they do take it against you, I'd think twice if I wanted to work for them anyway.
So true. My boss would be okay with it if I made a point of wanting to wear a suit.
And that's how it should be. You should be able to wear whatever you want as long as it's not making anyone uncomfortable.
If a company has a strict dress code, especially if it includes dress shirts or suits, I'll ask for a 10% salary bump just because of that.
I'm not saying that they wouldn't be okay with it or that it would cost me the position, but there are social consequences to going against the group. It's just not worth the stream of uncommon but steady resentment or distance from peers.
If the strict dress code is written down as casual and at-most business casual, then dressing up is seen as stepping outside of the code even if it's only socially enforced.
Do you have cat stickers on your laptop?
Me too, except I don't give talks. People say to dress for the job you want, not the job you have... Turns out I had been doing that all along.
Thats pretty common - the expectation for college students interviewing at office jobs is almost always to show up in a suit, and hardly anyone ever wears suits once they start working. I wore one to my interview for the job I have now, and I can wear jeans/sneakers any day to work
God, all of you sound so fucking awful.
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Show us on the doll where the tech industry touched you.
When I visited San Francisco and the city sucked.
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Traveling around the country or internationally for the sole purpose of going to raves is definitely a hobby and not something everyone does.
Nope. I dislike live music. Never been to a rave.
What broken logic are you using to conclude all that merely because people have a casual office attire???
Read pretty deep into the meaning of their clothes there didnât ya?
Yeah, sometimes is a good move to not appear âsnobbishâ and look more accessible.
Iâm a chemical engineer, and I get to do some project management, specially on the instrumentation and automation end of projects, and the programmers are always the most chill, specially when it comes to dress code.
Also, when dealing with field personnel I also tend to dress casual for the same reason.
The only reason I dress business like is because of the company dress code tbh.
Agreed. The OR bothered me a little because business clothes are just plain uncomfortable and some people really have trouble doing focused work, which is not about appearance, dressed in them. Status affords people to be able to dress how they want... Not the other way around in this case unless you're in a super shallow corporate environment that missed the point.
Polo, khakis, and hard toes.
This is the first time Iâve legitimately felt any regret for not pursuing higher education, reading this comment put some things into perspective for me. Iâve always been a bad student, bad with debt and financial management, and figured Iâd find my own way to success in the real world.
I work in the cannabis industry as a lab tech, I have a lot of responsibility and perform a lot of O-chem processes as a relatively entry level employee. My lab director, who I do not hold any actual grudge towards, is only a year or two older than me and is visibly more successful financially than I am and I feel the socioeconomic class separation from.
I can wrap my head around the processes, just makes me wish I actually applied myself to something rather than be paralyzed by fear of debt and failure.
You can always go back to school. And don't make excuses until you explore all your options! If you're doubting the path you've taken in life, you owe it to yourself to at least research other possibilities. At the very least, you might confirm that you're happy with what you have.
College is still open
I feel like this "snobbish" feel you get is only from people who don't really have the proper intellect for whatever they are being snobby about.
All you guys seems to be in pretty study heavy positions, so the average joeshmoe like me wouldn't consider dressing up looking "snobby" but maybe more of an attempt at the usual idea behind dressing up, looking "better" than the average.
With an actual brain for the subject or field you guys/gals study in how someone looks probably falls to the wayside in standards, compared to how someone can discuss and carry on a conversation in whatever you guys have spent years studying to do or research.
Damn company dress codes..
Right now I'm working for a travel agency as a resort guide/rep/whatever and most of my job is to run hikes in resort and of course go around hotels to make sure everything is fine. It's a nice job, but the company's view of a dress code fucking infuriates me; it's a +30°c day and I'm supposed to be doing a guided walk in a cotton Polo and Chino shorts? I would argue that anyone who's a keen hiker would find me a lot more convincing if I wore actual activewear, that doesn't drown me in my own sweat.
I understand airport days with long trousers and nice ironed white shirts, but I'm still a bit salty that my green Norrøna belt was "too colourful" and I'd need to wear the company belt in the future.
I'm working with a young man studying to be in construction management. He thinks he's going to be in an office 'all the time', but I know sooner or later, he's going to have to get in the field. He currently drives an older pickup, contractor lettering still showing from where they were peeled off, rusting through at the rockers and fenders. He said he would buy a new car when he gets his job. I said never give up the truck, and if he knows he's going to the field for something to take the truck. He's short, doesn't look too tough, so he needs something to help him fit in and be credible.
Hey plumber! Why isn't my distillation still automated yet? God damn ChemE's.
