I applied online. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at New York Times in Mar 2020
Interview
Got a random email from a recruiter and decided to pursue it. The process took quite long (2+ months), but overall it was a good experience.
1) Recruiter screen - my recruiter was a great communicator and always responsive. One of the better recruiters I talked to during this job search.
2) Technical phone screen - they ask what would be considered a LeetCode easy if it were on LeetCode, but it's not really a LeetCode type problem. It's just a simple string manipulation problem. I appreciated that it is somewhat unique and not just a cookie cutter algorithm problem. One other atypical thing is that there are two interviewers on the screen as opposed to just one.
3) On-site - They focus on culture fit and technical chops about 50/50. There are only two technical interviews, one system design and one coding. The coding was quite easy, just cookie cutter Leetcode easy problems. I easily finished two optimally in the time allotted. The system design one was a bit harder to read, my interviewers were not very chatty and I just went along with my design without them asking too many questions. I think I did well but It's hard to say if I was doing what they expected me to do. The non-technical interviews were a bit atypical for engineering interviews I would say, they were only thirty minutes each and very generic job interview type questions rather than specific to engineering. One thing I should mention is that every interview had at least two interviewers (I've never seen this before), which I guess was fine if not a little distracting.
Another thing I noticed is that the engineering team I talked to was quite diverse - a black engineer, and hispanic engineer, and more than one woman engineer. That was a bit refreshing and not what I am used to.
Overall I had a good experience and I thought I did quite well in the interviews, but ultimately I was not given an offer. The NYT seems like a great place to work and I was really bummed they didn't make an offer (and I don't really know where I messed up, they did not provide detailed feedback).
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at New York Times (New York, NY) in Jul 2024
Interview
I don't know why I keep applying to this company. This was the third time I've applied over several years to various departments, and each time I canceled the interview process due to bad experiences or better job offers. This particular interview was similar to my prior interviews, but this one was especially poorly organized.
I had an hour and a half discussion that was broken up into two parts: hiring manager, Staff Engineer & a junior engineer (shadowing), and then the HM left the meeting during the technical part. The HM asked an open ended question about how I would work on a feature. For whatever reason, there was confusion by one of them in regards to my answers and I was interrupted several times to be asked questions I already answered. It was difficult to move forward in the discussion. For the technical part, the coderpad environment was not properly setup, so I was not able to do the problem in my preferred (allowed) language (the language this job works in a large part of the time). They offered almost no help, so I resorted to writing out the problem partly in pseudocode just to complete the task.
After the interview, I reached out to the recruiter and told them I'm not interested, so this is definitely the last time I'm applying. As much as I enjoy reading the NYT, the pay is really low and interview process is joyless.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Give an example of a feature you worked on, and describe the project management side of things, architecture choices, tech stack choices, metrics, etc. The tech round was a very, very easy coding exercise. All you had to do was hit an API, pull back the JSON, filter the data based on a few requirements, then hit a different part of the API with the filter data, and then print out what was returned. It's a nobrainer, but they did not have coderpad properly setup and they didn't know how to resolve it.
Very lengthy. Went through at least 3 interviews, made it to the final round then they ghosted me. I assume I didn't get it but any communication would've been nice. Two interviews, one test.
I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at New York Times in Sept 2023
Interview
I Applied through a referral 1) 30 Mins call with recruiter and she explained all the interview steps 2) Hiring manager call - she actually have a set of questions and she asked those questions and I have noticed she didn't concentrate while I was speaking. Received email after that saying they are not moving forward. They have one of the worst interview process I have ever seen This is a very bad experience I have encountered in my carrier. Please do not waste your time for applying for this company they waste your time even you have the skills which they required.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
tell me about your self, tell me in a situation where you had a conflict and how did you resolve it
