> When I was recruiting programmers I always read them, though maybe 1 out of every 10 applicants included one.

So few? Just to make sure, does the body of the email counts as a cover letter? I always put mine there, surely that doesn't make it invisible?

The body of an email with a resume attached is an explanation to the person you are emailing about why you're sending them a resume and what you want them to do with it, no more. If the company is bigger than 80-or-so people and the person you're mailing is a recruitment inbox, then they are not going to be particularly interested in anything the email says other than which job you're applying for. Your heartfelt explanations about why the company is the place where you have always dreamed of working will never make it to anybody who has hiring decision authority.

So basically, the first person who receives my email will lose relevant information. It's like they don't even know how email works. Often at a technology company.

Such blatant stupidity is hard do fathom.

>surely that doesn't make it invisible?

It makes it perfectly visible, to the person who receives your email. After that only your attached resume is printed or passed on to other decision makers.

Putting your "cover letter" in body of an email is anywhere from bad to worse practice, depending on the initial recipient of your email (hiring manager vs low level recruiter).

> Putting your "cover letter" in body of an email is anywhere from bad to worse practice

So, the onus is on me to put this information in a place that is less convenient to reach than the body of the email?

This is ridiculous. The onus should be on them not to lose information. Sure, if I need that job badly, I may have to work around their stupidity. Hopefully I have more leeway than that.

> most firms are very averse to paying programmers more than the non-technical staff to whom they report

Why? Management is just a different kind of skilled labor, not a more important one, and certainly not a less scarce one.

The same applies to technical managers. It also applies to the managers of those managers- in general, if you're higher up the org chart you expect to get paid more than the people that report to you. If you get promoted, and are given more responsibilities, you expect to get more money. If you get promoted, and are given more responsibilities but are not given a higher salary, then you can probably get that higher salary for the same job by going elsewhere.

I don't see this as a management vs. engineering situation (especially since in there are plenty of companies that prefer to promote engineers to management rather than hire MBAs or external hires in general). It's more just a human hierarchy situation. The people higher up the hierarchy are held accountable for everything that happens below them in the org chart, even though they are by definition not doing the work of all of those individuals.

That's a functional hierarchy, of course. In a dysfunctional hierarchy, it's more like a pyramid scheme and the higher up you are, the easier it is for you to escape scrutiny by blaming those below you. All orgs I've worked in have been somewhere on the functional/dysfunctional spectrum, nothing's 100% good or 100% bad. There really are no ideal ways to get groups of people to work together towards a shared goal without introducing things which are injustices when seen in isolation, whether there's a hierarchy or a flat org or what have you. I hope someone figures out a better solution but I'm not holding my breath- like democracy and capitalism, it's the worst system in the world except for every other system that humans have been able to come up with.

Corporations are organized internally as command economies, not markets. There are other social logics at play.

Who makes the decision?