I respect people who can tell me how their operations work in their PJs more than a well dressed person can.
Snobbish, geez the freaking judgemental thoughts you guys have. Love to chock people since im humble but like to dress good. People shouldnt judge so much
A trendy modern look is better than a cheap suit sometimes.
True but a tshirt and jeans isn't. Plus the price of the suit does not matter nearly as much as the cut and fit. A $200 suit properly tailored will always look better than an expensive suit off the rack.
i disagree.
i'm so fucking over suits.
they serve no practical purpose.
the person in front of me does not know more about the thing i need because they're wearing a suit.
wear jeans, wear a fucking speedo, i don't give two shits. just give me the thing i'm asking for.
You are a man who does not understand suits or proper dress.
A suit doesn't mean you know shit, other than the fact that some jobs are going to require you to do stupid shit over and over again that isn't required.
Wearing a suit says, I'm willing to do what it takes. I understand sacrifices, I'm willing to send messages, and above all i'm willing to not question how dumb it is to wear a suit, and therefor not question how dumb anything else might be.
A suit says "I'm here to do fucking work, what do you have for me?"
I love suits, but I can't wear them because, as a programmer, they make you look like a clueless tool. They do exactly say that, and anyone in software who heard that would laugh their ass off.
if a suit says all that, but they 'make you look like a clueless tool', then do suits really say that?
if you want to be stylish, fuck everything else and wear a goddamned suit. but don't wear it because you think it 'sends a message' or 'indicates that you understand sacrifices'. if you want that, then understand sacrifices, send messages with your goddamned mouth.
you are not your fucking clothing.
Well yeah a programmer wouldn't wear a suit. Most jobs wouldn't. My point was that a tshirt and jeans is just lazy. For 90% of office jobs, a tucked in oxford button down, a pair of khakis, and really any non-athletic shoe would be as presentable as you need to be and look way better.
Can I ask what the functional or practical difference is in a work environment between jeans and a tshirt (provided clean and not holey) and khakis with a collared shirt or whatever passes for business casual?
I get that it "just feels lazy" but why do you feel it matters?
Putting a little more effort into the way you dress does a few things:
This is coming from a worker in the tech industry btw.
Generally if you have to meet with someone from another company you don't look like you just fell out of your bed
I mean yeah if you're a programmer at the bottom of the pyramid.
A programmer is to a software company what a shelf stocker is to a grocer, so of course you're going to look like a tool. As a programmer you ARE NOT expected to make sacrifices (beyond long hours) and you are NOT expected to send a message to other people/customers/clients. You're expected to sit in your corner and produce.
Meanwhile, almost everyone above you IS actually going to be wearing a suit at one point or another.
Wild guess: you're a timeshare salesman
Spoken by someone who has never worked in the software industry
Exactly. What does he think? Most programmers aren't like grocery stockers. Maybe in big companies like Google or something. But most of the time a dev is also a small project manager and a consultant, doing quite some important jobs, not only following orders.
This is one of the funniest, most ignorant things I've ever read. Go ahead; tell me how easy and bottem shelf work it is to implement dynamic data systems into a pretty graphics frontend using multiple different languages.
Do you know how much software engineers, or fullstack programmers make a year?
i think he's talking about webshit code monkeys and microsoft task managers not actual engineers and architects
and you are a presumptuous twat
But I'm not wrong.
Welcome to the business world kid.
You can sit and bitch about it all day long or you can use it to your advantage and better yourself, but I'm pretty sure I know which side you've already chosen. Meanwhile, if I see an opportunity to don a suit and make a lasting impression, you bet your bottom dollar I'm going to take it. I'm not going to like doing it, but I'm sure as fuck going to show somebody that I'm willing to do exactly that, something I don't like if that's what it takes to get the job done.
Wear a suit to an interview where everyone else isnât wearing a suit. Youâll make a lasting impression but likely not the kind you want
lol.
you're ascribing traits to an inanimate object. maybe you bought into that bullshit 'power tie' confidence-boosting self-talk that the corporate world encourages so their meek sheep remember to confidently ask for a sale. it's old hat. wearing a suit to project confidence is one of the oldest, most fucking tired, bullshit 'answers' to a problem that doesn't exist.
fuck outta here with 'sending a message'. use your mouth for that. you can say they're stylish, because they are and are accepted as such, but that's fucking it.
'kid'. fuuuuuuucking lol.
I swear, the level of vitriol in this site has appreciatively risen the past few weeks.
I say this as somebody who regularly works in boxer shorts. Goddamn do I love working for a fully remote company.
