> > I have never ever worked somewhere where sneakers were not allowed all the time. And I've worked for companies of just about every size. A west coast thing?
>
> No, that's pretty much been my experience too. My current job is the tightest of any professional job I've had, and it's also the only company I've worked for that wasn't in the tech industry. I'm sure there's a correlation. But even there, T-shirts and sneakers are acceptable, and while shorts are *technically* against the dress code, that doesn't seem to be enforced very much.

Like you alluded to, I think it depends on the type of business you're doing. I'm a software engineer - generally slacker-like when it comes to dressing - but I work for an insurance company. With agents always coming in for conferences and all that we can't afford to have even part of the staff (we're at least 1/4 of it) dressed un-professionally.

In my company of around 1,500 or so (in the home office) we have a structured form of business casual. Jeans and sneakers are allowed only on Friday and t-shirts are never allowed. Mon - Thur they look for nice slacks, skirts, dresses, blouses, polo's, sweaters and things like that. Friday the bottom half of you can dress down, but you're still expected to wear a nice top of some sort.

They actually just bumped up the policy last year because people were being so dumb about dressing and the CEO wanted to fix it. Thank goodness he did because I'm all for not having to see flip-flops and shorts on some of the people I work with. But boy do I miss wearing my t-shirts...

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