Many will disagree w/ me, but those who have been in my position will know I speak the truth...
At least in the technology sector, a suit is almost indicative of inexperience. Having interviewed with companies many, many times, and interviewed many others, I've only seen a few suits, none of which we hired. We didn't plan it that way, it just turned out that the suits were more interested in projecting an image of intellectual affluence, rather than actually showing it. We actually had one interview who had his MCP pin attached to his jacket. On the other hand, we've interviewed the other extreme; t-shirt and jeans.
I think the difference manifests itself in the fact that there's not very many people in the technology sector, who aren't in some sort of sales, who wear suits. When a total geek shows up at an interview in a suit, it looks aesthetically incongruous, like he's putting on a facade (yes, most do) for the interviewers. This conveys a level of dishonesty, however slight it may be, and could affect the overall outcome of the interview.
My interview style is respectful, but not "hi, I'm so new at interviewing, I didn't know what to do, so I wore a suit". I usually wear slacks, dress shoes, a nice button up shirt, but usually no tie. I've only interviewed once with a company who didn't put an offer on the table, and that was my first interview, and I wore a suit and tie
. My everyday dress isn't that far off, dress chinos, sport shirt, nice shoes.
I stress that this isn't the case for other industries, like law, sales, etc.. Some companies, like Intel I imagine, probably appreciate a suit.
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