I’ve recently discovered the TV show Mad Men, which is well into its second or third season now, and is just an awesomely good time. If you haven’t seen it or heard about it, the basic premise is this:
“Late 1950’s advertising agents in NYC drink, smoke and fool around too much.“
That’s about it. There are a lot of layers on top of that, but the heart of the show is a Lucky Strike and a whiskey neat. The main character is Don Draper, the coolest cat who ever cooled. He wakes up with perfectly combed hair, knows all the right things to say and owns more suits than Men’s Warehouse.
The scene (or line, actually) that got me writing was one where Don Draper is hanging out with some beatniks listening to Miles Davis and ends up getting into an argument with one of them about “Conformity VS Rebellion”. Don represents the suit wearing, 9-to-5’ers and the beatnik represents the free-spirited bohemian lifestyle. An unrelated incident brings the police to the building and the beatniks are all scared to go outside because of them. Eventually Don gets tired of arguing (I can’t imagine he’s tired of the Miles Davis. Everyone loves Miles Davis), and decides to leave. The following exchange takes place:
Beatnik: Hey man, you can’t go out there.. there are cops outside.
Don Draper: “….You can’t”
And then he leaves. Of course, the cop outside gives him no hassle at all, and the audience yells “Oh Snap!” Well, I did anyway.
This illustrates a personal philosophy of mine that I’m happy to say we use in a lot of aspects at SoftLayer, and that is “Dress to impress”. Whether you want to think about it or not, your wardrobe is going to tell people a lot about you before you ever get a chance to. This goes for a lot of other areas as well, not just your pants and jacket.
If your desk is cluttered up with papers, I’m going to assume you’ve got too much work. Or you are sloppy.
If your passenger seat is full of stuff, I’m going to assume that you never have passengers, which means you probably live alone.
Conversely if your car is uncluttered in any way I’m going to assume you never drive it.
The same goes for your web page, your order forms, your forums. All of these things sway the needle of the “Good/Bad” scale one way or another, and most of the time it’s really, really subtle.
At SoftLayer we spend a LOT of time on attention to detail. Our datacenter is so clean you can eat off the floor, and it doesn’t happen by accident. When people walk into the room I want them to say “wow!” and I’m happy to say that it happens every time.
What does your look say about you?
-Jeaves