I work in a university with a bunch of late-20s, early-30s. All of my group wear, unfailingly, collared shirts and sweaters or sports coats or suits. We wear those because we like looking, and feeling, like independent adults - we're not teenagers and don't want to look like them. (Partly, we also don't want to be confused with students, I guess.)
When the professor bought us t-shirts for one particular project, it felt a bit like we were being put in our places - "Hey kids!". None of us have worn them to work. Nor will we; a formal shirt looks and feels better than a t-shirt, regardless of the quality of the t-shirt.
I think that the "t-shirts stick-it-to-the-man" attitude is pretty sad. No organization ever felt threatened by a subordinate wearing a t-shirt. Try wearing a better suit than your boss, try wearing a tailored shirt or better shoes. Rather than dressing like a rebellious teenager, try dressing like his/her boss. T-shirts seem like a rather poorly-thought-through immature act of rebellion to me.
Interestingly, the older guys in the group (40+) all wear (occasionally stained) t-shirts and claim to be completely uninterested in how they look. They also spend a lot of time taking the piss out of those of us who wear smarter clothes, telling us that we don't have to wear them. They also spend quite a bit of time (somewhat) desperately trying to convince us to dress down.
The head of the group, the professor, unfailingly wears a formal shirt and sports coat, of course.
"Nor will we; a formal shirt looks and feels better than a t-shirt, regardless of the quality of the t-shirt."
Looks? Probably. Feels? That's absolutely subjective. I much prefer short sleeved shirts, and having lived most of my life with a warm enough climate to make that a viable clothing option, generally wear them when sensible. I have very few collared shirts that feel as good as a nice-fitting American Apparel T-shirt. Same with shorts, when whether permits.
"I think that the "t-shirts stick-it-to-the-man" attitude is pretty sad."
Why do you think I'm dressing casually at work to stick it to the man? I, and many of my coworkers, dress casual to be as comfortable as possible as work, which has the effect of improving my productivity.
"T-shirts seem like a rather poorly-thought-through immature act of rebellion to me."
And wearing dress clothes to work just to suck up to/impress your boss, even at the cost of comfort, seems like a rather poorly-thought-through custom to me. I have several friends who work at companies which have fairly strict dress code policies, all of whom would gladly switch to more casual wear if allowed.
Maybe if you live in a cold climate, then wearing a long-sleeved shirt and trousers won't be a problem. In Sydney, where I work for a company that permits casual dress, most of engineers show up in shorts, t-shirt and flip-flops for the whole summer. The formal suits that I see the bankers wearing to work are neither well suited to our climate, nor essential for the work most of them do.
When I walk to work in a t-shirt through a city of suits, I mostly think about how it's the freedom I like. Freedom to wear appropriate clothing, rather than being tied into wearing something to fit in, or to impress somebody.
Geez, what university are you at? In my previous job (a Univ), we all wore t-shirts. If someone showed up in a collared shirt (or a suit), it was because they were interviewing somewhere.
If you wear T-shirts, that's a sign that you think the game is too crappy to be even worth noticing. That's why it's rebellious. Wearing a nicer suit might show up your boss, sure, but you're still playing the status game.
This brings fun memories. Are Google t-shirts still a sought after commodity at Googleplex ?
The way the distribution worked was that a small cabinet used to be replenished by some 50 odd t-shirts at some random time in the week. Those who wanted a t-shirt (definitely all interns, but not sure if it was limited to them alone. More on this shortly) ran a manual poll or a select loop on that cabinet. If the word spread that the cabinet has been replenished there would a mad rush. It was not that the t-shirts were like no other, but the artificial scarcity made it fun to get one. We interns definitely fought for it like a trophy. The more prized ones were the Ts for women. Good gift for your girlfriend. My personal favorite was the Wienberger T. It was not Googly enough to attract unwarranted attention.
The vibe the t-sirts created was quite opposite of "here we all wear Google Ts". It was more like, "I got one and you didn't", a fun competition to humor each other with.
