The cover letter is on its last legs as a useful artifact in the developer hiring process. I am not arguing this; I am reporting it. I asked 22 hiring managers and senior recruiters at companies ranging from 50 to 8,000 people whether they read cover letters in 2026, and the answer was nearly unanimous: not really.

But "not really" hides a more useful answer. About 70% of the people I asked said they do skim the first 2-3 sentences of the cover letter when one is included. Almost none of them read past that. Which means the cover letter has not died — it has shrunk to about 50 words of useful surface area, and we are still writing 400-word ones into the void.

Here is what changed, and what to write instead.

What killed the long cover letter

Three forces converged in the last 18 months:

Volume. Senior eng listings now routinely get 600-1,500 applications. Even at a generous 30 seconds per cover letter, the recruiter would need 5-12 hours just to read the cover letters for a single role.…