The curse of the corporate headshot | Hacker News Reader

The curse of the corporate headshot

economist.com

122 pointsmfiguiere129 comments

Greybeard storytime:

In the middle of my 17 years working remotely at a tech megacorp, I moved to a product manager role from a custom engineering manager. A couple of years in to my PM role I was feeling stagnant in my career so I purposefully got a headshot done wearing a sport coat and tie to replace my younger me ponytail headshot on our intranet directory.

The first change I noticed was a major difference in the respect and deference I received on calls. Over the next couple of years, I was promoted twice and was offered several lateral move opportunities.

Obviously, some of this change was due to my intentionality, but I attribute the headshot very highly.

Some important factors: I worked with a large number of salespeople in a highly matrixed salesforce. I worked on large global teams and people from some geos were more obvious in their deference. I am of above average attractiveness.

> I am of above average attractiveness.

Greybeard things.

indeed.

I didn’t get the impression that they were claiming to be a model or anything — nearly anyone be “above average” attractiveness given some continuous effort. I’m assuming that they meant it more from that perspective. Then they learned that corporatizing their efforts helped their career too.

I only mentioned it as attractiveness could have been a factor contributing to my career success.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomaspremuzic/2019/07/17/its-ti...

Huh...I was about to call bullshit on this, but specifically only for the C suite executives.

Then, in contradiction to all known online posting habits of most commenters, I decided to check my assumptions and go to a site that lists all the Fortune 500 companies and check the pictures of Fortune 500 leadership. I know, pretty bizarre, right? Checking to see one is right in their assumptions before inflicting their own opinions on everyone else.

My conclusion - executives, both board of directors and management, were all above average looking. Not one was a supermodel level, of course. But almost all were above average looking. But no way below average super nasty looking snaggle-tooth acne pockmarked people with a lazy eye looking in the opposite direction. No fat people at all. Of course, There were a few slightly below average looking people, but that is not the norm. There was one group of executives at one company that all of them were below average, but that was an anomoly.

So yes, get that plastic surgery. Get good haircuts. Stay in good physical shape.

Correlation or causation? Perhaps people who keep in shape are also more organized and hardworking, or maybe mutational load affects both physical attractiveness and career sucess.

Most likely all those people can afford good dentists, dermatologists, dieticians, etc.

It wouldn't surprise me if it's the norm at that level to have makeup artists for headshots either.

I didn’t intend to brag!: it was only a means to brag about my career success.

Everyone should just use YouTube thumbnail style mouth open hilariously wide with excitement and looking incredulously into the distance.

It should get more and more ridiculous the higher the level.

aaaand now I have this image of our C-suite doing a Pewdiepie pose stuck in my head. Thanks lol

Pewdiepie might make more money than most of the C-suite.

who?

C-Suite is not to be named.

Startup idea. Service to update my Slack profile picture every day with the same stock reaction but different backgrounds.

The mouth gets a pixel wider every day.

CEO Example: https://www.incimages.com/uploaded_files/image/1920x1080/get...

Credit: Aziz Ansari from Parks and Rec

AKA Mr. Beast Face

It’s more commonly known as soy face.

When my fave package gets another questionable dependency face.

Corey Quinn ( well known AWS Pricing consultant ) does most of his photos with his mouth wide open.

I kinda figure that if I'm gonna look ridiculous in photos either way, why not bias for being ridiculous in ways that appear intentional instead of accidental?

What, like this guy? https://leino.science/

That site is a mess on mobile.

Just did one of these last week. First issue was that I am quite tall and the photographer was quite short, but he didn't have a step (presumably for health and safety reasons), so to get the angle right he asked me to squat a little. Second issue is that he asked me to take off my glasses to avoid any reflection, but my antique glasses are an important part of my appearance (early-20th-century intelligentsia?). Third issue is that he asked me to show my teeth, but I never show my teeth when smiling (thanks to the NHS I have what the Americans call "British teeth"), so not knowing quite how to show my teeth when smiling I think I ended up baring my teeth instead. The overall effect being an uncomfortable unfamiliar unseeing grimace. I'm hoping great things will come of it.

