https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAE5KoyFEUo
We've spent our week of introspection asking hard questions of ourselves and each other. We're ready to share what we've learned.Links Referenced in the Vide...
Sounds convincing, however businesses don't deserve the benefit of the doubt. For me to trust and support this content again, the investigation of the allegations needs to produce conclusive evidence. The whole quality drama passed to the background after Madison showed up what really went inside LMG
Either LMG admits wrongdoing and dishes out consequences to those involved, or they present verifiable and damning evidence showing no abuse occurred. Unlike bootlickers at reddit and ltt forums, I don't side with businesses against people. If you live in this world and not in your mom's basement you'd understand why.
If LMG comes out with "we found nothing," "no conclusions could be made," or something along those lines without evidence, then fuck them. Not good enough.
I vote with my wallet (and time), and I won't deal with more corpo BS while abusing emplpyees. Before any smartasses come here with the usual "you live in society" crap. Yeah I can't go live in the woods like a hermit to be morally right, but I can sure as hell drop a shit tech yt channel.
EDIT: taking another look, the second half of the video was more defensive nonsense. Basically claiming they aren't a twitter sweatshop, they are the victims, and some heavily edited parking loot footage as "proof"
And the turnover rate is at best a shaky argument, One can argue since it's mostly guys, they're not gonna be at the same situation to be bullied, insulted and sexually harassed until leaving. It doesn't seem the culture will be fixed anytime soon, so I'm just gonna stop wasting more time with it.
The burden of proof works the exact opposite way. You make a claim, then you need to support verifiable and damnable evidence. Not the other way around.
This isn't a court trial tbh, and what has come forth from Madison's side (testimonies, recording, consistency) is more than enough for me to put the ball entirely on LMG's side.
No reason to keep giving businesses the benefit of the doubt when in many cases they have every advantage over the situation.
Oh, sure, I mean, you are definitely free to do and think as you wish. Just pointing out how the burden of proof works, since a lot of people (not necessarily you) do not get how it works. Bertrand Russel, everyone!
This isn't a court trial tbh
So just because it's not a court trial means we should throw out innocent until proven guilty? The burden of proof is non-negotiable. These ideas have existed for centuries, they aren't a purely legal framework.
what has come forth from Madison's side
Which is, to be perfectly fair, limited to he-said-she-said which isn't evidence. It's just an allegation and very little can be decided from that alone.
At this point there is exactly zero useful information to actually derive any real decision from.
So just because it’s not a court trial means we should throw out innocent until proven guilty? The burden of proof is non-negotiable. These ideas have existed for centuries, they aren’t a purely legal framework.
I'm under no obligation to give LMG the benefit of the doubt, if I choose to abstain from watching their content due to the allegations, then that is my prerogative. My choosing to make a decision without proof either way doesn't harm LMG further than the loss of ad revenue, etc.
That's the difference.
Good thing that person's personal "court system" has no bearing on LMG's ability to do or not do anything.
How do you present evidence that it didn't happen without uploading months of continuous security camera footage?
I think we should first wait for Madison to provide evidence that it did happen
ehhh, no; Colin and Taran repeatedly stated they never witnessed sexual abuse or harassment, and they can only confirm current claims are consistent with what she told them before.
I think we're saying the same thing but I don't like the way you phrased it. They didn't support any part of her story, except that it didn't change.
Yeah I guess the wording in internet is difficult. What I meant is that they stood up for her, even if they can't confirm the things happened.
If, hypothetically, Madison made this whole thing up due to some ulterior motive, don't you think there would be other ex-exployees with mutual interests?
Just out of spite? Nah that's not normal. If we were talking about some megacorp like amazon or blizzard I'm sure there were ex employees piling in with some lies too but it's way less likely in a smaller company when we're talking about just 2 other people known by the community chipping in.
They did an okay job of addressing the accuracy issue, but failed to even mention the issues of workplace culture and absurd quotas.
It does not matter if workers start and stop their shifts at particular time - as strictly required by law - when the amount of work they are expected to do within that time frame is unrealistic.
Upping the expections for quality, without lowering those for quality, will only make things worse for everyone working there.
Not to mention it didn't even touch on the note serious allegations of sexual harassment.
I wouldn't expect any company would address a potential ongoing sexual harassment case via a YouTube video. Especially one that Linus is in.
"First of all, we didn't harass female employees, we pestered them."
Yeah this, unless you have proof it’s better to just shut up. It never goes well otherwise
SA wasn't mentioned because that is a sensitive investigation. It is messy, and sadly boils down to, he said she said, most of the time. I don't expect that to be resolved for a while.
Don't worry, they lowered the quotas (while adding a shitton of process).
