When the option to provide a cover letter exists, I usually share a PDF “pitch deck” that showcases my value proposition. This typically includes a tailored visualization of my experience and skillset, a competitive overview, strategic business analysis/SWOT, 30-60-90 day plan, etc. Of course this takes some time to develop, but I’m often doing the supporting research as part of my planned interview prep anyway. This approach has yielded a 100% response rate with hiring managers over the past 5 or so years, but I’m outside of the usual HN crowd where talent demand isn’t as high (commercial pharma). I also believe this method has directly led to more attractive compensation packages.

The PDF is not overwhelming - 7 or so slides max with a focus on visualizations over heavy text. It is worth the extra effort if you’re passionate about a specific role or organization.

Great idea! I'm not surprised it works well, because when hiring, I have never received something like this, and so it would definitely stand out.

I often ask for cover letters. Sure, the extra few minutes it takes to write one hopefully filters out a few people who can't be bothered, and it's also a way to test people's English. But actually the main reason is I genuinely want to get a quick notion of who this person is and why they are applying for this job. No hidden agenda. Depending on the situation, I'd be perfectly fine with "I desperately need a job and so am applying to all [job title] positions I can find. I know nothing about your company, but had a quick look at the website and it looks like it could be interesting." So it's a shame that the majority are so formulaic and insincere as to be useless.

I have never written a cover letter and any hacker friendly job which requires you to write a cover letter instead of showing code, is a great filter to keep away good hackers.

Yes, certainly depends on context. If it's a job that involves a lot of clear, compelling communication, such as management, marketing or even design, it makes more sense than for 'pure' programming. Having said that, unfortunately some candidates object to cover letters, others object to CVs, others object to programming tests, others object to IRL in-person interviews, others object to you asking if they have any side-projects or open-source you might look at, some object to hiring based on personal references, others object to highly structured processes. Some appear to object to all of the above. Whenever I hire I try really hard to make the recruitment process make sense for those applying, and yet I've come to accept that you can never please everybody.

As a hiring manager, I dig cover letters. Show me you can write and that you can communicate effectively, tell me why you’re interested in the gig, put your resume into some perspective, give me some sense of your personality…

At least in my world, a good Dev is a lot more than just a monkey who writes code.

I guess if the hiring manager cannot read and understand good code I guess that's a win win.

You can write about the code you wrote in your cover letter.

I don't think a cover letter is necessary - but being able to demonstrate that you can write thoughtfully and clearly is always going to be a plus imo, whatever the job entails. There are very few roles in which decent communication skills have no value.