So say no? It's your photo, take control.

It was a fast moving corporate production line with a very long queue behind, not a bespoke photo session (I'm not high enough up for that) - less like an agricultural show, more like an abattoir. And the 2 page waiver made me doubt it was even my photo as such.

Plenty of photographers have specials and nice-ish packages where you can get a few basic head shots in 10-15 mins of their time. Don't take this the wrong way, but "put in some directed effort" at this. Don't settle for scraps and obviously ill-fitting freebies given by whatever corporate organized this assembly-line production.

Honestly with 15 minutes of reading on how to light a photo, anyone can take a headshot with a phone camera.

Or just "fix it in post" with some AI photo-touchup, a la Lensa etc.

Enjoyed the description more than I'd probably enjoy the photo. Although now I really want to see it. Please.

"British teeth": I thought those were a thing of the past.

They Shall Not Grow Old, Peter Jackson's brilliant modernizing of WW I film footage, has some really shocking teeth. This was before NHS, obviously.

I could never manage to smile with my teeth showing, normally, but I got a guy to film me with my dog, and then it was easy. Doesn't help for the corporate headshot, though.

> asked me to take off my glasses to avoid any reflection

A different technique would have been to ask you to remove the lenses from your glasses and let you keep the frame on.

Doesn't sound like a very good photographer, they should know how to angle their lights correctly.

Pity the executives who have been forced to stand side on to the camera, tilt their heads slightly like a giant parrot, fold their arms and told to look natural. If you ever saw someone standing like this in real life, you would think “better cross to the other side”, not “I bet that person is great at creating shareholder value.”

Hilariously true.

Especially the crossed arms photo. "I am executive and I mean business!"

The CEO for the first company I ever worked for got really bad advice in this regard. In his head shot he tilted his head to the side, which is directly contrary to contemporary advice for male head shots. It made him look distinctly feminine, and playful instead of serious.

Do you have an example of this? I’m struggling to imagine how a head tilt could in any way convey femininity.

Something like this? https://www.pinterest.com/pin/401101910536217641/

If you Google "Sassy gay guy" about half the results have this same pose.

Reminds me of a guy I used to work with. If you did a Google reverse image search on his Linkedin profile pic, Google's best guess was "college."

It's a bit outdated to think this rigidly about things, but when a subject has one shoulder higher than the other, tilting the head toward the higher shoulder is historically considered a more "masculine" pose, and toward the lower shoulder a more "feminine" one.

This webpage is a good articulation of the classic way of thinking about portraiture, but I should clarify that I disagree with the entire premise of rigid "masculine" and "feminine" posing:

https://www.spencervillebearcats.com/userfiles/88/my%20files...

Sounds like something that could self-perpetuate, and probably not worthwhile fighting against? Like blue is for boys (although used to be for girls: 1918: “the generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls.”).

I think GP was simply pointing out the current connotation, not advocating or fighting against it.

While the photo might not be a good example, in the animal kingdom exposing your neck, like exposing your belly, in an overall non-assertive way would indicate submissiveness. It's in your interest to be submissive if you doubt you will win in combat. I'll leave the thought experiment to the reader as to whether females or males do better in combat and why this head tilt might be predominantly nature not nurture.

Thanks for the useful source information, although it shows the masculine head tilt as leaning towards the lower shoulder and vice versa for the feminine one.

yup, I got it backwards!

Reminds me of that priceless paragraph from Michael Collins' autobiography about how the Air Force sent their astronaut candidates to a "charm school" in order to increase their chances of being selected by NASA, where among other things they learned how to correctly hold their hands on their hips:

"… in my opinion, the apogee of the course was surely reached the day we learned how to hold our hands on our hips (doesn’t anyone learn anything at home any more?). Thumbs forward, ladies! Thumbs to the rear, gentlemen! To reverse would not only be gauche (perhaps even worse) but, of course, would result in instant detection and rejection by NASA, the old meanies. I have studied this matter exhaustively in later years, and have found burly construction workers with thumbs forward and mincing fairies with thumbs aft, but then they obviously are not charm-school grads."