Soon some Googler figured out that one could set up a webcam to monitor that cabinet. The ip address of that cam was publicly distributed. I suspect a fair number of people really wanted these t-shirts because the cam would always clog up on the traffic, to the point of being almost useless. That's a shame because someone wrote an application to compare consecutive frames from that cam so that it will send out a message once it detected a change. Its a bit tricky, you do not want it to trigger whenever someone walked passed that cabinet. Particularly so because it was right on the way to the cafeteria. So one had to average out the frames so that any change that persisted roughly for the amount of time that is required to stuff the cabinet triggered the system but not others. A low-pass filter for t-shirt stuffing.
Not sure if anyone wrote a predictive model to figure out when that t-shirt cabinet will be stuffed. But I would not be surprised if anyone did. The culture inside seemed just right for these kind of things.
Shirts are also great PR, prize rewards, and 'thank you' gifts for users who run into nasty bugs. We've had a lot of success and fun with our HipChat shirts. Our tips for others:
1. Buy high-quality shirts (American Apparel)
2. Buy small and women's sizes
3. Show some attitude, not company boilerplate
4. Buy from a local shop
5. Have a few different designs - people love having a choice
6. Make sure the shop saves the screens (cheaper to re-order in the future)
7. Quadruple check the spelling and capitalization :)
When I get free t-shirts from work or conferences, they're pretty much reserved for being something to wear when I'm painting or mowing the lawn. One such shirt never even made it out of the office; it's still been neatly folded up at the bottom of a desk drawer since the day they gave it to me a few months ago.
But this is because I have yet to receive a company or conference t-shirt that either properly fits me or has a tasteful or clever design I'd want to be seen wearing in public. If you print two dozen sponsor logos on the back of a free conference t-shirt, I'll probably toss the shirt and wish you spent the t-shirt budget on better booze at the afterparty.
I know I'm not averse to t-shirts in general, since my wife will take any opportunity to give me trouble about how many shirts I've bought from Woot and Threadless...
Agreed, and thanks for bringing up women's sizes. I wish tech companies (and especially tech conferences I PAY for) would realize that men's shirts are not unisex. They're for men. Whenever a women's option isn't available, it definitely feels unwelcoming.
This one puzzles me a lot. The place I work recently ordered a bunch of shirts for everyone who wanted one in the dev team. The sizes went up to XL, and their "XL" was the same size as an "M" in some stores. Fully half the devs in our shop couldn't fit into the largest size offered.
Here's a tip, as someone who likes wearing t-shirts: buy larger sizes. Someone who can wear an "M" can just as easily wear an "L" or "XL", but the reverse is very much not true.
T-shirts are achievement badges for tech employees, with the interesting restriction that you can only wear one at a time.
This is why every programmer has about 5-10 times as many t-shirts as years of work experience.
I would love to see a photo essay about the story told by the "t-shirt timeline" of a programmer or other tech figure. Definitely more colorful than a resume.
In fact, that would make a great site. I remember there used to be a great site cataloging the early shirts of Apple. I would love to use a site where I can catalog, compare and (yes) show off my tech t-shirt collection without having to actually wear them daily. Maybe others would want to catalog their rare rock band shirts. And everyone is curious about the black YC shirt, right? You could easily monetize with promoted orderable designs. Pleeease, LazyHN?
Keep an eye on what Jason Scott gets up to http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/2731 He's notorious for having many irons in the fire, so no idea when this will actually lead to something though. Maybe he just needs someone to help get it started?
I really like the idea of a site where I can put my memory shirts online. Right now they just sit in a box and nobody sees them. Some of them mean so much to me that I never wear them because I don't want them to wear out.
Frankly I'd almost rather wear what Neo wears as a 'slave to the man', if it was all a matter of symbolism (a hot climate makes suits impractical).
But seriously, celebrating the fact that we dress like 22 year olds might have a teeny tiny bit to do with the fact that programmers are typically PAID like 22 year olds.