Hear hear! I'm usually pantless until noon.
I think the main downside is that I fear I am completely spoiled now, and won't want to settle for a cubicle ever again...
Oh there's nothing for me 'fear' any longer, I know am most definitely completely spoiled and will never again be able to work in an office. Yolo, or something. ÂŻ\_(ă)_/ÂŻ
Alright, we get it. You like looking like a slob. Damn, dude chill out.
I flat out said suits are stylish.
There is a word for this, it's called symbolism you fucking rube.
Okay, well you just keep programming and going nowhere in life, meanwhile my programming days are long behind me and I couldn't be happier.
Notice I have not once said the word confidence, or even implied it. Please learn to read. I've said it shows you are willing to make sacrifices, and want to get a job done.
What if I am not supposed to say anything, but I'm simply there as an analyst to give answers as needed? How am I supposed to send a message if I don't get called on? I wear a suit, have full documentation of w/e it is we are presenting at my side, and I keep diligent notes of everything brought up. The suit is merely one piece to an act, but an act that would just make me look crazy without it.
I'm sorry you've never dealt with anything important enough in your life to understand that, but then again, you're still just a programmer, so I definitely understand where you are coming from. You like stability and knowing what you're doing. I like challenges and bettering myself each and every day. We are just two different people. I always believe I can do better, you probably don't. I used to be like you, but then I realized I can actually get what I want out of life if I don't let my own childish attitude about how dumb everything is get in the way.
in just 10 short years and almost 0 further qualifications than what I've started with, I've gone from game development to coordinating the technology needs for the joint venture between the USOC and Los Angeles for the 2028 Summer Games. I credit all of it to learning to just shut my fucking mouth in the face of dumb social norms, and let people now I'm here to get to work fucking done.
Would you prefer I use child instead?
Seriously, just try giving a fuck sometime.
haha. best check your reading comprehension too. i'm not a programmer.
i'm just guessing you're a troll account at this point.
good though, i'll give ya that.
cheers
You sound like an intern whoâs adderal just kicked in.
Keep thinking all industries are the same. Itâll keep you out of the fun ones.
I agree, thatâs exactly the attitude that wearing a suit conveys. The thing is, in the tech industry, that obedient and non-questioning attitude is not respected, and is in fact actively looked down upon.
Yup, doesn't do to aplear lacking in critical thinking or creativity as a software engineer.
So you're saying it says you're a bootlicker.
The practical purpose is that it makes you look better. More specifically, it plays an optical illusion that divides your body into 3rds, which is more pleasing to the human eye. It also accentuates an "hourglass figure," which makes you look stronger and more well-built.
It also makes you look more well-disciplined and that you at least care a little. If you at least put some effort into how you look, then you are already displaying more effort from the outset than a guy wearing a tshirt. A speedo though, that makes an even better statement. That's REAL CONFIDENCE.
"You're gonna like the way you look, I guarantee it*"
^*2/10 ^customers ^report ^that ^they ^like ^the ^way ^they ^look
It was my wedding anniversary so I dressed up a bit, since we'd be going out right after I got off.
Nothing too fancy, just slacks and a button down shirt.
Got comments all day about how I must be interviewing else where or gunning for CEO
I applied for a job where they specifically said "wear casual. Jeans preferably. No suit." Which makes sense because it was a factory and if somebody was wearing a tie it was because there were outsiders in an important meeting. But, the hiring manager told me that he would immediately turn away people who overdressed because they couldn't follow directions.
I asked if I should wear a tie at a factory interview and the guy laughed and said not unless you're applying for vice president.
Tie + machinery = instantaneous automated hanging.
I'm just trying to outsource my problems, man
Yup! Software engineer here. While working at a startup a few years ago, I was asked to wear a hoodie and jeans to a meeting to âlook more grunge like a hackerâ. Itâs not like I ever dressed nice or anything, usually just tees and pants - but adding the hoodie worked. Client ate it up.
Yeah. I remember one time the corporate manager of the data center I used to work at came in and blew a fuse when he saw how we were dressed. He berated us for what felt like an hour("T-shirts and worn out cargo shorts? That's not how we dress for work! That's what we wear to the lake!") we joked about it and mimicked his tirade for months behind his back. He wasn't a part of the culture, he didn't get it.
I recently started at a silicon valley giant (at an Oregon campus, not the main office). I wore a tie on the first day. Oops.
They do say to dress for the job you want, not the job you have. I want to be an engineer at NASA someday, so I only wear Hawaiian shirts to work.
