• Business Insider asked its readers on LinkedIn: Are shorts appropriate in the workplace?
• Instagram head Adam Mosseri recently said he was "pro" wearing shorts in the office.
• As of Friday morning, 54% of respondents said no, while 20% said yes. More debated dress codes in the comments.

Free the knee? Our readers want the knee locked away.

Instagram boss Adam Mosseri recently came out as "pro" shorts in the workplace. He said that it was a "hot debate" in the Instagram office, though "not all shorts are created equal" and not everyone can "pull them off."

We posted the question to our readers on LinkedIn: Do you think it's appropriate to wear shorts to the office? Over 7,000 people have cast their vote so far.

As of Friday morning, the majority of respondents, 54%, said no, compared to 20% who voted yes. Another 25% of respondents said "it depends."

The survey is far from scientific, and the results could shift as more readers vote. Still, the early results provide an interesting look into people's evolving views of the office dress code. Gone are the "Mad Men" days of mandatory suits. And with Gen Z firmly in the workplace and sweltering summer temperatures potentially swaying people's views, it's a good time to revisit the polarizing topic.

A lively debate over dress code and etiquette

Readers in the comments below the LinkedIn poll debated what, if any, shorts dress code would be appropriate.

Joella Shepherdson commented that chino shorts should be allowed, but basketball shorts shouldn't. She voiced worry of a "double standard."

"I think if skirts are acceptable, shorts should be too, but they should be subject to the same workwear rules as normal," she wrote.

Stephanie Cary wrote that it may depend on the industry. Startups and fashion may be more open to the apparel, she wrote.

What about a temperature threshold? Jay Martin wrote that shorts were okay if it was over 90 degrees.

Of course, the heat is outside the office for much of corporate America. Many workplaces pump cold air into their cubicles. April Weygand drew a comparison: "The men wear shorts in the summer while the women are wearing sweaters because of the crazy AC."

Donald Peace narrowed in on Mosseri's comment that "not everyone can pull it off." Peace called it a "clearly subjective judgement," describing the Instagram head's view as an "HR nightmare."

Working from home has changed standards of dressing. Brian Bower wrote that he sometimes wears pajama bottoms while working virtually.

"Businesses up top," he wrote. "Party below."

• Pepsi's former CEO shared a raft of career advice in a recent interview.
• Indra Nooyi said that chasing opportunity, finding mentors, and working hard are key to success.
• Nooyi also endorsed focusing on the job you have, taking calculated risks, and staying humble.

Indra Nooyi, the former CEO of PepsiCo, offered up some great career tips during an interview released July 1 as part of the Hoover Institution's "Only In America" documentary series.

Here are the six best pieces of advice she gave:

1. Seek opportunity

Nooyi emigrated from India to the US in 1978 to attend the Yale School of Management. Studying and living in the US was the springboard she needed to secure jobs at Boston Consulting Group, Motorola, and ultimately PepsiCo.

"An immigrant could come in with nothing in her pocket and become the CEO of an iconic American red, white, and blue company," Nooyi said, reflecting on her unlikely career path.

"I would never have been CEO in any other country in the world including in India," she added, championing the US as a meritocracy where the best and the brightest can get ahead.

2. Find mentors

Recruiting guides to accelerate her learning and help her chart a career path were vital to Nooyi's success.

Nooyi said she's a "product of great mentoring" and "forever grateful to every one of those people who gave me so much of their time and energy."

"My mentors believed in me even more than I believed in myself," she said. "They would give me impossible assignments to do, just to prove to the world that I was worth mentoring. They would lift me up at points when I thought I could never be lifted up."

3. Work hard

Nooyi said she's had to hustle and grind her entire life, including as a foreign student at Yale.

She and her peers "worked our tail off" with the mindset that they weren't at college to go to parties or take weekend trips, but instead "to study and to work hard and to move ahead."

"So we'd go to school in the morning, work through the night, and I was a receptionist in my dorm from midnight to 5 a.m. So people realized that this was a grueling experience for us and they respected us for that."

4. Focus on the job you have, not the job you want

Nooyi said she didn't join PepsiCo intending to become CEO. Her approach was "I'm going to nail this job," to the extent that when her bosses wanted to promote her, she would ask if they were sure and tell them she was happy in her current role.

Having an explicit goal like becoming CEO in 10 years can mean "you get obsessed with that," she said. Her advice is to "do the job you're doing very, very well and everything else will take care of itself."

