Onami

Thanks for all of the responses everyone. It is very helpful.

Vise

Office? What's that?

ash_schwin

I am 34 and in a senior leadership role in a manufacturing environment. Worked in manufacturing in aerospace / defense / industrial in the past and now in pharmaceutical manufacturing. Always wore dress shirts with slacks and dress shoes regardless since my first day working as an intern out of college. I do keep two different suits in my office at all times for the impromptu executives that pop up or customer visits where more formality is required. Even though I am a "millennial", drives me a bit nuts when people don't dress semi-formal in an office setting, but that is just my $0.02. I do expect all my direct leadership team to dress at least office casual at the minimum.

R-M-C

I hate those pins. I wonder if they are there so if someone gets lost, you know where to return them.

JTT

I agree. Crisp and tidy trumps every time. BTW I’m 58 and come from a tie and jacket world...hope I never go back. Both are ridiculously impractical.

JTT

I’ll also add, that as a client, when someone walks into my office is a $2500 suit with $800 shoes, it screams pretentious ******, who is more concerned with their personal image than bringing value to me....next.

pfitzsim

Conversely what about when said person walks in wearing an ill fitting $200 suit and $50 shoes 😀. It’s definitely about knowing your audience and ‘style matching’.

moab

what about buying a $200k Porsche?

JTT

While mine is not a $200K Porsche, it’s why I generally drive my Honda for business visits.

JTT

Onami

One of the main reasons for my post! Should leadership in a small 100 person company wear jeans?

At 30 I was running a 300 person, 400,000 sq ft multi-site division of a US based Fortune 500 manufacturing company. Suit, white shirt and tie for a decade followed by about 3 years of button downs and golf shirts with company branding for management. After refusing a Sr VP role in Virginia, I found myself turning around struggling family run businesses. I’m on my third now and have been here 5 years. Hope to retire here in 5-7 years. 100 employees, 110,000 sq ft with input into managing 2 other businesses owned by the family. New young boss (son of owner) which I am helping to train who is open to change. In fact, I’m sharing the comments in this thread with him.

I currently wear dress pants or dockers with a good quality dress shirt and dress shoes. Honestly, at 60 I feel that this look ages me (even more!) and as I look to bring more young people into the business due to multiple upcoming retirements, I think it’s time to freshen things up a bit. I tend to agree with the statement above about nice jeans and shoes etc. looking better than some frumpy dockers. Thanks again for your insights.

canuck964

Old fart here. When I started working at IBM in the 80's I was sent home once because I wore a sports jacket to work instead of the normal blue or dark grey suit with the IBM "rep or honest" tie.

I think that you can set a more casual dress code for anyone below senior management but I still believe senior managers should not be going to work in jeans and at a minimum it should be dress shirt (with or without a tie) and dress pants. Sorry but I still feel running a business is serious work and I feel more professional when dressing the part. Again I am probably in the minority here.

Pags993

Business casual with dress down Fridays seems to be the rule of the day and I call on alot of businesses across the country. Nice jeans, collared shirt and sport coat with a nice pair of shoes for the dressier needs ie customers visiting etc.

If I had to wear a suit and tie everyday at this stage in my career I'd quit the job frankly. "Owners wear jeans employees need to dress up." That one stuck with me from years ago and he was easily worth half a Bill at the time.

#1SomeGuy

Definitely minority...our VP/C level people regularly wear jeans, not just Friday's, nobody thinks anything less of them. There's just no need for dressing up that much these days, even most of our customers will come in in jeans.

pfitzsim

Current IBM C-level = jeans