As the article says, because the letter it's supposed to be good for you, just the companies found their way to pass along the message they want.

But yeah, it's all a bit crazy.

I would scrap it altogether, people aren't "bad", there is just contextes where they don't fit. I think people are always trying to create new means of exclusion, a new nobility. Introductions, elite schools, recommendation letters, references etc. It's like nobody cares about substance anymore, it's all about your background, like it was about your name before.