Pros
Great colleagues and talented designers, project managers, and engineers who care about their teams and the work they do.
Cons
The new digital leadership was immature and petty. Communication from directors was limited because they didn’t know how to direct remote-first teams. They called people names and then said they didn’t mean it. It was uncomfortable. New York Times always forced their people into Wirecutter leadership positions. Square peg, round hole. They tried to shove Wirecutter digital teams into The New York Times old, process heavy way instead of giving people help they needed for their teams they were smothering them in process. Leadership never listened because they don’t care. Many of us worked on two teams because things became slow like The New York Times and toxic and people were starting to leave. Everyone in that department were constantly in fear of being blamed publicly by a director for something they didn’t do or being talked down to by the new narcissistic head of digital and his best friend of product. People are probably still scared to say anything. Digital leadership directors couldn’t fix culture, because they are toxic themselves and blamed people of color for their mistakes and lots of miscommunications when they communicated at all. The directors never asked for feedback for themselves either. Wirecutter lost its spark. Happy to hear more good colleagues are finally getting away from that place. It must be really bad if they are quitting during a pandemic. Good for them.
