I am less impressed by the cover letter's creativity than by its honesty. This guy writes like we're sitting together over coffee, or better yet, beer. He's either completely sincere or totally full of shit. After 5 minutes in person, it's probably easy to tell which.

Glad to hear this had a happy ending. Respect.

So I don't suppose anyone knows what the outcome was? Did he get an interview at least?

Post-GOOG Edit: http://twitter.com/#!/onyxfish says, "Happy you all are enjoying it--even more happy it got me the job!"

If you click the last of the weird (and, imo, quite visually displeasing) yellow tab thingies, close to the scribbled-over piece of text, it says "You didn't think we'd give away our teammate's contact info so easily! [...]".

I interpreted this to mean that the guy who wrote the letter got hired by the ones who received it.

He's happily working there now. http://twitter.com/onyxfish/status/26467188200 shows:

"For those reading my cover letter via @brianboyer's twitstorm: Happy you all are enjoying it--even more happy it got me the job!"

“If you are not a hacker then you probably aren’t going to enjoy the rest of this letter any more than the first paragraph.”

I love this. I want a hacker-friendly environment and you need a hacker. If you understand any of this, let’s get together.

Anyone have the original job ad? I'm curious.

Here are two recent job postings from the News Apps team at the Chicago Tribune:

http://blog.apps.chicagotribune.com/2009/09/09/hacker-wanted...

http://blog.apps.chicagotribune.com/2009/12/24/were-hiring-a...

I'm the hacker in question and its the former ad I replied to. And yes, I'm quite gainfully and meaningfully employed with the Tribune. And no, I'm not full of shit (at least I wasn't on that occasion.) Glad folks are enjoying/inspired by it.

The ad used the work `grok'. So there was a pretty high chance that the tone of your cover letter would be well received. Good perception!

Me too. I felt like I was listening to half a discussion.

When I hear "creative cover letter" I think of something more than three to four paragraphs that cover an applicant's background, interests, and goals. It's an excellent cover letter, sure, but I fail to see much creativity with the form or structure. There's "only" the creativity that underlies all concise, punchy, effective writing.