Too real. I once got turned down by the Apple Store for a retail position because I wore a collared shirt to the interview (after being told in advance not to wear anything formal). Interviewer let me know I came off as too formally dressed to get their vibe. The discrimination/bias was real.
I mean, if they said not to wear something formal, that doesn't really seem like bias as much as just not following instructions. If I showed up to an interview where they said to wear a suit and I was in jeans and a polo, I'd expect to get turned down too.
A button up shirt without a jacket, at the time, was business casual at most. What they wanted was a t-shirt and jeans. Even Walmart, when I’d worked as a teen, expected a collar and appreciated a sports coat for interviewing. Different times for sure.
Sure, but t-shirt and jeans is also what everyone working at an Apple Store wears. It'd be one thing if they didn't say what to wear - then I'd totally understand going a bit above, but if they specifically put in "not formal", then it seems reasonable to assume they mean "match the uniform generally".
They didn’t say what to wear, they said a vague what not to wear. Almost all interviews at that point in time expected attire a step above your intended position. I personally think it was just a silly test of whether you already know what they expect. “You are a great hire but you dressed too nicely for the interview” is certainly a thing that I chuckle at.
I'd mostly agree, but with them specifically calling out "not anything formal" as part of the expectations for interview attire wouldn't be the time I'd want to be riding the line of "is this too close to formal". This isn't a job at a tailor or stylist. You're not being tested on your understanding of the roles of various garments in different levels of fashion over time.
Presumably OP had seen/visited an Apple Store before and knew what employees wore there, so it's not a mystery what the uniform is, and therefore what is probably meant by "don't wear anything formal". It's not some kind of gotcha.
We might be getting a but pedantic about what “formal” meant at the time, but you would have had to be in that Apple culture circle to consider a button down formal. Seems normal today, but it was not back then in most parts of the world. Today I would agree that folks would already know the expectation.
I didn't wear a suit, but in 2012 I wore slacks, tucked in collared shirt, and a tie, and got the same response from Microsoft. It was for an internship which is hilarious.
I interviewed elsewhere and one other time I wore an Oxford. I passed the university interview but the hiring manager told me for the on campus interview to not wear that again, or I'll stick out too much. I wore a plain T-shirt and have been happily employed for 10 years here :)
Reverse snobbery is like slave morality. It transmutes a high standard into a perverse mirror image consisting of intolerant, intentional, celebrated mediocrity.
At least requiring a suit requires something aesthetically better and more worthy of human dignity. Reverse snobbery demands you dress worse and beneath it.
It's just a different set of in group // out group signals, not some sort of moral failing. You're well within your rights to not like the signals though.
In human dynamics, very little is based on “first principles”. Some words are considered vulgar and others are not. Why? Aren't they just a sequence of letters? They certainly are, but those sequences have been assigned a meaning that does not derive from any “first principle”.
In the Western world, for a long time, at least 100 years, a suit was considered the proper attire for men. Then expectations changed and now some, many even, consider jeans and a t-shirt as aesthetically pleasing as a suit. Maybe in a few years, you'll go and talk to your lawyer, who will turn up to an hour-long meeting that you'll pay 500 dollars for in a tracksuit and it'll be perfectly fine, you'll even find the attire aesthetically pleasing.
> In the Western world, for a long time, at least 100 years, a suit was considered the proper attire for men.
Traditionally, it was a suit and hat. Going suit alone was already "dressing down". It is funny that we now consider that to be the paragon of male fashion.
> Maybe in a few years, you'll go and talk to your lawyer [...] in a tracksuit and it'll be perfectly fine, you'll even find the attire aesthetically pleasing.
It seems we'll question why he isn't wearing jeans and a t-shirt like a dignified man.
I absolutely agree, humans are creatures of context, that's why GPs opinion that not wearing a suit is a "perverse mirror image" and "mediocrity" is out of touch.
Firstly, what we call a suit is a highly varied outfit of clothes that are designed to look good on a male silhouette. Deriving from that, yes, the suit is aesthetically better- to disagree is to discount both the entire field of custom tailoring and also the rest of wider society surrounding tech.
Most people off the street would agree that a suit is more dignified, and it's not without reason. Wearing a suit indicates a level of discipline, effort, and intention about the way that you look that simply wearing a t shirt with jeans does not.
To contrast, the historical reason for the t shirt / jeans combo is practicality and convenience; tech as an industry got away with it at first, because techies were not interfacing with clients directly or simply because they're working class.
You can argue about the elitism and class differences surrounding suits versus t shirts and jeans, but I think it's a bit ridiculous to say that suits aren't aesthetically better just because of the media image for hacker types.
Most of the popular outfits are "designed to look good" to a high degree, and then humans are quite bad at fitting the garments on average. Poorly fit suits that don't look good on a male silhouette are absolutely a thing, and I'd posit that an unkempt male wearing a poorly fitting cheap suit looks "lower status" than a fit and well groomed male wearing a stylish t-shirt/jeans combo.
So all we have is the tradition that "high status males" in the traditional power roles wear suits when in public, which is true and valid, but it does not translate into the inherent superiority of this garment.
100% agreed. I’ve seen way more than enough people in poorly-fitting expensive suits to last me a lifetime, and it is just painful to watch.
The main benefit of a suit is that it can be easily tailored to fit a person perfectly, which isn’t the case with tshirts/hoodies/jeans/etc. I mean, you can tailor those, i guess, but that’s very uncommon.
For non-suits, the pro-tip is to just focus on finding ones that fit your shape the best (or changing your shape; unless you are one of the unlucky few who has a non-conforming shape, e.g very tall), and that’s their main downside.
Well fitting casual clothing > poorly fitting suits any time. Beyond that, it is situational.
Hehe explain aesthetics from first principles sounds like demanding the equation that proves Mona Lisa is a good painting.
I mean you can argue aesthetics, but it’s a fact that in the western world, a suit is considered by everyone, more or less, to be more formal than T-shirt and jeans, and more formal is widely considered to be more dignified than casual wear. The first principles that matter aren’t aesthetics, they are more likely customs and class (socioeconomic status).
