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As always, know your audience. And one way to do that is to peruse the
profiles on LinkedIn for the company. No, people's photos aren't
particularly likely to show them in their office attire. But you can still
get the trend of the predominant age of employees (generalizing here, but
the younger the workforce, likely the more casual), whether their pics show
them in office or outdoor/personal settings, and the like.
Inland Empire is certainly different from the San Francisco dot.com scene,
the San Francisco Financial District scene, the mid-West, and so on. But in
San Francisco, I'd never show up in an outfit that's guaranteed to make my
likely young-ish interviewers feel like they're interviewing their
grandparents. I'm not looking to fit in with the club clothes-clad or
ready-for-the-hiking-trail workers who don't differentiate work attire from
other parts of their life. But I also don't want to be such a glaring
standout that our age difference is exaggerated.
As well, gender certainly plays a role. For non-management jobs, women just
don't wear suits or formal office attire. I've not worn
women's-suits-that-look-like-men's (a la the "women's dress for success"
phase of the '80s) in many a decade. As well, I moved from Pittsburgh, PA to
the SF Bay Area in the '90s, so my preference for more comfortable outfits,
especially shoes (!), is sure a better fit where I am now.
(And I love the ridiculous concept of "dress jeans", which allow me to wear
comfortable shoes. I simply pair this with a nice blouse or shell/sweater
combo, and I look quite formal across the interview table, but easily fit in
with the extreme casualness of the engineers with whom I work.)
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