I tried to get into ties. I bought myself a few nice ones, and coordinated them with my outfits. It was, briefly, glorious.

Then the idiots in charge started to treat me like I was one of them. They started to hold my opinions on the same level as their own.

I never said, “No, Bob, we don’t both have valuable inputs in this nuanced technical topic. I have decades of deeply technical experience and you have a fine arts degree and took four seminars on interpersonal skills.”

But I did stop wearing ties.

I’m a fan of fine arts degrees and those interpersonal seminars, but neither one (alone) will keep a fragile web service running safely.

Now I show up to those meetings noticeably underdressed, and everyone in the room assumes “oh shit, this person must know their shit, it certainly wasn’t their fashion that got them into this room”.

It irritates me that it works.

When I was fresh out of college (about 20 years ago for context) I was shadowing an executive for a meeting with a bunch of people. I asked him if I should wear a suit and tie. He said you can’t go wrong in a suit and tie, but whatever you wear tells everyone in the room what you want them to think of you.

Some people dress comfortably because they don’t want to impress anyone. Others dress comfortably because they want you to think they don’t care if you’re impressed. And then there are people who dress comfortably because they don’t need to impress anyone.

I asked him what the difference was, and he said it’s the cost of the tie they aren’t wearing. I always thought that was clever while also completely useless.

Then in the meeting he made a bigoted joke and killed the entire deal. So, I don’t quote his advice often, but I thought it was relevant here.