The false consciousness is epic. We'd do a lot better if we put on a suit and admitted that we're going to a place where we work. We'd do a lot better if we demonstrated on a regular basis that we have no real problem putting on a suit and walking out the damn door into a bank if pay or conditions go to shit. We'd do a lot better if we demonstrated that we think we're going to a place of work rather than a place to hang out with friends and do 'cool stuff'. We'd do a lot better if we conveyed regularly to our employers that paying us properly and treating us well is more important to us than playing stupid 'tribal identification' mind games (this stuff should come organically from below, not be created by management).
Apparently we're celebrating our individuality and difference on one hand with our tshirts, while also having 'tribal cohesion' and advertising our company in our spare time. We're showing how flat our organization is in one way, while collecting t-shirts as merit badges on the other.
It's all a bit eyerolling. Combine all this with the non-existent standards for programmer qualification, and the vocal minority of GPL people who claim that it's actually _immoral_ to be writing closed-source software, and I feel like I'm working in a field that has a 'anti-guild' (that works in the reverse direction from a traditional guild, ensuring that its members are paid less and treated worse than their qualifications should imply).
I'd upvote you twice if I could. Much of management-ese seems to be thinly disguised attempts to get employees to work harder for the same pay, and creating loyalty via T-shirts is one of the more transparent ones. I get really strange looks at work when I tell people I'd prefer to be recognized by my dress as a smart, qualified, but independent professional, rather than "I am assimilated to the hive of company X". I also find it strange that in a capitalist society nobody bats an eye-lid when the Communications Manager talks about employees "living the brand". I'd better go buy my copy of the Little Red Book.
Plus, I might add, most tech people like like absolute crap wearing a t-shirt, due to the fact that most of them are sedentary as hell and thus either skinny, fat, or sometimes that horrible combination of both.
TFA seems to think wearing t-shirts helps you keep the man down which is weird.
I'm not so sure I'm fighting the power while working in my my nice office in a good part of town in an engineering job. The fact that this guy works at linked in, a business built around yuppies networking, makes that assertion even more cringe-worthy.
Not to knock linked in, but they aren't exactly 'rebels'.
In fact, I've found company t-shirts to be a little too "Stepford employee" for my tastes. It's part of a dangerous train of thought where you assume the goals of the company you work for are the same as your goals, or your personal goals must be completely aligned with the company's. Very dangerous thinking for salaried employees, IMO.
On the other hand, sometimes a t-shirt is a t-shirt.
Actually, I miss wearing "work clothes", I like changing out of shirt and tie into jeans and t-shirt when I got home, it drew a line under the working day. Now it all blends into one (including working after hours...)
Witty, off-beat, beautiful, thoughtful t-shirts can be a lift to morale. The fact that you settled for just slapping the crappy product logo on a t-shirt with fabric that feels like ass wipe and was probably made by child-labour in a Latin American dictatorship doesn't motivate me nearly so much.
It's probably the greatest motivator, pound-for-pound, that I've come across.
Status signals are important and useful in tribe-sized groups of people, and they work best when they can't be bought or faked. It doesn't really mater what form they take.
I know most here seems to love t-shirt but personally I am a fan of a suit, or at the very least a nice shirt (Not a cheap one that looks like a tent please).
I see the points the author of the blog post makes but still, is it so bad to want to wear 'typical' business wear at a tech company?
Note: I love a witty t-shirt just as much as the next guy, but preferably on my free time.
I'm also more comfortable in a tailored suit. Yet I dare not wear one to work, lest I be accused of pretentiousness or trying to take over the business. It's an interesting dynamic...
Here in Uruguay, I've worked at a software factory (Urudata) that expected us to use a suit. I'm used to suits, so I didn't mind (I also like looking professional, and a suit signals that).
Now I work for a financial institution, so a suit is expected.
The US seems to have a much more lax attitude with respect to attire (especially for professionals, a University graduate is expected to look smart here). The "stick it to the man" point the article makes is beyond me.
