Why don’t they wear suits? And how do other businesspeople take them seriously when they don’t wear suits? It seems super unprofessional.
Why don’t they wear suits? And how do other businesspeople take them seriously when they don’t wear suits? It seems super unprofessional.
Wearing a suit isn’t the only way to show power.
Tech used to dress up to the same standards as other professions in the 60’s, with their rules for conformity. Some engineers realized that they were too good to need to conform, so they dressed down, daring their bosses to fire them. Given how valuable the good engineers were, they got to keep their jobs even though they didn’t fully conform to the dress code.
It became a statement of power. Meetings would often be decided on the person worst dressed because they were the valuable tech decision maker.
Fast forward to when Facebook is trying to get its IPO and Mark Zuckerberg is going into meetings with financiers dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. The financiers were all wearing suits, but Zuckerberg didn’t need to because they needed him more than he needed them. Zuckerberg didn’t need to dress up for bankers, bankers needed to dress up for him.
The only time Mark Zuckerberg wore a suit as part of his work was when he was testifying in front of Congress. Why? Because Congress had power over him and that power made Mark dress up.