Do techies get preferential treatment?

Yesterday myself and Hemisha caught up with Sunil Purushe – the big man from Rediff for dinner at Rice boat – a nice keralite food restaurant. The conversation at the end of the day went to an interesting topic – in short, my wife and Sunil felt that today techies get away with lots of things – casual dressing, reporting late and in general eccentric behavior which the rest of the working class are not allowed to do. They felt that organizations should enforce some sort of organizational discipline and there should be some norms for how people should go to work – e.g. people should not have long hair, be disheveled, wear t-shirts to work etc. etc. They felt that by giving preferential treatment to a section of people – companies were being very unfair and that is leading to techies feeling that they can get away with concessions in all areas.

I personally am very confused about this issue. We are in a day and age when organizations need the best people. A good programmer can do in a day what 20 mediocre programmers will not be able to do even after 5 days. These guys have high expectations and certain privileges have become industry norms. How are we as an organization going to attract and retain these people while maintaining a balance with the rest of the staff – sales, biz dev, accounting etc.

It would be interesting to hear the views of other people here. Anyone out there?