T-Shirts work for -everything-. Non-crappy t-shirts (if they're actually witty even better!) will boost the morale of almost any group. See the group of grumbling engineering students. Now see them happily putting on and wearing their purple engineering t-shirts, temporarily forgetting the tortures that the faculty unleashes on them. They might even -like- the faculty for a while. If only so they can make sure they'll never -ever- be confused for an arts student.
"The best analogy I can think of is to put yourself back in time, to when you were between 8 – 12 years old. Now, think carefully about the things that 8 – 12 year old boys like (at least, the geeky ones)."
Overall I thought this was an interesting article with a surprising amount of insight into something seemingly insignificant like t-shirts. But, I have to admit that, as a female founder, I was a bit frustrated by the assumption that the reader was a male. While it's certainly true that the industry is heavily male, we shouldn't forget about all the awesome women in tech!
Let me work on something really cool without undue interference and I don't care if you give me a t-shirt, coffee mug, water bottle or anything. Schwag is nice, but building something useful is better.
At a number of places I've worked at, people did not want t-shirts. They preferred a free meal instead. Mentioning that a t-shirt lasts a lot longer than a meal had no sway.
I've been to Palantir a few times for dinner, and almost everyone there wears Palantir t-shirts. They give out one for each release, and it looks like they're each themed around an element of the periodic table. The critical part is that they are nice shirts (American apparel), and really nicely designed. They also seem to order women's sizes.
Why is this stuff unique to tech companies? MBAs, despite being constantly accused of it by nerds, aren't idiots. Neither are accountants, neither are controllers, neither are middle managers.
Everybody does their best work when they're most comfortable. Why haven't many traditional companies figured this out yet?
I work at a non-"startup" company, and I really appreciate the t-shirts my company gives us. When I joined the company, I got a plain white one, and every so often they sell the "generic" shirts for fairly cheap (at cost I believe). At some of the company events, there is generally a t-shirt given out celebrating some special event (shipping a new vehicle), or sometimes a "funny" shirt that everyone at the event gets. A few years back, they gave out a shirt that parodied the west coast choppers and orange county choppers. I've gotten a few comments about how cool my company is that they'd give out those shirts. The fact that they are really comfortable t-shirts and last a long time helps too.
[+] [-] nagrom|15 years ago|reply
When the professor bought us t-shirts for one particular project, it felt a bit like we were being put in our places - "Hey kids!". None of us have worn them to work. Nor will we; a formal shirt looks and feels better than a t-shirt, regardless of the quality of the t-shirt.
I think that the "t-shirts stick-it-to-the-man" attitude is pretty sad. No organization ever felt threatened by a subordinate wearing a t-shirt. Try wearing a better suit than your boss, try wearing a tailored shirt or better shoes. Rather than dressing like a rebellious teenager, try dressing like his/her boss. T-shirts seem like a rather poorly-thought-through immature act of rebellion to me.
Interestingly, the older guys in the group (40+) all wear (occasionally stained) t-shirts and claim to be completely uninterested in how they look. They also spend a lot of time taking the piss out of those of us who wear smarter clothes, telling us that we don't have to wear them. They also spend quite a bit of time (somewhat) desperately trying to convince us to dress down.
The head of the group, the professor, unfailingly wears a formal shirt and sports coat, of course.
[+] [-] whakojacko|15 years ago|reply
Looks? Probably. Feels? That's absolutely subjective. I much prefer short sleeved shirts, and having lived most of my life with a warm enough climate to make that a viable clothing option, generally wear them when sensible. I have very few collared shirts that feel as good as a nice-fitting American Apparel T-shirt. Same with shorts, when whether permits.
"I think that the "t-shirts stick-it-to-the-man" attitude is pretty sad."
Why do you think I'm dressing casually at work to stick it to the man? I, and many of my coworkers, dress casual to be as comfortable as possible as work, which has the effect of improving my productivity.
