That said, I have a guy I worked it who I liked immensely and was intellectually one of the most talented people I have ever known. He was nearly half my age, no formal schooling in IT, but he made people listen when he talked.
And he has a "man-bun".
I am retired now, but I recall a time I was on a late night conference call with bigwigs and high-end engineers at a vendor that we were working with to fix a problem that made a medical system unusable.
A very bad and stressful thing. All these people were far more qualified than I was, even though I was the "point person" for this event, system, and issue. I determined to watch the interactions these high end engineers had, and to learn what I could about the system.
This talented fellow I worked with dialed in from home and jumped on the call with us. A very cool thing happened.
As I observed, listening to the dynamic of somewhere between five and ten people on this technical troubleshooting call, within seconds, without any prompting, like two magnets thrown into swirling water, this talented fellow I worked with, and some other engineer on the other side, unerringly gravitated to discussion with each other, even though they had never personally met and were only vaguely aware of the existence of the other, mostly by seeing a name on an email chain.
But in the shallow pitter-patter of introductory conversation meant to lower the stress and provide some diversion before everyone arrived and we got down to business, some guy on the other side made an IT related joke, and the guy I worked with retorted with some witty reply that IT guys would understand, and almost immediately, it was like a plug was inserted into an electrical outlet and the current flowed.
Everyone else just stopped talking on both sides, and within five minutes with these two guys doing a quick back-and-forth, the problem was solved and we were back up and running. We spent the next ten minutes marveling at how an unknown and unforeseen problem had arisen, and having two right people, two talented people talking directly to each other had solved the issue almost immediately.
I found out later he was one of their most highly respected engineers who wasn't expected to either have the time to jump on the call, or was not authorized to be bothered on a call like that one, late at night.
Those two guys didn't need an introduction, a title exchange, a query about some IT related thing that would convey a level of knowledge.
Between these two guys in the exchange of humor-filled pleasantries, had somehow done the equivalent of "exchanging credentials" by simple, unrelated conversation and gotten right down to business.
I say all this, because I often snicker at guys who wear man-buns, but...not this fellow I worked with. Just wow.
Now, on with the ridicule!