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But having long hair, as a man, would have been a Serious Statement until quite recently, and not one that you could have in a professional white collar job.
Only if you consider 30+ years ago as ”quite recently”.
It would have been in 2005, I'm quite sure. I remember strong disapprovals of it in the early 2010s, at least, as well.
Back in 2001 I had a lecturer in the university whose day job was as an engineering R&D department leader at Nokia (a company not exactly known for being "hip" or a hotbed of alternative culture). As an old school goth he naturally had long black hair and dressed in all black, with a suit jacket being his only reconciliatory gesture to corporate dresscode. Absolutely nobody batted an eye at his style.
As another example, Mikko Hyppönen has been a well known computer security researcher / expert / educator for three decades, whose hairstyle has stayed the same at least since 1995. In some ways you could call his entire career a fight against a type of counterculture.
So, yes, long hair absolutely was something you could have in many professional white collar jobs unless you perhaps happened to live in a particularly conservative place. It really was and is more about your overall conduct and presentation than about any particular subculture style attributes. As an extreme example, an acquaitance of mine was a hard core crust punk in the late 2000s. In his free time he was all about sticking it to the man, fighting the police (in a very physical sense), multiple large piercings, tattoos etc. I've also rarely met anyone who's exuded as much polite professionalism as he did in his professional role (with the piercings and all) as a technical documentation specialist for a Fortune 500 company.
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