If you feel a burning need to protect your fellow users from employment at the New York Times, please avail yourself of the standard way to share information on HN and make a separate, careful, factual post. Bringing it up in the Who Is Hiring thread, where there's no room to evaluate whether the complaint is valid or just a smear, and the OP loses whether they engage with you or not, is not earnest discussion, it's attempted arson.
I'm going to detach this subthread now and mark it off-topic.
We won't be able to improve the working conditions, lack of specialization respect, burnout, or other industry problems unless more people vocally call out companies like this. If anything here is not cool, it's that more of this targeted, call-out-a-company-on-its-bullcrap doesn't happen.
The comment was clearly pejorative.
Please don't post any more comments that attempt to stir up rage in Who Is Hiring threads.