IT Dress Code: 10 Cardinal Sins

 

 

 

You don't need to be a runway model to succeed in IT, but please stop making these office fashion faux pas. Remember, you work for an enterprise, not on the Enterprise.

Sandals with socks

Sandals and socks are each fine innovations in foot comfort that should never, ever been worn simultaneously. Stop it. Now. Yeah, we hear your gripes and rebuttals about comfort, yadda-yadda. What you do with your sandals and socks at home is your business; just don't strut through the halls of an actual business in them.

Sandals without socks

Some folks can pull off open-toed footwear at work. You're probably not one of them. And even if you spend your weekends in a pedicurist's chair, there's a big difference between an open-toed pair of Manolo Blahniks and a pair of flip-flops. Feet are for beaches and podiatrists, not conference rooms and daily scrum meetings. Save the Birkenstocks for your camping trip in Big Sur next weekend.

Hipster hats

Writer and satirist P.J. O'Rourke said it best: "A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat." Ladies and gentlemen alike, we beseech you: Doff the hat before entering the office. It may look great when you're at a coffeehouse or out for drinks after work. Not so much while managing software updates or provisioning virtual machines.

Jorts

Hey, great: You work in a cool, casual office where you're encouraged to be yourself, where shirt-collars and full-length pants are seen as "legacy" attire that inhibits creativity and innovation. That's super. You still can't wear jorts, whether hand-made or the off-the-rack variety (pictured). Jeans are a great fit for a casual workplace. Shorts could be, too, if it's truly that casual. Jorts are a great fit for a trash can.

Sleepwear

Those flannel pajama pants look sooooo comfortable! They also look soooooo ridiculous when you're sitting at your desk in your place of gainful employment. Sure, the boss has been asking you to put in some long nights, but she wasn't inviting you to a slumber party. Here's a career-safety rule of thumb: Never wear to work anything that you would also wear to bed.

Star Trek attire

Hey, we love Star Trek as much as the next person. And if a portion of your closet is devoted to wearing your fandom out and about, then more power to you. Just remember that you work for an enterprise, not on the Enterprise. Dressing like a crew member would be illogical.

Cycling gear

Do you bike to work to save on commuting costs, reduce your carbon footprint, and improve your health? All wonderful things. Now please change immediately before any of your coworkers see you in your cycling outfit. It fits you, um, extremely well.

Workout attire

Make no mistake: Exercise is a wonderful thing. It will make you feel better. But like our cyclist colleagues, the clothes we exercise in should not double as the clothes we work in. There's too much Lycra (codename for Spandex) and other "stretch" fabrics. There are too few sleeves. If you feel the need to wear wicking material while monitoring the network or rebooting a server, something's amiss. Ditto yoga gear, track pants, and other fashions of the (occasionally) fit. You're in an office, not a CrossFit gym. Dress accordingly.

Sasquatch beards

There's a certain je ne sais quoi about the masculine beard. You're smart yet rugged, able to handle Hadoop clusters during the week and a chainsaw on the weekend with equal aplomb. But at some point, smart-and-rugged turned into Sasquatch. It's not a beard, it's an ecosystem. You're sending the wrong message. Are you an IT wizard or an actual wizard? Nobody's seen your neck in months. Maybe set aside a small slice of that paycheck and invest in a trimmer, Gandalf.

Nothing

The odds of you actually showing up to work in your birthday suit are, we hope, very long. But sometimes people show a little too much skin, intentionally or not, in the office. Too few buttons (men and women alike, mind you), unzipped zippers, see-through fabrics, too-shorts -- no matter the offending attire, just do a mirror check once in a while, would ya?