I’ve literally never had to write a cover letter in my 6+ year career in tech outside of FAANGM. Complete waste of time imho.

I hire and pay top of market and I definitely look at cover letters, at least scan them (some are huge tells that they don’t even know what we do, so it weeds out the candidate), and often they’re the thing that differentiates the various candidates who have similar backgrounds. I’ve also hired lots of people without cover letters. I don’t think spending a few minutes writing a paragraph like another poster stated above is a waste of time.

How are you sure you're paying top of market?

And i'm explaining from my 22 year career, my best positions came with a cover letter