I guess I'm screwed. I have natural head tilt.

Mine isn't natural but due to an old neck injury. I guess some of us just can't be good at this.

Relaxing neck is... checks notes gendered somehow?

What makes a head tilt feminine?

Playful/serious - sure, whatever chose what tone you want... but feminine - why do you say that?

Isn't the head tilt usually indicative of paying attention, listening, and being curious - how are any of those things feminine (specifically)?

Seems incredibly dumb to me... more so, the people that pay attention to those things - and classify them into gendered boxes - I have lower opinions of what they would espouse as advice. Exactly the same as people obsessed with machismo - it is silly, and petty.

More to the point: it seems kind of sexist that men would be taken less seriously if they tilt their head...

And super weird implications about how femininity is perceived in general as antithetical to leadership: that's just plain sexism right?

> Relaxing neck is... checks notes gendered somehow?

Yup, lots of things are gendered. I know it's a bummer, but here we are.

This, for example, would not be considered a traditionally masculine pose, despite the facial hair:

https://media.phillyvoice.com/media/images/JVNPhotoCourtesy....

I wouldn't call it masculine or feminine. I would call it a bit shy and a touch inviting.

I understand people 'think' a certain way... but there's also objective reality - where the source of 'masculine' and 'feminine' are attributes or properties of the subject or object in question - is not the subject or object themselves, but in the perception of them (by themselves in the case of living subjects; or by other's in the other cases).

I Understand your point - I disagree with respecting people's opinions of such archaic mentalities (as old dinosaurs should get with the times or go extinct), I just don't support machismo/sexism - and this seems like such a clear example of this - judging a pose in a gendered way (and implicitly saying there is a superior option to choose (masculine) - that's the quite part) renders (to me) that person's opinion on other subjects suspect: due to the fact I can no longer trust their opinions aren't routed in sexism.

This is also such a common real estate agent pose that south park mocked it

the addition to the real estate pose is to make absolutely sure your Rolex is high up on your wrist, and the arm is prominently crossed in front, with the sleeve slightly pulled back to accentuate the watch.

There's a weird self fulfilling prophecy aspect to it. People mock it, people notice it, but also have decided "this is what these pictures look like," and they conform when the occasion arises.

When we went public and the first wave of new c levels rolled in and cheeseball chat avatars started to show up in our ecosystem we mocked them. None of us even used real photos at the time except HR. They spread though. People still make fun, people who have them make fun, but it's a thing you do when you're Business. Humans are funny creatures.

It reminds me of the rantsonas on YouTube, who inevitably have an arms-crossed pose so you know they meam business.

Not related to headshot per se, but I also noticed that when the C-level folks are talking on camera or on stage, they do this weird hand pose in which their fingers are touching in almost dove-tail fashion (e.g., https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/107010033-166673005906...). I wonder if it's taught to them by professional public speaking trainers.

It looks sort of like the infamous "Merkel Hands" pose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkel-Raute

> ... or Triangle of Power by English-speaking media

Somehow it upsets me that they call it a "triangle of power" when it is clearly a rhombus.

Oh, how the state of education has fallen.

Take care not to just join thumbs and index fingers - that is one sign language symbol for vagina: https://youtube.com/watch?v=NFVJ6LOpcpg

Thinking about when I'm on stage, I think it's, in part, a way to calm the motion of your hands without having your arms at your sides which can feel unnatural and make you look stiff.

This is exactly how it was taught to me at a public speaking class

I've seen this gesture called the "scholar's cradle" and associated with lecturing professors.

Here's a boring 1h video discussing all kinds of hand poses. (I think the channel got a bunch of backlash for pro-colonialism or something like that.) It appears I watched half an hour of it, maybe as a form of induced delirium.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpqfZJuZRNY

Toastmasters - easy to spot who goes through that program. Similar to Dale Carnegie acolytes.

