To Tie or Not to Tie

No, I'm not talking S&M or bondage. (But, check back next week, who knows...) The question in front of me right now is a simple one: Do I put on a tie or not?

As you may or may not know, I'm at a crossroads in my life, quite literally trying to figure out which way to go with the rest of my time on planet Earth. The small biz thing just wasn't me...Too much hassle for too little return. I'll go into details some other time, but suffice it to say that small biz is boring at best, stressful for the wrong reasons most of the time, and there are much better opportunities out there. If I'm going to pour my heart and soul into something, I want it to be worthy of the effort.

At this time, I'm debating if I want to get back into high-tech or to take some time off or to go into something entirely different. In the short-term, as a kind of "hedging my bets" thing, I decided it would be best to at least test the waters with some of the local (Seattle) high-tech firms, to see if I might stumble across something that truly excites me. To that end, I have an upcoming interview with a local high-tech company, and I really cannot decide if it is appropriate to wear a tie or not. In the days of old (like when I was starting out in my career!) that really wasn't much of a dilemma: Guys wore ties for interviews. Simple. Easy. Over the years, however, that has changed, especially in leading-edge high-tech firms. Obviously, not wearing a tie is a risk if the company thinks you don't care enough to get dressed up for the first date. On the other hand, a candidate wearing a tie might be viewed as too "stuffy" or too traditional for the opening, especially in high-tech. Silicon Valley led the casual charge, and it has quickly spread to most of the rest of the country. So, it really is a quandary: If a man interviews for a senior management role in a high-tech company, should he or should he not wear a tie? Let's face it: The choice does send a message, and without knowing the people who will be interviewing you, it's pretty much a coin-flip. Arghhh...I'll let you know tomorrow which way I decided to go. (And for those of you who have seen the Halloween picture, no, I will not solve the tie question by dressing in drag ...though I have to admit, I was pretty damn hot!)

At least in this area, women candidates really do have an advantage over us poor guys. While I debate the ominous question above, my fate potentially hanging by a cloth around my neck (how symbolic!), our women candidates can't go wrong: Wear a dress, a skirt, slacks, pants-suit, anything other than cutoffs, and you're perfectly fine. We've all been drilled to avoid reading too much into what a woman wears, but for a guy, the tie is a statement, one way or the other. Oh, the pain of this dilemma!!!

I honestly don't mind wearing a tie. While most guys complain that they are uncomfortable, I've never found that to be the case at all. I think the real problem most men have is not with wearing a tie per se, but rather the unchanging nature of dress shirts, combined with that getting older and putting on weight thing. Let's face it: Women's styles change every year or two, but for us guys, the standard dress shirt is really no different today than it was 20, 30, or more years ago. Sure, occasionally an off-beat color comes out that might be indicative of the era, but short of that dress shirts just don't change. A guy can buy a dress shirt to interview for his first job out of college, put it in the closet, pull it out every few years when he interviews someplace else, and more than likely go his entire life that way. One small catch: Though the shirt hanging in the closet doesn't age, we do. We guys put on the years, and we put on the pounds. While most of us look at the mid-section and see the pounds there, we also put some on in the neck. So, that perfectly good shirt that fit comfortably when we were in our 20's gets quite a bit tighter in the 30's, 40's and beyond. Get a clue guys: The tie isn't uncomfortable. You need to buy a new dress shirt.

Another pet-peeve of mine when it comes to job hunting, this one not related to ties: I'm a senior high-tech leader. I've been a director of engineering (or its equivalent) in many companies. I have a proven track record as a leader, one who can form teams, resurrect dysfunctional teams, work with other company leaders, all in all a very seasoned professional if I do say so myself. So why is it, given what I have done and what I am looking for in terms of a career, do so many companies suggest that on top of being the director of a group, I should also write some code myself? Don't get me wrong: I love hands-on dev work, whether it be coding, circuit work, debug or anything of that nature. It's fun, and though I am a bit stale, I have no trouble picking it up and joining in the fun when necessary. When I do write code, and have it reviewed by one of my team members, I usually always rate a "pretty good" or better. But, that's not my role at this point in my career. Managing a group (at least on that has double digit members) is a job unto itself. In most departments that is understood and accepted, but for some reason when you are a high-tech leader, the thought is that you should also be a hands-on individual contributor in your spare time. I've actually gotten rather flippant when asked about my willingness to code during interviews: I'm not afraid to ask in return if their CFO processes expense reports. When I pose this question, I get the funny look, and the "Of course not" answer, then after a few seconds of silence they usually get my point. To be honest, if a company broaches that with me, I figure they are not a good match for me, so I really don't mind if my question irritates them. Think about it folks: You want people working on what they do best, and frankly you're better off letting the people who write code on a daily basis do so.

For the geeks out there, one of my proudest coding accomplishments was in my first job out of college. We were doing stress analyses and reliability predictions by hand, and I computerized the entire process. I worked on an IBM 360 mainframe, used Xedit to generate an input template, parsed that with REXX, then input the data into either a Pascal program I had written (based on MIL-HDBK-217) or into a FORTRAN program I inherited for hybrid microcircuits. All in all, it really was an incredible piece of work, even more-so given that I did it in my spare time. Alas, however, I worked for a defense contractor, and I didn't understand one very basic principle: For a company which charges hours back to the government, the last thing on earth they want is to be able to take 40 hours of work and shrink it down to 4 hours! So, my baby was shunted off to the corner, but it did get me to realize that I needed to go someplace else where passion and enthusiasm would be welcomed if not demanded. That led me to Apple Computer...more later.