"T-shirts seem like a rather poorly-thought-through immature act of rebellion to me."
And wearing dress clothes to work just to suck up to/impress your boss, even at the cost of comfort, seems like a rather poorly-thought-through custom to me. I have several friends who work at companies which have fairly strict dress code policies, all of whom would gladly switch to more casual wear if allowed.
[+] [-] mryall|15 years ago|reply
When I walk to work in a t-shirt through a city of suits, I mostly think about how it's the freedom I like. Freedom to wear appropriate clothing, rather than being tied into wearing something to fit in, or to impress somebody.
[+] [-] ajays|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zasz|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chopsueyar|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] srean|15 years ago|reply
The way the distribution worked was that a small cabinet used to be replenished by some 50 odd t-shirts at some random time in the week. Those who wanted a t-shirt (definitely all interns, but not sure if it was limited to them alone. More on this shortly) ran a manual poll or a select loop on that cabinet. If the word spread that the cabinet has been replenished there would a mad rush. It was not that the t-shirts were like no other, but the artificial scarcity made it fun to get one. We interns definitely fought for it like a trophy. The more prized ones were the Ts for women. Good gift for your girlfriend. My personal favorite was the Wienberger T. It was not Googly enough to attract unwarranted attention.
The vibe the t-sirts created was quite opposite of "here we all wear Google Ts". It was more like, "I got one and you didn't", a fun competition to humor each other with.
Soon some Googler figured out that one could set up a webcam to monitor that cabinet. The ip address of that cam was publicly distributed. I suspect a fair number of people really wanted these t-shirts because the cam would always clog up on the traffic, to the point of being almost useless. That's a shame because someone wrote an application to compare consecutive frames from that cam so that it will send out a message once it detected a change. Its a bit tricky, you do not want it to trigger whenever someone walked passed that cabinet. Particularly so because it was right on the way to the cafeteria. So one had to average out the frames so that any change that persisted roughly for the amount of time that is required to stuff the cabinet triggered the system but not others. A low-pass filter for t-shirt stuffing.
Not sure if anyone wrote a predictive model to figure out when that t-shirt cabinet will be stuffed. But I would not be surprised if anyone did. The culture inside seemed just right for these kind of things.
[+] [-] ithayer|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chopsueyar|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] powdahound|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ben1040|15 years ago|reply
When I get free t-shirts from work or conferences, they're pretty much reserved for being something to wear when I'm painting or mowing the lawn. One such shirt never even made it out of the office; it's still been neatly folded up at the bottom of a desk drawer since the day they gave it to me a few months ago.
But this is because I have yet to receive a company or conference t-shirt that either properly fits me or has a tasteful or clever design I'd want to be seen wearing in public. If you print two dozen sponsor logos on the back of a free conference t-shirt, I'll probably toss the shirt and wish you spent the t-shirt budget on better booze at the afterparty.
I know I'm not averse to t-shirts in general, since my wife will take any opportunity to give me trouble about how many shirts I've bought from Woot and Threadless...
[+] [-] kariatx|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] randallsquared|15 years ago|reply
This one puzzles me a lot. The place I work recently ordered a bunch of shirts for everyone who wanted one in the dev team. The sizes went up to XL, and their "XL" was the same size as an "M" in some stores. Fully half the devs in our shop couldn't fit into the largest size offered.
Here's a tip, as someone who likes wearing t-shirts: buy larger sizes. Someone who can wear an "M" can just as easily wear an "L" or "XL", but the reverse is very much not true.
[+] [-] zach|15 years ago|reply
This is why every programmer has about 5-10 times as many t-shirts as years of work experience.
I would love to see a photo essay about the story told by the "t-shirt timeline" of a programmer or other tech figure. Definitely more colorful than a resume.