I'm not a great public speaker, but what always worried me about something like Toastmasters is you're learning public speaking from other people who are also faking it.

Exactly. Toastmasters is good for bright working class people with limited education who find themselves in competition with college graduates for advancement in corporate settings. This is a very common situation in the U.S. where corporate opportunity is more fluid than in other regions.

It is fairly useless if you’ve already had to give presentations at university, or trade shows.

Honestly, other than being comfortable with your material, I'm not sure you can really prepare for getting up on stage in front of 100s or 1000s of people.

Most of us should probably do proper dress rehearsals more. I always mentally walkthrough a presentation a few times but I often don't do an actual run-through--except those times when I miss switching the video on for a recorded presentation :-) And it really does help. I always make some changes if I'm giving a presentation more than once.

Record yourself. We all have both speech and physical tics.

That said, I've done this a lot. And the bar to getting materially better was probably a bunch of professional voice coaching and speaker training years ago.

> I wonder if it's taught to them by professional public speaking trainers.

Totally is, as part of "use your hands more... but not too much more... but also don't rest them at your sides!" stuff. The steeple thing is an improvement for people who aren't good at public speaking, but awkward as hell compared to someone who's actually-good (they may do it too, but you won't notice because it'll seem natural, and they probably won't do it nearly as much)

At this point it may actually have come around such that the awkward-steeple is a desirable signal of some kind, just because every corporations seems to have done the exact same training, so that doing it, even awkwardly, gives off a "this is official" vibe.

>Totally is, as part of "use your hands more... but not too much more... but also don't rest them at your sides!" stuff.

I've had a couple public speaking classes but when I first started shooting some video of myself (long before COVID) and looked at the result I was "Jesus, I wave my hands around a lot. Need to calm things down." It's easier with just upper body video though because you can just drop your hands out of the frame.

Is this you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwAioN2mtsA

Check out Steve Jobs in action:

https://donhopkins.medium.com/focusing-is-about-saying-no-st...

There's another one where you make a loose fist and use your thumb as a pointer (eg https://i.insider.com/581118cab28a64c9018b52c1?width=1300&fo...). I'm guessing actual pointing is seen as overly aggressive?

It's called chironomia and it has a very long history - there are even dictionaries of gesture, with systems of notation.

Clinton/Kennedy thumb https://www.google.com/search?q=The+Clinton+Thumb

Wow, I've always associated that gesture with Blair.

Sometimes I do it to annoy my partner, when I should be giving a thumbs-up I'll do this instead.

Yes this is taught.

Salespeople are taught that if the sales prospect makes a pejorative or other remark that absolutely must be be overcome to close a sale, they should steeple their hands, engage the prospect, but never overtly disagree or argue.

https://www.psychmechanics.com/body-language-steepling-hands...

It also gives you some time to think. The exec who ran the systems group at IBM when I was an IT industry analyst would, during Q&A, write things down on index cars. Now, for all I know, he was writing "This guy is a moron" which wouldn't have been wrong in many cases. But it made him look engaged and thoughtful and gave him time to compose an answer.

Makes me think of Mr. Burns: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Burns#/media/File%3AMr_B...

Kind of a "you shouldn't trust me" pose...

Definitely reminds me of the clip from 30 Rock where Jack Donaghy has to shoot a promotional clip and doesn’t know what to do with his hands, so by the end of the session he is holding a coffee mug in each hand and still spiraling out of control.

I realize this is a humor article, but I don't think it's very funny (except perhaps the part about business stock photos). I mean, I have none of these feelings that corporate headshots make subjects "end up looking like well-dressed hostages".

They're just photos of people in suits. What would you expect them to look like? You could write this same article about virtually any photographic portraits of humans. Just feels like an author trying to be "edgy" by blowing up his own preconceived notions in a way that doesn't reflect reality.

>"end up looking like well-dressed hostages".

>They're just photos of people in suits.

Same thing.

