Boy have we been busy. Ever since I started at Google, aB has been languishing in the background. But look, a post! Our author is a fellow product manager and Olin alumni, Nate Smith.

I was feeling especially close to my manager at the end of our
one-on-one meeting the other day, and I dared to ask her a more
personal question. “I’ve got sort of a strange question to ask you,” I
started. “I feel some pressure to dress like all of the other ads
product managers, but I don’t know whether it is good to stand out or
not.”

“And how do ‘all of the other product managers’ dress?” my manager
inquired.

I stumbled a bit in my response, “Oh, you know. All the men dress
like I do - with a long sleeve button down shirt, jeans, and nice
shoes.”

“Do they really?”

“Yeah, but sometimes I would like to wear something a little different.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, you know, like wearing flip-flops. I don’t like wearing shoes.”

“You could totally wear flip-flops. No one cares how you dress.”

“- Or ties, I would enjoy wearing ties occasionally.”

“Ties? Now that would be a little weird.”