(author here)

I get your sentiment, but I feel an important advantage of this approach is that the markdown file is much more appropriate to put in version control than a Word document would be. Also, the TeX typesetting is just that bit nicer than what you'd get from converting the .doc, but that's perhaps of secondary importance for some :-)

Thing is, as a developer, I don't have Word on my computer. So when it comes to reviewing resumes, one in Word format is going to be very difficult for me to view. I might just not bother.

PDFs are fine. But, IMO, Markdown is better, because it's also demonstrating a skill that's usable in your job.

Out of curiosity, what do you use as an alternative to Word if you do have to open something in a .doc/.docx format? Surely just saying "I don't have Word because I'm a developer" can't work in every situation?

I use Bean (for Mac, no longer supported) for reading documents. Open Office and Libre Office also work.

Honestly, I use Word for writing formal documents on the rare occasion when it happens, such as letters to the government. But not for resumes. The formatting is just too frustrating. I've been using HTML and markdown for that. www.rocketships.ca, for example. I never send .docs to anyone - .pdfs or raw text only.

I can't remember the last time I had to open anything in Word format. I did have a copy of OpenOffice installed on my last laptop - I'm sure eventually I'll get around to installing it on my current one. But I only trust OO to read Word files, I would never send someone a .docx generated by OO.

I do say that. If I'm dealing with somebody's rude enough to force me, I open it in vim and pull what I'm looking for from the XML.

pandoc has very good conversion to docx and accepts external style files, so: some are doing both? ;)