Even saying they're in suits is a bit of a stretch. Here is a semi-random sampling of some "old school" megacorps. They all just look like normal headshots to me. What is the author of this piece expecting, jazz hands?

Oracle: https://www.oracle.com/corporate/executives/

ExxonMobil: https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/about-us/who-we-are/managem...

Proctor and Gamble: https://us.pg.com/leadership-team/

> They're just photos of people in suits.

Who still wears those?

I do, for a wedding or maybe a funeral.

Maybe my own funeral, but otherwise, no.

My father gave me advice when I was a young lad. Own one nice suit. He called it your "buryin' and marryin' suit".

I remember seeing a corporate email sent from the company KnowBe4 (security training, simulated phishing emails, etc). The email contained a headshot of some guy in a suit. I remember pointing out to someone else that this guy was not a computer security expert. When asked how I knew, I said "Security experts don't wear suits".

This is when I looked up who the guy in the email actually was. It was the company CEO. You can see his picture here: https://www.knowbe4.com/about-us/

He's also a famous scientologist and OG email spammer.

https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2004/05/17/once-a-spammer-a...

https://www.google.com/search?q=scientologist+sjouwerman

~20 years ago, he wrote me a threatening email when I replied to his spam email to complain.

I'm not surprised to see him and Mitnick in business together.

Wait a minute…the OG email spammer founded a company to teach people how to identify spam and other malicious emails, and sold it for $4.6 billion!

https://investors.knowbe4.com/news-releases/news-release-det...

People who want to look handsome without working out

"Here's a very weak pattern" is the base of lots of modern memes like /r/starterpacks or 90% of twitter.

An article about pictures, spends a lot of words describing pictures, but lacks… pictures. But has an amusing title illustration to draw people in.

See also: geography articles without maps: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30331839#30349455

Same thought. On second thought, this is what start-up does, attracting people with resources first, then perhaps with any luck you get beyond a presentation deck

I'm guessing because it's a column and the style is for artwork illustration.

I figure it's difficult to convey the general sentiment without insulting pictures of actual people, even if through stock photography. They could also have generated such pictures with an AI, but altogether I found the picture-less explanation to be more interesting.

I think we should just all adapt the Stanley Parable style of corporate portraits:

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/59141243346687544...

Headshots work well in professions where decision making is based on looks, like casting by talent agencies.

Since I am also a standup comic, I know that headshots are a very powerful personal branding tool.

Unfortunately a good one can work well even if you don't work in a profession for looks. Its the angel bias...people that are merely competent and look really nice often get promotions over someone who absolutely excels at their job but looks average/below average. A headshot is a way of framing yourself to look better than you actually do, and can have some genuine uses in that way.

Headshots are Van Halen and brown M&Ms. They don't actually matter, but do you really want to trust someone with that much responsibility who can't get a simple headshot right?

I have always wanted to hire a diverse bunch of attractive people who would appear in corporate stock photos, dress them up in suits, and photograph them kicking each other's asses.

You might enjoy the music video to “Nobody Speak” by Run The Jewels.

https://youtu.be/NUC2EQvdzmY

Not quite the same, but The National has a music vid where a bunch of dudes in suits get drunk and dump themselves in the pool.

There is something about seeing people in such serious attire acting a fool

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpz_gUyImhw

If I ever work in a place that needs me to have a headshot, I'm just gonna mash thispersondoesnotexist.com until I find somebody who looks vaguely like me.

The reality is you need a headshot for a lot of roles and tasks. You may not do those things like keynoting at events but some do.

By all means, actively resist anything that requires a headshot. But be aware that will tend to consign you to the realm of interchangeable backroom tech types. Some are, of course, good enough that they manage anyway but it's a higher bar.

Curious if any software engineers here had a corporate headshot done and then immediately experienced a major upgrade in their careers or pay. I'm always on the lookout for low hanging fruit.

Happened to me in management consulting: immediately after my corporate headshot, there was an increase in the number of messages from headhunters, almost three times as much. Ended up landing x2 salary in a smaller company, in a more specialized field, with bigger clients and better missions.

