>> Ironically my career and I guess wealth/status has progressed exactly opposite to my looks.
A friend of mine is an engineering consultant (software) and looks shabby. He met me for lunch one day after seeing a client and I said "you went to see them like that?" He said it's part of the uniform. It sends a message about being good enough not to worry about superficial impressions. I'm sure in some cases that's true.
The "uniform" thing is very true. I'm a software developer in the Pacific Northwest who loves to wear suits (they look damn good on me). I was told long ago that jeans and a hoodie are the de-facto uniform of my profession, and I needed to dress the part.
That got really hammered home when I showed up to a job interview in a button-down shirt and slacks and I was _far_ more dressed-up than the CEO. Getting bounced for not being a "culture fit" cleared up any lingering ambiguity.
I'm a t-shirt and jeans person but I will never go to an in-person interview without a button-down shirt. If a company judges me negatively for wearing that then it's not a place I want to work.
The opposite thing happened to me. I work as a lawyer and I was advised to get nicer suits and grow a beard to look older. I was told that my work was good, but appearances mattered. They said that I wasn't looking trustworthy enough to be presented to clients.
Once while giving a talk at a dev conference I was heckled just after being introduced. This was over 10 years ago but it was something to the effect of "get off the stage, suit". I wasn't wearing a suit but apparently my overall look screams "sales guy"...
I was pleasantly surprised when I completed my talk and the guy who heckled me (I never even saw him) came up to me and apologized. Then again this was in Toronto so maybe the old stereotype about apologetic Canadians is more true than not!
The "shabby nerd" stereotype is a very real thing and it goes both ways.
This is so true. There's been a lot of times when I cleaned up my look and wore really nice clothes to work, just because I felt like looking good -- and the number of "going for a job interview?" jokes I got all the time was countless. It's like a requirement to dress down.
Ugh, that joke was thrown around so many times at our office, whenever anyone dared show up to work in a button-down shirt and slacks. Or some variant like "Good luck on your job interview today!" or "Looks like you need to take an extra long lunch today. Let me know how it went."
A friend of mine is an engineering consultant (software) and looks shabby. He met me for lunch one day after seeing a client and I said "you went to see them like that?" He said it's part of the uniform. It sends a message about being good enough not to worry about superficial impressions. I'm sure in some cases that's true.