An inside look at how the New York Times builds product | Alex Hardiman (CPO at The New York Times)

Alex Hardiman’s career has repeatedly placed her where journalism and technology meet: she spent a decade at The New York Times, led news product at Facebook after the 2016 election, became chief product officer at The Atlantic, and later returned to the Times. She describes the work as a sequence of disruptive moments, from the post-election reckoning at Facebook to the onset of COVID at the Times. Her account suggests that product leadership in news often means operating amid uncertainty, where teams must first diagnose what is happening before deciding what to build.

That environment is not attractive to every product manager. Hardiman says she is drawn to chaotic problems because product teams can turn many competing inputs into a shared model: what is known, where conviction is warranted, what remains a question, and which problems deserve priority. Lenny’s metaphor of the CEO’s “Eye of Sauron” captures the difference: some managers deliberately work near the company’s most urgent problem, while others prefer a less exposed role. Hardiman’s enthusiasm is a personal fit, not a claim that constant urgency suits everyone.

The Times organizes product and design work along two axes: professional functions and missions. Functions support craft standards, career development, promotion practices, and shared skills. Missions are cross-functional teams, typically led by a general manager or a product or engineering leader, that pursue defined outcomes. Consumer missions cover products such as news, cooking, games, and audio, with editors embedded in the teams. Monetization missions include subscriber growth and digital advertising, while platform missions provide shared capabilities. This arrangement puts editorial expertise inside some product teams while allowing commercial and technical work to scale across the bundle.