As a college professor, I am often asked for letters of recommendation by my CS majors. I have templates, for whether the student is applying for grad school, for an internship, for a scholarship, etc. Each of my letters ends up being 1.5-2 pages. When I read letters, they are often much shorter, sometimes only a paragraph. I have no experience with CS jobs outside academia, and I'm starting to worry the letters I'm writing are too long (though I do have a good track record of students getting what they applied for). First question (with an eye towards CS internships or jobs especially):
(1) How long are your letters of recommendation?
Another question is scalability. Each letter I write takes me about 1 hour, and the original templates took longer (probably 3-4 hours each). Every year, more and more students are asking me for letters, so I wonder if I should find a way to do it faster. Hence my 2nd question:
(2) How long does it take you to write a letter of recommendation?