Linus just can't seem to get over the fact that employees should have some free time at work, especially in creative or highly technical fields. It's all about time being money.
If someone wants to take longer on a project just because they want to, there should be time for that. Salaried employees shouldn't have to account for their time down to 15 minutes increments outside of contracting work. The fee for that kind of time accountability is about 4x what a salaried employee generally makes.
while adding a shitton of process
If you do it right, having processes that are well reasoned and adhered to is a net time saver. I've been on teams with many different levels of processes. I can say from 20+ years of experience that there is nothing worse than a pipeline with too few processes. When every writer has a different way of delivering information to the editors, that's a time waster. When every tester has a different way of putting together a spreadsheet to hand off to the graphics department, that's a time waster.
Also, processes are supposed to serve the needs of the staff. Not the other way around. If a process adds too much effort for little reward, you can always change it or scrap it. Ideally, you'd have someone on staff whose job it is to manage your process flow, facilitate handoffs, and make periodic changes to the processes to close up inefficiencies and pain points for the staff.
Absolutely agreed. Work gets done faster with the correct processes. If I don't know what to do when I have issues, I have to pester multiple people until I get to the right person that can handle it. If I knew exactly where to go and what to do, I might not even need that person in the first place.
Regarding the sexual allegations, I doubt the independent review is concluded yet. I'm guessing we'll hear more when that shares it's findings.
but failed to even mention the issues of workplace culture and absurd quotas.
For my own understanding, was there something that was missing in their content reforms/error handling and workplace culture segments? I think they had mentioned a commitment to reducing frequency, which I understand is a solution to those, no?
I was mistaken - they did say they would "reduce output." However, they said nothing about how, how much, or what that would mean.
They also heavily implied that they were not overworking people, despite that clearly and evidently being a real issue.
It's exceptionally difficult to address this sort of deep-seated issue, but they needed to acknowledge specific wrongdoing, and take concrete action to improve, as they did with the accuracy issue.
Yes that's true, but I do empathize with the difficulty of the situation, as a manager. A week is practically equivalent to a flash of time in normal business circumstances... Under normal circumstances, that is barely enough time to begin talking about issues, nevermind rolling out plans... I'm even shocked Linus announced a plan to begin with. I was fully expecting a vid to simply call out observations. And this to me demonstrates his commitment and dedication to the community.
So, as much as I've been critical of LMG in the past, I would probably give them the time to allow those details (how, how much, what it means) to organically surface over time. Otherwise, that demand is probably what unintentionally pressures LMG to have the output speed they have, because they want to satisfy the community.
Agreed - this announcement started well in detailing the positive changes to workflows and quality assurance, but quickly turned south once the finger wagging and defensiveness raised it's ugly head again.
FFS, this is the time to accept responsibility, take the criticisms on the chin, and show how you're going to make things better - not fall back on the "some people are being really mean to us and we're really the victims here" BS.
Am I the naive one in missing where they were finger wagging? I thought it was a good video throughout. It anything, I saw that they committed to even more process transparency of their business operations (which, to be fair, no company does unless they are an open source company).
Only time will tell, but if those changes had already been in the works even before the blowout, then I'm not sure if there actually is any other way of communicating that without simply unproductively crucifying oneself
No one is asking for public self-crucifixion - this the point in public relations where you want to make a fresh, positive start and be the bigger person. It's not the time to throw any more fuel on the fires of animosity by shifting the spotlight and directly attacking those critics that you feel did you wrong.
Linus, who obviously can't let it go, does this a few times during this announcement. Firstly in addressing the "people who wanted us to fail", but more noticeably when admonishing the people who allegedly harassed his team on social media and denounced them as "not members of our community".
While the toxic faction doing this don't deserve to be defended by anyone, this is simply not the time and place to call them out. Perpetuating this petty bickering when you should be moving forward positively and building bridges with the community is not a good look.
ffs half of the video/issue is about the workplace culture at LMG. What kind of boss would he be if he didn't call out assholes issuing death threats to his team? That was the singular part of the video where he got emotional. Note that he didn't mention himself, who I'm sure could open up his phone and find a hellstorm of comments ranging from shitty to deranged.
Perpetuating this petty bickering
"Petty bickering" is not constant harassment and threats to kill you. The time to call that shit out is immediately.
edit: and plenty of people are asking for a public self-crucifixion.
I guess it's a matter of perspective and opinion. Not that Reddit is anything to trust, but this thread clearly demonstrates that there are people who appreciate the approach Linus took: https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/161lh3f/heres_the_plan/jxslkvs/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Damn if you do, damn if you don't. What is a company to do? They have no choice but to take a position, even if that means a small number of folks be upset with them.