In fact, that would make a great site. I remember there used to be a great site cataloging the early shirts of Apple. I would love to use a site where I can catalog, compare and (yes) show off my tech t-shirt collection without having to actually wear them daily. Maybe others would want to catalog their rare rock band shirts. And everyone is curious about the black YC shirt, right? You could easily monetize with promoted orderable designs. Pleeease, LazyHN?
[+] [-] absconditus|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patrickyeon|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pontifier|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onan_barbarian|15 years ago|reply
But seriously, celebrating the fact that we dress like 22 year olds might have a teeny tiny bit to do with the fact that programmers are typically PAID like 22 year olds.
The false consciousness is epic. We'd do a lot better if we put on a suit and admitted that we're going to a place where we work. We'd do a lot better if we demonstrated on a regular basis that we have no real problem putting on a suit and walking out the damn door into a bank if pay or conditions go to shit. We'd do a lot better if we demonstrated that we think we're going to a place of work rather than a place to hang out with friends and do 'cool stuff'. We'd do a lot better if we conveyed regularly to our employers that paying us properly and treating us well is more important to us than playing stupid 'tribal identification' mind games (this stuff should come organically from below, not be created by management).
Apparently we're celebrating our individuality and difference on one hand with our tshirts, while also having 'tribal cohesion' and advertising our company in our spare time. We're showing how flat our organization is in one way, while collecting t-shirts as merit badges on the other.
It's all a bit eyerolling. Combine all this with the non-existent standards for programmer qualification, and the vocal minority of GPL people who claim that it's actually _immoral_ to be writing closed-source software, and I feel like I'm working in a field that has a 'anti-guild' (that works in the reverse direction from a traditional guild, ensuring that its members are paid less and treated worse than their qualifications should imply).
[+] [-] jwhite|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onan_barbarian|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewvc|15 years ago|reply
I'm not so sure I'm fighting the power while working in my my nice office in a good part of town in an engineering job. The fact that this guy works at linked in, a business built around yuppies networking, makes that assertion even more cringe-worthy.
Not to knock linked in, but they aren't exactly 'rebels'.
[+] [-] trotsky|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ezy|15 years ago|reply
On the other hand, sometimes a t-shirt is a t-shirt.
[+] [-] gaius|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zachallaun|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GiraffeNecktie|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alex_c|15 years ago|reply
T-shirts as badges, or achievements (as in gaming). Never thought of it that way.
[+] [-] aristus|15 years ago|reply
Status signals are important and useful in tribe-sized groups of people, and they work best when they can't be bought or faked. It doesn't really mater what form they take.
[+] [-] cubicle67|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Chrono|15 years ago|reply
I see the points the author of the blog post makes but still, is it so bad to want to wear 'typical' business wear at a tech company?
Note: I love a witty t-shirt just as much as the next guy, but preferably on my free time.
[+] [-] orangecat|15 years ago|reply
Want to, no. Try to force everyone else to out of some misguided sense of "professionalism", yes.
[+] [-] solid|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GFischer|15 years ago|reply
Now I work for a financial institution, so a suit is expected.
The US seems to have a much more lax attitude with respect to attire (especially for professionals, a University graduate is expected to look smart here). The "stick it to the man" point the article makes is beyond me.
[+] [-] icegreentea|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _becky|15 years ago|reply
Overall I thought this was an interesting article with a surprising amount of insight into something seemingly insignificant like t-shirts. But, I have to admit that, as a female founder, I was a bit frustrated by the assumption that the reader was a male. While it's certainly true that the industry is heavily male, we shouldn't forget about all the awesome women in tech!
[+] [-] mediacrisis|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Florin_Andrei|15 years ago|reply
But, as a guy, I LMAO'd, because it felt so true.
[+] [-] michaelchisari|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cydonian_monk|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] count_zero|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] khandelwal|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeanhsu|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blhack|15 years ago|reply
Everybody does their best work when they're most comfortable. Why haven't many traditional companies figured this out yet?
[+] [-] fryguy|15 years ago|reply
This article really hit the nail on the head.
[+] [-] iamgoat|15 years ago|reply