I was on a contract for the government when my company hired a really good DBA. He hated dressing up. He was introduced at a meeting and wore a polo shirt, which I thought was fairly professional.

Government contracting guy said to wear a tie.

Next meeting, he wore a tie around his polo shirt.

He was fired on the spot.

There are times I fucking hate the government and this was one of those times.

The guy was fucking amazing. But my company fired him because the government didn't want someone so sloppy on the team.

I've actually seen this go the other way before.

I met this dude from Serbia, I can't remember his name, but he was the friendliest guy you'd ever meet, and was probably about 7 foot tall.

One day our infra team was having an issue with a custom Spark cluster, and he was brought in to help. He came in a full suit that looked tailor made, like he'd just walked off the set of Suits, a suited Galdalf in a room of hobbits dressed in t-shirts around a foot or two smaller than him. He was in the room for two hours, and whatever he installed or ran for everything up and running again, with some extra time to help with some other tweaks.

He worked near my desk, so I asked him if he wanted to come for lunch. He declined because he was busy, so I asked if he wanted me to grab him something. His response "...Cherry Coke". Once he'd finished, he came over to us, and offered to take us out for food. He paid for everything, including a drink at a nearby whiskey bar he apparently goes to often. I asked him why he wore a suit, and his response was "I'm uncomfortable wearing loose clothes, and I like layered clothing that fits to my frame, so I always wear suits when I need to be comfortable". In many ways, for someone his size, I guess it made sense.

I miss him sometimes, because he'd always say "hello my British friend" every time he saw me nearby, even though we both lived in Britain, and he definitely knew my name. If I had to guess, the dude probably had a solid mil in stock, and was getting paid a solid £150k a year + more stock. He was definitely rich, because he could afford an apartment in central London near the office. Dude worked probably 60-80 hours a week though, and if asked he was on a plane to the US, India, wherever someone needed a freakishly tall suited guy to fix a data problem.

Pssh... This guy is chump change, maybe a senior engineer at best. You can tell by his footwear. The really highly paid engineers have Crocs with socks, if any footwear at all. 😆

There was a meeting a couple of years ago between my company's engineers and some NASA representatives. No one in my company really wears suits anymore and the NASA guys complained that it was "unprofessional" to not wear a tie when one of our leads went up to present in just a Tshirt and jeans. After hearing that, the lead went back to his desk and came back with a wooden joke tie hanging around his neck to continue. They stopped criticizing our apparel after that.

There's an interesting cultural difference that I've observed. My grandpa was a senior engineer and he was proud to dress immaculately. He went to work in a suit and he never wore less than business casual even when going to the beach. I don't think he owned any shirt that wasn't a button-up long-sleeve. I'm an engineer (with a different specialty) and I only wear a suit to job interviews. Generally when I'm at work I'm in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt.

I wonder if it's a matter of generations or countries or both. When and where my grandpa was young, a suit was very expensive and hierarchies were rigid.

Adam sandler looks a bit tired these days

Principal engineer outfit...

Someone who knows he has job security

He's dressing much nicer than he used to. At least his clothes fit. He used up wear basketball shorts and giant t shirts everywhere

Adam Sandler looks great for his age.

I stopped dressing to "impress" after about 4 years in my field. The amount of crap I've fixed that was done by more tenured/"experienced" people is too much to count.

At this point, I'm wearing what's comfortable. If you don't like it, too bad. I'm here because you need me, not because I want to be.

I'm still paid fairly paltry amounts, so I dunno if I'm the "highest paid" person. Management certainly doesn't listen to me, but they keep signing the cheques. If you want to pay me to tell you about problems so you know about what you're refusing to do anything about, I'm okay with that. Your company, your decision.

Ours has a coffee stain.

In my experience working in a tech company, seeing someone not dressed like that is the oddity. You know they're from marketing or finance when you see them.

I once worked on a company that made IT Security products and was located close to a major technical university.

The guys that used to come in very much with that look (though it was sandals and white socks as footware) were all in their 60s, who worked both at that uni and had a side-gig in that company doing programming work in mainframes.

Also applies to software developers.