The dead giveaway that it is a puff piece written by a PR firm, and then only lightly edited to preserve the pretense of journalism being involved, is when the piece describes the executives in glowing, hagiographic terms.

The marketing team has the piece written glorifying the CEO, which in turn leads to more budget and promotions for the marketing team. The PR firm places the piece everywhere, which leads to more PR briefs. And the "reporters" are starving in a dying industry, so they'll do anything for a crust of bread and the odd review item they can keep.

---

p.s. Don't tell me that hackers can't play the same game:

http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

It isn't binary. Something can both be a puff piece and be interesting. An aware reader adjusts for bias, and finds what's useful, in any kind of propaganda.

The saying is that no one on their death bed wishes they had spent more time at work, but there's always a counterexample.

> Is this anything more than a puff piece

Yes it is. It is also an example of journalism where the writer gets paid by the word, hence the tedium of the 'vignette'.

In the UK we don't have 'paid by the word' in quite the same way, so you rarely have to wade through rubbish to get to the gist of the article on a UK website. It is a U.S. phenomenon having the fluff-bloat at the start of the article, and, to be honest, it puts me off reading anything linked here from the likes of the New York Times. I just cannot stand this writing style with the extra 'vignette' or whatever padding out the article into some narrative that I cannot be bothered with.