So far, so good.
One of the most highly paid engineers I knew at a Silicon Valley giant in Oregon was a guy who wears Hawaiian shirts every day.... and drives his 25th Anniversary Lotus Elise every Friday, because it gives him a break from his DeLorean.
I'm starting to understand why people come to me for their tech questions.
My boyfriend works for Bioware. He's a bit high up on the management ladder. He wear jeans and t-shirt to work ( clean ones but... ). You would never know he works for one of the most exciting game companies in the world and makes a fair chuck of chnage doing it.
Damn thatâs cool, any super cool perks out of that job? I would have to assume something neat besides making bank.
Ummm...yeah. There seems to be a lot of perks. The company puts a lot of money into employee happiness and job satisfaction. The provide breakfast everyday and lunch once a week it seems ( either order in or they bring a food truck by )My boyfriend goes on trips a few times a year. Flexible scheduling as well. Seems as long as the work gets done, they're happy. He's very happy with his job.
I have had this happen in Japan. I asked if I should shave for a client meeting. Boss said no, you need to look like a foreign engineer.
My rule of thumb has always been to dress +1 tier higher than the client/prospect staff does, but never more than that.
Do they all wear shorts and flip flops? Then itâs nice jeans and nice polo shirt for me.
If they wear jeans, I go to khakis or slacks.
If they are at that level, then I go to a sportcoat on top.
etc. etc. all the way up to full suit and tie.
If they are nudists, wear only socks
Haha, yeah. Work at a tech company in Austin, but a lot of our clients are big international banks and insurance companies. Pretty stuffy businesses where the C-levels might be jetsetting billionaires but the rank-and-file needed to fill out paperwork to take a piss.
When they were coming on site for something, a bunch of us tried to look a little classy, which meant wearing your Good Jeans and maybe a shirt with a collar.
Apparently, all these people were very disappointed. They'd concocted a pretty specific image of what a coder in Austin must look like. We all got an email asking us to play it up.
The next day half the office was wearing no shoes, while the other half were either in flipflops or cowboy boots. Band t-shirts and taco-stained jeans. Someone filled a fridge with Lone Star. Everyone used windows and mirrors as whiteboards to take extraneous notes during meetings.
They ate that shit up.
Dressing up is seen as trying to make yourself better than you really are. It shouldn't be perception but actual skill which gets you respect. This is the reasoning basically.
Agreed. But sometimes you need to dress to impress the types that believe in dressing to impress.
I hope to never work a job that makes me âdress up.â
Iâm fine with a uniform, but I hate feeling like I have something to show off.
It works to
Opposite, I have a set of "senior leader meeting" clothes, dress up when talking to higher up, otherwise, I'm dressed down. I had a contest with a co-worker on how long we could wear sandals to work. I won, I went over a year.
This is the weirdest part of being in a Japanese company that works in tech. We show up in jackets and ties, and everyoneâs in untucked shirts and jeans.
And before anyone goes on about how amazing Japan is, ~~most~~ a lot of dudes here donât actually know how to wear a suit properly even though they wear one every day. Two words: white. socks. Just...no.
So thatâs one thing - if youâre overdressed but youâre not on point with your look, you just look really stupid. Showing up in a suit with white socks when everyone else is in jeans, you just look like a middle schooler at his first dance.
No wonder everyone hates Mark Zuckerberg
Absolutely, if you come to a meeting with me wearing a tie, the first thing you better do is take that shit off!
/r/SuddenlyGay
That's Apple in Austin too. Was told by many people to dress "as you would on your day off" for interviews.
Itâs just some kind of circle jerking
That feels like my professional nightmare lol.
Bay Area engineers are hilarious tho, I wish I could do a study on the tech subculture
A friend of mine that sold some screenplays was coached by his agent and manager on how to dress and sit when meeting the hollywood types. They wanted him to be unshaven and sit with his feet up to seem more eccentric and said that people like that more.
Read a story about a guy laughed out of an interview because he wore a suit. Tech claims to not care about clothes, but they are just the other side of the same coin: using in-group markers to peddle exclusivity.
Man that's wild
I wore a tie my first day. One of the sales guys pointed to it and said 'we don't do that here.' Swear to God.
Super weird. I go to NYC and I have to be business formal. Head to the Bay Area and itâs jeans.
I just want to get work done.
I was doing some freelance illustration for a design house and the owner made a point of mentioning he was surprised by the quality of my work, because I dressed normally. Apparently the weirder you dress, the more creative you are. Fucking artists...
What's really any weirder about finding a suit respectable though?
