It's a tech company with a mission that matters
Pros
The New York Times is a great place to work. It's large enough that you can easily and quickly progress your career from entry-level engineer to manager and director on the management track or senior engineer and architect on the technology track. But it's also small enough that it feels like a community and you're not lost in a giant company. And, since the Times is a media and technology company you're able to work with a wide diversity of people on a wide range of projects. You could be working on anything from speeding up our homepage to building out a new recipe database, to building tools to cover a hurricane. We do a lot of user testing here at the Times and you get to see first hand how your work helps change people's lives. Also, it's worth mentioning that our building is amazing. It gets great light and is super convenient to anywhere in the region. And everyone gets a real desk.
Cons
The Times isn't a startup and isn't a pure technology company so we lack some of the perks you'd expect at a Google or Facebook. There aren't free lunches or haircuts. We don't have a dozen engineers cordoned off in a corner of the building working on React or Go. Compared to the big players, we're a much more lean operation. It's the media, afterall.