And no; we can't rely on something like "it's a small company" (there are small companies where everyone's too busy to read cover letters, or doesn't care about them), or "they say they genuinely care about cover letters" (that's about as reliable as the list of qualifications, and we all know how idiotic those can often be).
We would all be better off if we could relegate that "getting to know you" part of the hiring process to the interview. It's a relic of a time when applying for a dozen or so jobs would be likely to get you hired, so you could justify putting in a solid hour or so of effort crafting an individualized cover letter for each one.
That isn't to say that the lack of a cover letter is disqualifying (though a bad one might be), but a good one can definitely set you apart.
I know you think you're a special snowflake that's different from every other company out there, but looking for a job is a grind. A tough one. Why make people dance and sing even more?
True, it's a lot of work. But plenty of people (myself included) manage it.
I'm not going to say that anyone is wrong for not writing cover letters, of course. But there are lots of people making hiring decisions that put a lot of stock in good ones, so it makes logical sense to provide one.
Generally what the person recruiting ate for lunch and the state of their bowel has ten times the influence on the success of your application than any amount of time you spend writing a cover letter. It's all random, and you can't know beforehand if your application will arrive at a serious recruiter or not.
Like start with some bio - as a young child, I took everything apart to see how it worked (much to my parents' chagrin). From that I learned to see the beauty of a mechanical watch ticking away, and I see a similar beauty in a RabbitMQ server ticking away messages, directing them where to go and seeing the inside of the system at work - it's been a lifelong interest of mine.
That part can pretty much stay the same. Then write a paragraph or two about the job. You might not know much but try and find a connection. Like if it's a bank, talk about how you'd like to know more about how money moves over the modern global infrastructure, or if it's some service you've used, talk about how it was helpful. If it's hard to find a connection, then you can say I've got some relevant skills, but I don't know much about your industry and I'd like to learn more.
For weeks.
Months.
Can you still bring yourself to do it at all, let alone find something meaningful to say about each one, after all that?
If they were to apply to fewer jobs, less frequently, and more personally, putting more effort into each, they might not need to be searching for months, or making so many applications where it's clear to the company that they don't care whether they get that job or 1 of hundreds of others.
Maybe think of it like phishing vs. spearphishing. Or sending "hi" as an opening line on a dating app, vs. tailoring it to the person. The latter gets a better response rate per interaction.
In all those cases (okay, not phishing), I got better results the other way myself. I also didn't reach out to recipients that struck me as having the type of culture/personality you described when I read up on them. So there's a selection bias there, too, but one that works for me.
You don't research a company before you apply for a position with them?
b) How on earth do you expect me to be able to "research a company" to be able to tell whether they're genuinely going to read a cover letter and care what it says? The only way I can think to find that out is to be able to talk to people who've recently been hired there, and fuck cold-emailing random people at a company you're trying to apply to; I guarantee some significant percentage of companies would find that super creepy and shitcan your résumé out of hand.
I don't. That's not what I was talking about when researching a company. You can't (usually) know if a cover letter will be read or valued. But it might be, so it seems worth doing anyway just to gain that possible edge.