At the end of the day we've arbitrarily placed status in a style of clothing.
Engineer that me and my coworkers work with frequently never wears shoes. Literally goes everywhere barefoot. Pretty fucking nasty.
Work for Microsoft as a solution architect. Had a sales guy suggest I be the only one who didn't wear a suit to a customer meeting one time. Wanted me to bring a hoodie, backpack, and Mountain Dew.
Try giving a talk in a dress shirt at a real tech conference...
I think I didn't get a job because of this. I did a video presentation with an SF tech company and I was wearing a suit. The guy commented on it at the beginning and a couple days later I got a really weird rejection letter. Basically they said that they loved everything about me, but a tiny misstep in presenting their product was a deal breaker.
Rick Reuben in a nutshell.
Damn I went into the wrong field. When I dress like a bum I am pretty sure I don't get extra respect
Upvote for your name, it made me laugh!
Can totally attest to this. Used to do onsite tech support, mostly law firms. I would get taken way more seriously when I was a little shabby, eg. not clean shaven, slightly worn out shirt, overdue haircut, scuffed up shoes vs. if I was super clean cut.
I have been repeatedly told not to wear a suit in the office because it makes the other developers feel weird. I look better in a suit, but whatever, it is a super minor thing for all the great things about my current workplace.
I mean, I sorta get it. If you look like the average person they can identify with you more. Its like when my boss walks out of his office and makes an appearance in the warehouse. He wears a suit and he sure as hell looks like he doesn't belong there.
This sounds perfect for me. I love it.
Yup.. can also confirm. But to me thereâs a function behind this.. weâre always working through the night to finish or figure out something. I ainât wearing a g-damn tie!
Same, the tech company I work for is all remote so we only see each other a few times a year. Occasionally someone dresses up for it, they get pulled aside pretty quickly and told "we don't do that here".
Think "the zuck" and his wardrobe.
That reminds me of that scene in The Social Network where Justin Timberlake has Zuck go into that meeting in a bathrobe
Itâs actually extremely annoying because they say to âwear whatever makes you comfortableâ to visit, but if youâre most comfortable in khakis and button downs theyâre judging the shit out of you and suddenly youâre not a good âculture fit.â
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We're not going to trust a suit, bro, haha.
Does that not make sense to you? To me at least, it always feels like people who dress up in fancy business clothes are trying to compensate for something. If you are good at what you do, you can impress with your skills, not with your looks.
It made sense once I was in the culture, but I grew up with relatives in east coast finance. There, if you donât dress extremely sharp itâs assumed you donât have the skills and anything you say is meaningless.
I was used to, âMeeting a 7 figure client? Better wear a tailored three piece suit.â So being told, âYou brought a suit?! Ok go get an Uber, we need to find you a T-shirt and jeans. Throw the shirt in your pillow case so it looks wrinkled but not dirty and try to steam the jeans in the bathroom before you go to sleep so they loosen up.â was really weird.
I think it's also about "our culture, not yours". It's negating the previous importance of appearance to financial/etc types with the rise of tech companies that are (more, but not entirely) run by techies and those who know how to fit in with the techies.
east vs west mentalities.
the west coast is casual is fuck in comparison to the east coast.
That's really odd. A suit would be overdressed but intentionally looking like shit is weird. Lol nothing really wrong with a suit. Youd might get a joke but no one would disrespect you or think less of you. I'm an "engineer" in a bay area social media company
Either way it worked. When I stood up to give my presentation I heard one guy in the back say, âSee how heâs the only one not wearing a suit? Pay attention. He knows what heâs talking about.â
I just like to look nice.
Me too. I don't see anything wrong with dressing up a bit so you stand out from the other 12 dickheads in a t shirt and jeans.
I like looking good m8
These are the people who wore weird unattractive clothes in high school. Why? They literally do not care at all about how they look. Itâs that simple. They have âbetterâ things to focus on than their appearance.
I grew up in Palo Alto. Maybe this is why the east coast rankles me so much. Who has the patience to wear nice clothes in their spare time?!?
This is my casual closet. I literally do not own any jeans, or non-slacks other than a pair of board shorts for swimming and three sets of shorts for exercise/working out.
108 degrees out? Polo and slacks. Snowing in winter? Polo and slacks. Playing tennis? Polo and shorts. Answering the door for UPS? Polo and slacks. Lounging on the couch watching Netflix? Polo and slacks. Playing CIV until the sun rises? Polo and slacks.
Weeeeeeird, although props for not needing to fold anything.
I hate folding clothes. Iâm so bad at it.