Software Engineer Interview Experience - New York, New York
Process
I applied via LinkedIn and was contacted by a recruiter who set up a phone round with the hiring team.
The phone round was a discussion about my projects and a few easy questions based on my work experience.
Then I was invited to an onsite interview at the New York Times office. I was interested in meeting the team, and the onsite round was, overall, a good experience.
Nothing asked was particularly too difficult; mostly database schema-related questions, and I was asked just one algorithm question.
The onsite interview was scheduled for 3 hours and was pretty straightforward. A few questions from interviewers overlapped and felt a little disorganized.
After the onsite, there was a take-home coding test with vague specifications. I was given a JSON-related question and was rejected based on the coding test.
The feedback felt highly nitpicked and was contradictory to the assumptions stated in the question. This was a complete waste of my time. I already had another offer in hand and attended the interview because I committed to the recruiter.
Questions
One algorithm question based on comparing two sorted lists.
Take-home test related to comparing JSON data from two files.
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Interview Statistics
The following metrics were computed from 17 interview experiences for the The New York Times Software Engineer role in New York, New York.
Success Rate
The New York Times's interview process for their Software Engineer roles in New York, New York is very selective, failing most engineers who go through it.
Experience Rating
Candidates reported having very good feelings for The New York Times's Software Engineer interview process in New York, New York.
The New York Times Work Experiences
- 2.0Good company. Tries to show that they care about their employeesSoftware Engineer • Current EmployeeNew York, New York, United StatesSeptember 21, 2020Pros: Benefits: * Salary is competitive * Remote work culture * Relaxed work cultureCons: For non-immigrants, it’s not the right place to work. They have a stupid policy of filing for a Green Card after 4 years of working at the NYT. If they don’t change this policy in the next few months, I am planning to leave, and so many people will leave. Higher employee churn rate. A lot of employees are leaving The New York Times. The technology side of the group is low-invested. As a result, they are still using a technology stack which is 20 years old.
- 3.0A great, committed staff operating in a stifling management structureSoftware Engineer • Former EmployeeNew York, New York, United StatesJanuary 8, 2014Pros: Great people who care about the company. An awesome, respected brand. Reasonable benefits. An awesome place to work on your skills.Cons: Vapid promotion path for technical roles. Hyperscale has a highly variable experience depending on the team. Teams operate in silos, and interdependence is managed poorly. Editorial vision interpenetrates everything, sometimes to a fault.
- 4.0Fantastic and Friendly Coworkers, Excellent WLB, Questionable Upper ManagementSoftware Engineer • Current EmployeeNew York, New York, United StatesMarch 8, 2022Pros: - Really smart engineers and product people, with a lot of empathy. - Incredible work-life balance, with a really flexible schedule depending on the team. - The core mission of the company (producing great, informative, important journalism) can be very motivating. Not everything we publish resonates this way, but the work that does feels good to be a part of. - For the most part, I've felt pretty shielded from office bureaucracy/politics in my day-to-day (though I am aware it exists in some parts of the company).Cons: Upper management often comes off as very disconnected, disorganized, and even antagonistic at times. They don't pay as much as many other tech companies of similar size, which makes retention difficult and hiring to replace people very slow. The company insisted it planned to address that discrepancy, even at some point sending emails about pay raises across the board, but it never happened. Instead, they offered slightly larger RSU grants than normal to senior engineers and above only (still below the rate of peer tech companies they claimed they were comparing their compensation to).