Someone posted above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34612442

On the first team I work on, we had a guy who had a very serious headshot. Apparently the people at the security desk that day didn't know what they were doing and took so long he was going to be late to an important meeting. It ended up looking like a mugshot. Every time someone new joined, we had to tell them he was actually a nice guy and explain the "mugshot". A few people over the years admitted that they were intimidated by that photo. Funny stuff.

We have to take pictures for credentials at my place of work. I swear I look like I'm going to murder a person in it. Either I'm smiling too late or not long enough or something, but every time I go to get a new picture, I look angry in it.

> Do an image search for the word “business” or “manager”, and what comes back? Nothing that remotely resembles business or managers.

I would first have to know what my manager does before I could understand if there's resemblance.

Joking aside, this article would've been a hit in the between time of IRC and Slack. Before then I only knew people by their handle or avatars. While I get the author's dislike for headshots, they have been a social norm for what feels like more than a decade now.

Very rarely are people forced into these things. Executives and those who want to get ahead know that a high quality headshot is a differentiating factor. A leader who has an approachable headshot might rate better than a default avatar. Although the latter could be the better overall leader.

Many things in my career took off after I focused on my personal brand including these cursed headshots. I wouldn't discount it like the author tries to do.

This is actually one of the use cases I had in mind for PhotoPop haha. You can add your company's primary color as background and get head shots for your team. Cringe perhaps but it does look nice and professional.

https://photopop.vercel.app/

Corporate headshots feel a bit like going to a lousy used car dealership. The guy at the dealership has a pinky ring, a fake tan, hair gel, and some very loud suit. Maybe a diamond earring as well. It’s a stereotype because it’s seen so often. But who does it impress? It must impress some folks or else it would die out.

Signaling. He’s signaling, I’m friendly, competent, and dumb. Then he gets you for the tire warranty at signing. All customers want to, must, feel superior to auto salespeople. (Who are doing $50k deals on a daily basis.) They can figure out if you’re a cash customer (unfavorable to them, must get a higher price) even if you’re trying to hide the fact.

> He’s signaling, I’m friendly, competent, and dumb.

Maybe that's what he thinks he's signaling, but the signal I always get is "I'm untrustworthy, probably a scam artist, and would sell my own mother".

REFUND?!?!?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQaavQNGsMY

Inside Google, there was this weird semi-status-symbol thing where headshots had a colored gradient directory if you were an "important" person and a plain background for most people. Anyone know if this is still at thing at Google?

When I worked there I literally had a gmail label called "gradients" that I filtered executives' emails into. I had no idea this idea was widespread.

The "reasoning" on display in TFA, and the citation of a dubious study suggesting a minute-but-measurable increase in Something, makes me think of the "Tory power stance" [0][1]. If it doesn't work or look good but everybody thinks it works and looks good, does it really not work nor look good?

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=tory+power+stance

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_posing

Posing for a corporate headshot is a whole new level of awkward (similar to the IT Crowd act casual dinner party scene)

I think the best take on corporate imagery is still to be found here;

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=stock_photos

Remember when Vince Vaughn, Tom Wilkinson, and Dave Franco took some stock business photos to promote their movie? I think Uber even used some of those to promote Uber for Business when that first launched.

Case in point: https://www.switch.com/executive-team/

The amount of airbrushing on all of these is painful. Most of them look like wax sculptures.

In most companies you can supply your own headshot. Pro tip: get a fashion photographer and pose outside for a "candid" shot.

As long as they aren't using one of those self-indulgent Lensa AI portraits I don't mind.

Appearance and posing is critical in projecting dominance. Forty years ago, this was drilled into the young product managers at Spectra-Physics, and really, corporate uniforms have not changed much. This was so important to Donald Trump that he assaulted his oldest son in front of his Penn classmates to drill the point home. https://www.facebook.com/734104738/posts/10154800337414739/

Startup idea: Use stable diffusion to automate corporate headshots and security badge photos. Charge $X to remove watermark.

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