[1retep]

Love this answer, I was thinking the same thing.

I remember in college I applied to over 100 internships and my friend said “I don’t understand how you wrote over 100 cover letters.” My response was “I didn’t. If they ask for a cover letter I don’t want to work for them.”

[chefandy]

And if you believe you're best represented as a bullet list of educational and professional accomplishments, I assure you that the feeling is mutual.

[tempestn]

I agree. I'm not interested in software that will screen resumes for keywords or that kind of thing. Instead we ask a simple question right in our job postings, asking that an answer be included in the application, and that filters out 90% of applicants who don't bother. If someone additionally includes a decent cover letter, they go to the top of the pile. We want people who took the time to read our posting and want to work here, not those who are just spamming resumes everywhere.

[chefandy]

Yeah. Filling a perfectly developer-shaped hole in your team? Sure... Sort a stack of resumes by experience and education and contact the top n applicants. Want more than dense pull requests, snide code reviews, and lots of "well actually" interjections even when discussing things outside their expertise? You might be disappointed with your options if you're only booking interviews based on resumes.

[eikenberry]

Cover letters are one of those things that are only really useful for the first few jobs. Once you've started working you will get most of your future jobs via your network and cover letters are pointless from then on.

[chefandy]

If you're content to work within your network or and only care about the craft rather than the overall purpose of your company and tasks, then sure. Jobs your friends and colleagues get you don't require a cover letter.

[nomel]

I've been involved in hiring at several tech companies, including two top 5. Cover letters were never considered in any part of the interview process. Our recruiters didn't even include them in the candidate packet. So, there definitely isn't any uniformity in the way cover letters are perceived.

[chefandy]

I never said you couldn't get a very prestigious job without a cover letter. In fact, I'm positive top 5 companies are far less likely to care about cover letters than many organizations. They want to hire people who are mostly excited about the code and solving exciting problems that come up while the company does its thing. Get a stack of resumes, sort by pedigree and experience, put them in front of a whiteboard to make sure they weren't lying, get them in some interviews to make sure they aren't total jerks, and you're off to the races.

If you want to work with a think tank, a nonprofit doing exciting and important work, a startup with an amazing idea that really captures your imagination, or any other org where the big picture needs to matter as much or more to everybody involved than the content of the PRs, then the cover letter likely matters more than the resume.

No judgement. I use those top 5 products. It's just pretty myopic to deem cover letters as unnecessary when that's only true for people with very specific goals and ideas about what matters in a job, even if they happen to be very common.

[notch656a]

The only reliable component about getting a job is being a desirable candidate. That's it. Maybe you write some great cover letters. I have worked for both startup and non-profit without writing a cover letter. Sometimes a resume and a glass of whiskey with the CEO is enough to get these jobs. I could probably get a job just as easily with a bottle of whiskey and two glasses as I could with a cover letter. Although the whiskey is the only one of the two I've any experience with.

[nomel]

> I never said you couldn't get a very prestigious job without a cover letter.

I didn't suggest this, at all. I suggested the value of a cover letter is not some constant across the tech sector, from startups (sample size = 2) to the big 5 (sample size = 2).

[BeetleB]

I agree with you, but people have strong opinions on this on HN. See past discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15934135

I wish I could find the golden comment of an HN user realizing that he has used cover letters to exclude candidates, but he can't do that for those who didn't supply one - putting the latter at an advantage.

[Sunspark]

I hate cover letters so much. They're utterly ridiculous.. imagine applying for a lawnmower technician position or something and needing a cover letter. You'd have to write how you're great because ever since you were little you would read lawnmower catalogs to bed.