Yes and no. The recent issue with the NYT is certainly the immediate trigger of Scott Alexander's decision to change jobs; but it seems to me at least that this course of action was inevitable (once the blog became popular).

If (you feel that) your job is incompatible with a personal association to a popular 'rationalist' blog, and you write a rationalist blog under your own partial name, and it then becomes popular - well you will have to take that decision at some point - resign, or shut down the blog.

Scott has put off that decision as long as he could, and the NYT journalist's behaviour certainly forced him in one direction; but fundimentally this controversy is of his own creation.

Evidently he has taken the logical decision that the blog matters more to him (or there are more opportunities as the writer of a popular blog) than his old job and he's actioned this; I don't think it's fair to characterise this as the New York Times 'costing him his job'.

I'm torn on this. On the one hand, there's really no real reason for NYT to have refused to not publish his name, and also refuse to drop the story when he made clear how uncomfortable he was with being doxxed, a reasonable thing for his profession. On the other hand, his response was so extreme and scorched earthy I find it difficult to blame the outcome on the New York Times. I guess I just have to take him at his word of how badly it will affect his patients though.