Long ago I got offered a splendid job teaching chess full-time in a private school, where the male staff all wore suits and ties.
Since I’d previously worked in computing, I didn’t own a suit. :eek:
I persuaded the Headmaster that strong chess players wore informal clothing (which is pretty true.)
I also offered to help out the Sports Department with the non-team players (e.g. organising non-contact rugby, tennis etc.)
So I wore a tracksuit to work for 18 years. 
Maybe it has to do with one gender outnumbering the other?
At my place of work women outnumber men 4 to 1 and it is the opposite. The women’s dress code is strictly defined, (allowed tops and bottoms, types of allowed hosery, quanitity of makeup, etc) while the men’s seems more of an after thought.
I work at a marketing agency and it’s as casual as can be. As long as your clothes are clean, not ripped to shreds and not too revealing, you’re fine. Silly (non-explicit) Graphic tees? Awful color and pattern combos? Bring it on.
… EXCEPT …
For some reason, men are expected to wear long pants and closed-toed shoes year-round, and no such rules apply to the women. In July and August I get so jealous of the women in shorts, skirts and sandals while I’m still in jeans and loafers. Although I will admit they all look 100% classy and professional, whereas in shorts and sandals I look like a complete slacker.
That’s backwards.
These women look “classy and professional” because the societal convention for women’s business dress includes that look. Conversely for men.
I’ve been in many, many performance reviews in a number of tech companies, and dress has never been an issue. When I started at one company there was a guy, an older guy, who liked suits. He was considered weird but still respected.
You do have to worry about what your boss thinks of you, but except for very extreme cases (which I’ve never seen) this doesn’t have anything to do with dress.
Agree with the above so shall we move towards space communism ala Star Trek?
We can all wear a muʻumuʻu (each, not sharing) for now.
Could be. Or maybe they’re actually classy and professional, and I’m actually a slacker. 
Sometimes people who work in technology have difficulty appreciating subtle issues and the social significance of many behaviours.
They don’t see it, so they don’t see it, and they don’t consider it.
How would they know what they are missing?
I don’t really understand your comment. If someone wore something that disrupted the office, people would get that. But a guy wearing shorts doesn’t distract the office. A woman wearing jeans doesn’t either. Nor does a guy wearing a suit.
In fact, over the last 10 - 15 years, salespeople calling on us who used to wear suits stopped, because they found that we didn’t think their product was better or worse depending on the way they dressed.
I’m saying you don’t understand things that you don’t notice.
How could you?
I didn’t mean that people wearing a suit won’t be respected , that’s why I used the more generic “think badly of you”. That phrase covers a whole lot more than just “not respected”. You just said he was considered “weird”. I wouldn’t want my boss or coworkers to think I was “weird”.
If **Voyager **gets to wear stuff he likes, isn’t uncomfortable, is still employed and doesn’t feel like he’s being unfairly held down for nebulous reasons, then this “not noticing” sounds like a win. Assuming that there truly is something to notice in the first place.
That may be a personal preference difference between you and the sorts of people who wear suits at tech companies. IMO it’s much better to be thought weird than thought generic (I’d certainly prefer it)
If someone dresses outside the norm at work, it will influence how other people think of them. Someone with a sloppy or much more casual appearance might be thought of as a slacker. Someone who dresses up too much might be thought of as pompous. Someone who dresses in a much more flashy way may be thought of as trying to hard. Even if no one says anything, people will make judgements based on how people look and it may influence how the person is treated at work. Bosses and co-workers are people with regular people behaviors. If someone thinks you look sloppy, they’re going to think less of you regardless of any office dress policy.
I’m a lawyer, and my practice is one of those rare areas where we’re in court pretty much daily. However, it’s Children’s Court, which many view as slightly more casual than other courts. Men still mostly wear suits and ties, though I’ve seen slacks with non-matching sport coats. A male colleague used to wear colorful suits and loud ties, and judges would compliment him on his outfits. Women really run the gamut. Some wear full suits with heels, though hardly anyone wears flesh-toned pantyhose anymore. Others, especially the children’s attorneys, dress in a way that barely qualifies as business casual.
When I was a staff attorney, I always wore either a suit or something fairly close to it, such as a blazer over a nice blouse with slacks or a medium-length skirt. Now that I don’t have to be in court as often, I dress more business casual. But I think it’s important to dress for court, especially when you’re a court-appointed attorney–clients who have no say in who represents them deserve someone who at least looks like they’re trying. I don’t know if children feel differently.
It can be tricky to meet that standard, though. Women’s suits are actually pretty hard to find these days, especially if you’re trying to avoid the ill-fitting (for me) matronly department store options. I once bought a sheath dress with matching jacket combo online. The hips were snug, but I could’ve smuggled a basketball around the middle. It was not a maternity suit. I always snap up a good one when I see it, but I haven’t seen one in years.
I take it you don’t work in tech. Weird and smart works very well. Though smart counts for more.
And the guy dressed weird, he wasn’t considered as weird. We can mostly distinguish clothing from ability.
That’s true if you go outside the norms, but when the norms are very, very wide, going outside of them is not too likely.
In some places the wrong tie might be considered outside the norms. Where I worked, at the end, maybe ripped jeans would be. I never saw any so I wouldn’t know. Shorts definitely were not outside the norm.
as far as fitting you can go to a tailor to get clothes modified but of course that adds cost.
I teach at a private school here in Taiwan. The dress code is pretty relaxed, but they do have some rules. Shorts and T-shirts are OK, but sleeveless shirts are not. However, the women can wear sleeveless shirts so that’s only something the men can’t do. Same for sandals as there are dressy sandals for women.
This is where the OP’s misconception is:
It’s not a reversal, that’s exactly the point.
Men’s fashion, particularly in the US, is very limited and conservative. So in formal offices, a standard uniform has developed with very few options*. You’re only a shade more free in your clothing options than a soldier performing in a formal ceremony.
Meanwhile there’s more of a culture for women, certainly since the second world war, to wear bold, unique and aesthetically desirable clothing, for various reasons including of course sexism and our patriarchal history.
But nowadays, even imagine we’re a completely feminist society, what even would a woman’s uniform be? There’s no obvious single choice. It makes more sense that the rules for men be relaxed instead.
If you don’t mind my asking, what industry or type of business do you work in? Given the details evident in your unwritten dress code I can’t help but be curious. IME, which has been mostly in business casual settings, higher level staff tends to be dressier rather than more casual, generally due to more external meetings and so forth.