5. Budget for taking risks

Nooyi said she "took calculated risks knowing that I might lose my job sometimes."

That was possible because she and her husband "lived simply" so that "even if I had lost my job we could have lived on one salary," she said.

"So we both were very comfortable that the risks I was taking were calculated, and it was worth fighting for, and that's what we did through our career."

6. Stay humble

Nooyi said her family played a "major role" in keeping her grounded.

She recalled her mother always telling her, "I don't care if you're a big shot, leave your crown in the garage because you don't need to bring your crown into the house. You're the mother, you're the wife, you're the daughter, the daughter-in-law. Don't forget those roles."

Nooyi said that the message from her mother, that she wasn't above helping around the house and taking care of her family, "anchored" her and kept her humble.

This 'as-told-to' essay is based on a conversation with Juli Ford, a 57-year-old real estate agent and certified senior advisor based in Massachusetts. It has been edited for length and clarity.

When my children were young, we saw my parents all the time.

We lived very close to each other in South Plymouth, Massachusetts, and my parents always helped with the kids. From the time they were born, Wednesdays were Grammy and Grampy Day.

My dad got sick in 2005. When we learned in the summer of 2011 that he probably didn't have much time left, we talked about what life would be like after he was gone, including where my mom would live.

When he passed in December 2011, my mom was not ready to live with us. At 68, she had never lived on her own. She'd been with my dad since she was 15.

Then, in April 2015, a house in Pembroke, Massachusetts, about 30 minutes from South Plymouth, came on the market. The second I saw it online, I thought, "Oh, this is perfect."

The house had a beautiful in-law apartment

The house is 4,300 square feet, and the basement is about 800 square feet. Upstairs, there are three bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms.

My mom fell in love with the home's basement apartment. It's full of beautiful natural light. It's one bedroom with a den, a full kitchen, a fireplace, its own laundry, 1.5 baths, its own outdoor patio, and two entrances.

We made an offer within two days. We bought the house in April 2015 for $630,000.

My mom had no interest in ownership. Instead, she made a financial contribution toward the down payment equal to what she would have paid in rent for the next five years.

She also gave us money every year for utilities. Last year, she started making a bigger monthly contribution to help cover household expenses. She essentially has not had to pay rent for 10 years, and as the house gets older, the cost of maintaining it grows.

It was a dream when we first moved in

My mom helped me a lot with my kids, especially with their schooling. My kids were 10 and 11 when she moved in, and they were homeschooled. We drove around a lot because we were going to museums and other activities in Boston. She sometimes helped with driving, and she became their English teacher because her first career was teaching English.

Grammy Wednesdays continued when we moved into the house, and my kids, who are 20 and 22 now, would go down and visit her on their own.

My mom has exceptionally good boundaries. I'm sure we did things differently than she would have done with our kids, but she's always been very good at keeping her opinions to herself.

My mom is still independent, but needs our help now

At 82, she's a bit less independent than she was 10 years ago because of health issues. Still, she has privacy: I don't know everything that she does all the time, and we can go days without seeing each other. Other times, we see each other a lot more often.

We have had a few medical emergencies with my mom, so I got in the habit of keeping my phone next to my bed. There have been a few times that she's had to call me.

I cannot imagine how much harder it would be to be a daughter of an aging mom if we weren't in the same house. I would be so much more concerned about her being alone and getting lonelier. It would be more time-consuming for me if I had to go somewhere else to support her.

The house gave us other financial benefits

In the beginning, the only financial benefit I really thought about of combining households was that we could get a nicer house than my husband and I could afford on our own.

Around the time we got this house, my brother's family went through a foreclosure after his wife had been hit by a drunken driver and had a traumatic brain injury. They had a lot of housing instability during that time because she was unable to work and had massive medical bills. They were not sure where they were going to live.

Because we combined households with my mom, we were able to tap into the equity in this house to help them. We took out a home equity loan and bought a small, lovely house, and rented it to them. We weren't really making any money on it, but the rent was paying the bills.

Within two years, they recovered their credit enough that they purchased the house from us. They were able to rebuild their financial well-being in that house.

We used the proceeds from the sale to buy a vacation property in Vermont, which we turned into an Airbnb for four years. When we sold it, we paid off our kids' student loans.

We were all able to build wealth because we combined households with my mom. We feel so proud and grateful. It's not something I saw coming 11 years ago.

I see multigenerational living as one of the most compelling solutions to our elder care and affordable housing crises. Bringing families together around this is really an underutilized solution.