When I look at pictures of NYC, I always see people walking in suits down the streets. It's bizzare.
My fiancee, who is from the West Coast, jokes that if you're wearing a suit in the South, you probably have an important job -- if you're wearing a suit in Seattle, you probably work at the mall.
There's a socioeconomic U-shape to the clothing curve for employed people where lower status jobs have dress codes to indicate their lack of individuality and ease of replaceability and interchangeability, and general lack of humanity or humane treatment via strict and formal uniforms. Then it declines into "cubical land" where a local minima is probably the "jeans friday". Then the curve goes back up where there are strong labor markets (programmers in SV, former Apple CEOs who like turtlenecks, etc) and slovenly attire is a very public display of how difficult replacement would be.
Something else to keep in mind is the unemployment rate (the real labor force participation rate, not the made up propaganda figures) is about half. And labor saving home appliances mean the half who are not working are no longer standing at a sink doing dishes or hand washing laundry. And a minimal level of social transfer payments mean the unemployed have some money and therefore something to be seen doing. In "the bad old days" the bums down by the river were not well dressed, but they were unseen. Now a days you will be seeing the unemployed half of the population, and they have not necessarily begun to dress up. This has certain trend setting issues. Given "people of walmart" photos I don't feel the need to dress up when I torture myself by shopping at walmart, and that caving in, applied to a very large scale, ends up with very few people dressing up to shop at walmart.
If you're my boss, and you turn into that kind of a control freak, I may cooperate for the moment, but my resume will be on the street by this evening.
Personally I'd think that visit would be more effective if he sees that the programmers are not dressy business people but people hired for their brains, but clearly some disagree.
Amazingly, the computer doesn't care whether you code it in an office, in a café, or at home in your PJs.
Other people tend to care though.
A lot of people moving here from France lately. They really stand out in their clothing habits :)
But who am I kidding with this injured pride, french really dress really damn well.
Having worked in a similar hot place (but probably not as dry) I can say the tolerance is smaller on 'mild temperature' places
Pants are dangerous?