My son is a programmer in the somewhat northern VA area. He works for a small company where the dress code is very business casual- Polo shirts and khakis. He wants to change jobs and move out of our house to a more urban area where he doesn’t have to drive and there are things to do within walking distance. He’d also like the 4 seasons type areas. He was thinking NYC, Chicago, Boston, etc. But would still like business casual.
My impression is that those cities are more than business casual…that the farther east and North one goes, the more formal the wear. He’s a very laid back kid, so my thoughts were more towards Seattle or Colorado? Maybe even SF. He’s not interested in hot places like AZ or remote like AK.
I’m looking for ideas and/ or opinions of cities he should research or think about. ( because one day he might actually move out)
I worked in tech from 99-02 (in the PNW, admittedly) and the engineers never had a dress code at all–some were even quite eccentric, including one full-on industrial/goth type. Unless engineers are somehow client-facing, then lack of dress code is the cheapest and most welcomed perk a company can provide them. @ChuckleDoodle
I thought business formal, as daily attire, was practically dead in the US. Outside the most conservative law firms, what entry level employees have to wear suits every day? Or perhaps you have a different definition of business casual?
Our S is an EE for the Fed Govt in DC. He is mostly business casual (dress shirt or polo shirt and nice/khaki slacks) but I believe sometimes wears a blazer for site visits.
I don’t understand your query-- he does or doesn’t want 4 season weather? SF doesn’t really have 4 seasons, at least when I’ve visited. It does have a nice transit system but rents can be quite high near workplaces.
Programmers have dress codes? When I wrote software you could wear whatever you wanted. T-shirts and shorts when it was warm and jeans when it was cold. One guy always had a Hawaiian shirt on and others wore biking clothes. The only time we wore business causal was for conferences. This was back in the 1980s and 1990s in Austin and Seattle.
(sorry, just to be clear–when I wrote “engineers” in my post above, I meant “software developers and other programmers,” not electrical engineers or whatever. I worked for a software company and a dotcom.)
My son in Silicon Valley wears shorts and a t-shirt. My brother in Boston wears loafers, button up shirts without ties, a a ratty leather jacket and hair in a graying pony tail. (I was pretty shocked when he came down to client in NYC - it was all I could do not to sound like my mother. “You planning to wear that?!”) He does occasionally put on a jacket or blazer, but I haven’t seen him in a tie in 20 years. My other brother in NH (though he now commutes to Boston) is a dandy and dresses up. He’s got fedoras and boaters, and fancy shoes - the works. All in tech/CS.
SF and Silicon Valley are mostly just casual for non customer facing non management technical employees in computer companies. But companies can vary. There are seasons, but no snow except in the mountains.
@mathmom – “it was all I could do not to sound like my mother. You planning to wear that?!”
LOL! My father always said he bugged me to get up early, be ready for business at 8am, and dress decently so I could get a decent job. I ended up programming: waking up late, getting to work at 9-10am, wearing t-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops.
Of course, now I bug my D18 to get up early and be on-time, dress decently, etc.
I did some AutoCAD work for an architecture/engineering firm a few years ago. One night, I stayed until about 3 am to meet a deadline. Nobody else stayed. The next morning, I came in wearing shorts and a T-shirt. I was told I needed to dress up more. I was never even in the vicinity of clients, I was in a back room. I was happy when that job ended.
@MaineLonghorn - that was very poor decision-making by management, the kind of thing that, over time, will ensure that good employees go elsewhere. Why on earth managers would insist on such a thing in cases like that is beyond me–it’s totally self-defeating.
Seattle is mostly jeans for CS or IT people. Minneapolis is mixed – lots of large employers there for IT and some software development. Target was the only employer in town that was true business attire for IT (and it hurt their talent acquisition). Others are all business casual or jeans.
I think all the programmers I know who work in NY and Boston have a business casual or casual work environment. I don’t think it should be an issue at most places. Certainly the dress code will be obvious when he interviews at a company.
CLEAN clothes are always appreciated.
S1 is in SV and wears jeans and tshirts. He bought two suits and a couple dress shirts last year, but those are for when he goes dancing.
At one of my jobs about 20 years ago I joined the marketing department of a software company to be a technical liaison to partners. I was dressing pretty casually, in jeans and a t-shirt typically. The old-school VP didn’t like that so he actually instituted a department-wide dress code, but I was the obvious target since I was only one who never wore a tie and slacks. Hey, you hire a techie, that’s what you get!
My manager actually fought pretty hard for me, telling the VP that I’d have no credibility with the programmers from our partners that I regularly met with, if I showed up wearing a suit instead of jeans (pretty true, actually). Sadly she lost that fight. :))
I think he’ll find a business casual dress code in most places, but if he doesn’t, is he going to turn down the job he wants, in the place he wants because they want him to wear a shirt and tie?
We all did it in the 70’s, 80’s, and even later. We survived. Even recently working for the government jeans were for special days or Fridays, depending on your boss. We often used it as a fundraiser for co-workers with cancer (pay $5, wear jeans). Usually we had a fairly casual office (slacks, sweaters, no ties), but sometimes when guests were in the office, we were asked to step it up.
Worked in tech startups and IT/IS departments in the NE.
Startups was basically wear clean clothes…including t-shirts/jeans.
Financial companies and Biglaw firms are usually on the higher end of business casual(no jeans) though many techies including yours truly did subtly subvert it. Funny part was my supervisors not only didn’t come down hard on us…but sometimes even encouraged this subtle subversion.
Only rare times I had to don formal wear of suit, dark pants, and tie was if a client or senior corporate execs came by and we were given at least a day’s notice beforehand.
I.e. Wearing black jeans, black sneakers, etc.
There’s a good reason why even my former supervisors in the corporate IT/IS departments dubbed the formal suit and tie the “monkey suit”.
And in actuality, if someone donned a formal suit and tie outside of formal professional/social occasions where it’s mandatory, we’d take it as a sign someone is trying to use formal wear to overcompensate for something upstairs…
This seems to be a common mentality among many engineers/programmer/tech folks IME and spans generations considering my supervisors were boomers/older Gen X and felt the same way.
On days I have to don the “monkey suit” for work, I can’t wait to be finished with the workday so I can come home and quickly change into something more comfortable and less pretentious.
Everywhere is business casual nowadays for tech (including NYC and Boston). My daughter was even told to wear business casual for an interview at one company so as not to stand out (told by the recruiter). Have him check out the career websites for companies he is interested in - see what the employees are wearing in the pictures and videos - that will give him an idea.
In general only banking is still shirt and tie and even then only in certain areas (probably not in the tech area).
