At the time I grew the beard, I was pretty sure I was about to start doing short term contracting myself out as a software developer as opposed to having a permanent staff job. Dressed in a suit with just a ponytail, clean shaven with the Asian Smooth Skin, I just looked too young to be taken seriously, despite being over a decade into my career at that point. The beard took that same outfit from "too-young" to "wise asian dude", courtesy of approximately a billion kung-fu movies... I think it did subsequently help when interviewing for contracting roles - my resume was impressive enough anyway, but physical impressions do count, even if they're not supposed to.

The beard took about six months of concerted laziness to get anywhere useful though. :-) I'm not likely to get rid of it any time soon because of the lag in re-growing it. Unfortunate, because I do like the androgynous look on me sometimes, but it's kinda impossible to look androgynous with a full beard.

As far as the haircut thing goes, yeah. Stereotypes exist in people's minds, unfortunately, and making use of them in your favour is at least useful to you. They're still annoying though, especially if you're having to trade one against another, and neither really sits comfortably alone, identity-wise. :-/