“Pajamafication” just made me snort — guilt as charged, I am currently wearing literal pajamas right now (tank/cami pj top that passes for normal tank and yoga pants), and working late (1oPM-ish).

There’s a lot of risk involved in appearing too well-dressed aside from people thinking you’re going to a wedding or a funeral. At least for women.* For instance, I don’t really want to risk a visitor mistaking me for biz dev or a lawyer, because they’d probably sooner assume that I’m an executive assistant … and if I’m in a t-shirt, hoodie, and yoga pants, people assume I’m a software engineer and don’t question my competence.

The whole point of dressing well is so we put our best foot forward and bias the observer towards taking us seriously. If dressing super-casually gets us respect, are we missing the point here? I can’t really wear the vast majority of the things suggested in the blog post. Granted, I didn’t say people take me more seriously in a bathing suit, it’s just that they treat me better and assume I know more when I’m in jeans and a t-shirt than a dress.

Also relevant:

“The science of a tech company shirt is really complex. Wearing newer shirts could signify a newbie—a new hire.
Non-company shirts may be worn by a longtime staffer comfortable in his role. Or these longstanding employees might also wear older company T-shirts, with outdated logos, to indicate all the years they’ve put in. At this point in the conversation I felt as though I was being taught the etiquette of a 17th-century French court.

This idea that specific T-shirt customs within a tech company can follow certain rules and imply meaning, power, and hierarchy is a fascinating one.” (http://www.businessinsider.com/tech-uniform-2014-5#!IUb2q)

* https://medium.com/@sailorhg/coding-like-a-girl-595b90791cce