[kayodelycaon]

I've never read or written a cover letter and I have a single-page resume.

I've got two sentences at the top of my resume explaining who I am and what I do.

I use much more flowery language but I basically say:

    I'm team lead.
    I care about communication.
    I want to know your business and customers. 
    I want to work with stakeholders and help them solve problems.

The rest of my resume backs this up. And at the bottom, I describe all of the business skills I learned over 4 years of running a furry convention. It's written just like all of the other jobs.

It's worked pretty well for me. I don't get calls from people who dislike furries and the first two sentences got me my current job.

[jjice]

Anecdotally, I've never read a cover letter as someone who's interviewed a good chunk of engineers, but not nearly as many as a lot of the folks on HN. I have however had a much better initial response experience from companies that I added a cover letter for. I think some larger companies that have a resume and cover letter upload on their site just might prioritize those who wrote a cover letter as well. That's just a guess though.