How successful IT professional looks like

I would like to discuss like your looks can affect your professional life and career. I like to explain why looks matter and how your appearance influences other people’s opinions about you and your work. I also would like to show you few simple strategies and algorithms to improve in that area.

IT companies from Silicon Valley started not only the technological revolution that changed lives of so many people, they have also changed the traditional corporate culture. I think all of us are happy that we no longer have to come to work in the cubicle and wear unified corporate uniform which for men was always suit and tie. We have our fancy offices with colorful sofas, Swiss balls and Xboxes and our work-life balance is harder and harder to define and maintain. It is perfectly acceptable to wear funny t-shirt and jeans in the office and for many IT companies it is actually “standard” corporate uniform. Even popular culture teaches us that IT guys are dressed ultra-casual, have long hear and beards, are very difficult to understand and basically … strange. It all works somehow until you would like to be considered as professional and not just strange guy from IT. When you will need to convince someone that they can trust you to solve their problems, when you would like ask your boss for a promotion or when preparing for a date with potential partner “the strange guy” image may not be helpful. I am sure you take care about your code. You are making sure that is efficient and bug free, but I am sure that you also take care about its cleanness and elegance so when someone will look at it later he or she will be able to admire your coding craftsmanship. You are even adding spaces and tabs at the beginning of the lines even if they have no real function apart from cleaner look. I would like to convince you, for your own good, that you should take equal care about your own appearance to build consistent professional image. I would also like to show you couple of tricks how to do it easily and not to step out of your comfort zone too much. I promise that with just few minor adjustments in the way you look and dress (and how you are thinking about it) you can be much more successful developer, architect or analyst.

Here is my LinkedIn article that can be used as a teaser for the talk