[InfamousRece]

Cover letters are a waste of time. You‘ll spend lots of effort writing to 10 companies or so and then they will just ghost you. Applying for a job is a numbers game. Send 50 resumes and get 1 phone call. Or maybe use your network if you have one. Nobody reads cover letters.

[BoorishBears]

Twice in my career I've had recruiters call out my cover letter

Granted, one admitted "usually they're cookie cutter and I don't read them" before praising mine... but I like writing real cover letters because it's a second chance to consider why/how badly I want to work somewhere

I craft them to the company/problem space, call out specific areas of interest. And sometimes halfway in I realize I don't care what they do enough to continue writing, so I save everyone involved's time

[JohnFen]

That's not my experience. I get ghosted too, of course -- that's just part of how things currently work -- but my ratio is much better than yours. I get a response from about 15% of the applications I make.

Perhaps the difference is because I write cover letters?

> Nobody reads cover letters.

This is demonstrably untrue. But if you said "not everyone reads cover letters," you'd be correct. But that's not a reason to not put in the effort to write them.