It’s not that the outfits are necessarily bad, although many of them are. Have
we lost something in the transition away from the coat-and-tie?
The business casual revolution of the 1990s and rise of tech billionaires in the
early aughts supposedly ushered in a new era that freed employees from the
shackles of dress codes. Mark Zuckerberg turned hoodies and jeans into a symbol
of New Economy meritocracy, the uniform of whiz kid hackers shaking up the
coat-and-tie aesthetic of traditional industries back east. In the digital
economy, many imagined, the most successful companies would allow talented
employees to wear whatever they wanted as they jumped around in colorful ball
pits.
But as Facebook engineer Carlos Bueno wrote in his 2014 blogpost Inside the
Mirrortocracy, we simply traded our hard-written dress codes for softly coded
dress norms. The new world is actually not so free. The cognitive dissonance is
plain to see on the faces of recruiters who pretend clothing is no big deal, but
are clearly disappointed if you show up to a job interview in a dark worsted
business suit. “You are expected to conform to the rules of The Culture before
you are allowed to demonstrate your actual worth,” wrote Bueno. “What wearing a
suit really indicates is – I am not making this up – non-conformity, one of the
gravest of sins.”
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Tag - Jeff Bezos
Proposed sale of 25m shares disclosed in notice on Tuesday after stock hit
all-time high of $200.43 during session
Amazon founder and executive chair Jeff Bezos is planning to sell almost $5bn
worth of shares in the e-commerce giant, a regulatory filing showed, after its
stock hit a record high.
The proposed sale of 25m shares was disclosed in a notice filed after market
hours on Tuesday. The stock had hit an all-time high of $200.43 during the
session. It has jumped more than 30% so far this year, outpacing the 4% gain in
the Dow Jones Industrial Average index.
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