Deez Interviews: Meet the Wirecutter writer with the stellar snack choices, stringent product testing methods, and a packed Amazon wish list

Happy Friday, Deezers! Today’s rather seasonally appropriate interview is with Anna Perling, whose work you’ll probably be scouring at The Wirecutter whilst you do your Black Friday/Cyber Monday/holiday consumption thing in the coming weeks. She talked to us about what it **actually** takes to put together a product guide, and how seriously her team takes the task of reviewing even lunchboxes. Enjoy!

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The interviewee: Anna Perling (follower her @acperling!)

The gig: Staff writer on the Wirecutter’s kitchen team

The day-to-day:

Writing a Wirecutter guide is a long process, often taking 1-2 months from start to finish. Usually, I’m balancing four or five projects, and cycling through the various steps in our process: research, interviewing, testing, and writing.

I do my best to balance my days so I work on a blend of tasks, but sometimes I’ll go through a marathon week of making six cakes and six batches each of cookies and frosting and pizza dough to test — not much writing gets done then! Others, I’ll be working through a spreadsheet hundreds of items deep. I switch off working from our Chinatown test kitchen, the New York Times Building, and at my home office (you can see my living room in this standing desk pick).

During the day, I eat many snacks to get me through (currently: roasted salted cashews, apples, and those delicious/dumb pea crisps that are basically like eating air) and always try to go for a walk at some point to get my blood flowing, even if it’s only ten minutes, and even if it’s raining.

What kind of audience do you have in mind when you're putting these guides together?

I try to imagine that I’m recommending stuff for my friends and family — the stuff that I would buy with my own money. In most of our guides, we have a “Who this is for” section, in which we try to work out on the page who could use an item (and, just as importantly, who could skip this purchase).

We really, really care about our readers because ultimately, we’re writing to try help them save time and money by recommending a small thing that could improve their life. I think about our readers all the time, throughout the entire guide process! (I have even had some late nights worrying about possible Reddit reactions, I hate to admit).

Personally, I try to tune into comments on my guides, consider responses on social while we’re doing outreach during testing (sometimes people have really great ideas on what we should consider), and also monitor reactions after publishing. We update guides frequently, with reader feedback in mind.

You've been at Wirecutter since before the NYT's acquisition of the site in 2016. Has being attached to the NYT's brand of journalism changed your job?

Being acquired by the NYT has offered us some resources we didn’t have before, like the chance to collaborate with our colleagues at Smarter Living to offer even more far-reaching service journalism. But I think those collaborations came easily since we already shared a strong commitment to journalistic practices and serving readers.

Basically, we can just do more now. I’m constantly impressed by my colleagues’ reporting, on everything from how to secure your smart home devices from domestic abusers to whether or not $2000 sheets are really worth it. As we’ve grown, our editorial team has worked to solidify our processes so everyone’s on the same page with our approach and style, and it’s an ongoing process. We’re constantly asking ourselves how we can be better, and then trying to be.

Can you tell us a little more about the process you go through to test and research a product?

During the research phase, we try to become experts about every product we review by reading other editorial and poring over consumer reviews, comparing best-selling items, and interviewing actual experts to learn what to look for when testing (and yes, we do this for things like lunch boxes!).

Things get fun during testing. Whether it’s carting 14 gift baskets through Times Square and up the NYT’s freight elevator for a taste-testing panel, chasing rain to Olympic National Park for rain pants testing, or whipping up countless cakes and cookies to see how a hand mixer performs for different real-world baking tasks, we try to get creative when pushing products to their limits.

Reading Wirecutter “How we tested” sections are a guaranteed good time to see the extreme lengths our staff will go to during the testing process to weed out the competition.

What's the biggest misconception about your job that people have?

People often think that we get paid to review products by the companies that make them, or that we get to keep everything we test. That’s not the case (as our about us page makes abundantly clear). We have a strict ethics policy surrounding test units (and we also don’t accept free stuff).

We choose what to test based on extensive, objective research, and we only keep products that we need to long-term test over time for later updates. The rest we donate or return! I also don’t think people realize how long it takes to write a review, or how much editorial effort goes into it — each guide goes through many, many edits and steps before it goes live on the site.

Finally, what's at the top of your Amazon wish list right now?

How did you know I was trying to Wirecutter my kitchen?! I just added a slew of our cooking picks, including our measuring spoons, which are magnetic and SO convenient, and cups, to my cart — I want to learn to bake bread this winter, and I think these will help.

We use Hedley & Bennett aprons in the test kitchen, and my BFF got me a gift card for my birthday, so I’m working on choosing a sturdy apron as well (there are so many colors!).

Moving off of the wish list and into reality, I just got our space heater pick (winter is coming) and our rec for white noise machine to hopefully help me sleep a little better in the city that never sleeps.

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Don’t forget to follow Anna @acperling, and have a great weekend!

Like Deez Links? Forward to quality space heaters ‘cause those are the realest.