Last week I was a the University of Washington recruiting computer scientists. When we go recruiting we tend to wear what most would consider business casual. No ties, suits, etc. but definitely not jeans and t-shirts. When I showed up I felt like I had walked in on a competition for who could find the rattiest jeans contest. The thing is that some of the clothing I saw was in worse shape than what I wear working in my yard on the weekend.
While I understand that software engineers don't want to work in an environment where they need to dress in anything more than jeans and t-shirts, it is common courtesy to dress with some respect for the notion that you are representing your company and not a bunch of yahoos that just walked in from a weekend of yard work.
The thing is that this attitude of disrespectful dress basically tells me that these people aren't professionals and don't expect professional work from the students they are recruiting. While I wouldn't make a decision about hiring someone based on how they dress, I have noticed that those that dress well fall into two camps. Those that know they need an edge and those that are truly professionals. The smart ones that don't dress well tend not to be well rounded. These are people you don't want interfacing with customers.
Since a good portion of software engineering is actually getting the right requirements from customers it makes sense that you need at least some engineers that can do this. While we would probably hire someone who didn't have these skills if they were very smart in other areas and worked well with the team, we would rather have more well rounded people as they will tend to solve the right problems.
In any case it was astounding to me that so many big well respected companies seem to feel that software engineers will be attracted to a company that sends under dressed recruiters.
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