As someone in management, I personally feel Linus' response was pretty appropriate.
A lot better of a response, but I think Linus missed the point on toxic workplace/culture comments.
I'm sure they're not able to comment on Madison (for good legal reason and they still need the third party firm to investigate), but Linus' response just felt more "look at all the nice things LMG does" rather than a commitment about the long-term cultural issues. Anonymous employee surveys are really difficult to trust because a) they have a reputation of not being anonymous and b) if the culture has someone already scared to be open, it's doubtful that there will be honest answers. It sounds like LMG did take their one-on-one meetings seriously, but time will only tell.
(Personal ancedote: I have had managers watch me fill out those anonymous surveys to make sure it was "filled out properly.")
Yeah, it's nice LMG gives decent Christmas bonuses and hold have all those off-hours events, but I can't help but feel it's designed more to keep employees trapped in the LMG bubble and when you feel trapped, it's harder to push back and up for yourself.
I don't want Linus/LTT to fail. Mistakes are bound to happen and I enjoy watching a tiny Canadian man put things down really fast. I honestly just don't want to support a complete jerk that purposefully hurts other people and refuses to take accountability. If it comes out that everything with Madison is true and LMG takes no corrective action, I will have no issue hard blocking LMG content.
EDIT: Further thoughts after reading the responses:
It's really none of our business what happened between Madison and LMG. The only thing that matters is hoping Madison has a good support system in place and LMG makes the necessary internal changes in response to the third-party investigation.
I don't think it's wrong that they shared their turnover numbers, but I don't think it's representative of the big picture. LMG's roles feel more specialist in nature. I don't imagine there's a high amount of jobs in some areas that LMG offers, which means people are less likely to leave. It's also possible that some parts of the company are shielded from what happens elsewhere. (It appears both Creator Warehouse and Floatplane weren't as impacted)
It's good to at least some companies take anonymous surveys / one-on-one feedback seriously. Rewatching the video, it appears they are taking one-on-one feedback seriously, which I hope is the case.
Although I don't disagree, publicly announcing turnover stats that are far below average kinda blows a giant hole in the "LMG is a toxic hellhole" narrative. I've been in toxic hellholes, and turnover tells the real story.
This also doesn't negate necessarily Madison's statements and there probably have been real issues, but I think this is the part of the video where he said (paraphrased) "don't panic about a rise in intentional turnover." I lead a team about LMG's size, and people often don't realize that you can say and demonstrate your values consistently at this size, and still have someone fuck it up because some people just come to the org with the wrong learned behavior and it's gargantuan to re-program them to a healthy state, and a smaller few are just unsalvageable assholes. See also, the Stanford Prison experiment. It would extremely not blow my mind to learn that a few people or a particular team in LMG are entirely toxic and it was missed, and also that the experience for the vast majority doesn't match with this and they're trying to run an ethical company. My (optimistic) assumption is that the intentional turnover comment is probably going to focus on those that Madison dealt with.
If I had to guess, I'd say the turnover stats only count full employees, and are therefore a reflection of their "trial period" hiring policy more than anything else. They avoid needing to officially "fire" people they don't like, and anyone who isn't comfortable with the culture can leave without needing to "resign".
On top of that, LTT holds "dream job" status in many people's minds, so a lower-than-average turnover is expected, and it's impossible to distinguish that effect from the working conditions.
I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad place to work, I'm just saying the stats they gave are inconclusive.
If I had to guess, I’d say the turnover stats only count full employees, and are therefore a reflection of their “trial period” hiring policy more than anything else.
If they were deliberately manipulating the stats, that would come out quickly with the level of scrutiny they're facing right now. Also, wholeheartedly agree with a trial period. They're good for the company obviously for lots of reasons, but a less obvious one is rooting out cultural fits and problem people like this. Also, I think this is better for the employee as well - it's much better for mental health to have a clean break than it is to spend the next 6 months going through "performance improvement plans" and such.
Never said the trial period was bad, nor that they were "manipulating" the figures per se (including temp employees in the stats wouldn't make sense at all). It just makes comparing against the national average a little silly.
Agreed, I thought mentioning those statistics was a tasteful way of addressing that conversation as best as possible in a YouTube video, and those "people will be fired" comments felt like a clear commitment to rooting out and going as far as firing anyone creating that kind of environment.
The amount of "Linus didn't even talk about" in this thread is crazy to me, just feels like bad reading comprehension when he directly addressed most of the conversation (HR, work hours and environment, etc) and even committed to firing people in a video his staff will all be watching.
I've always viewed off-hours events as a sort of shitty way to show you're a "fun company" (tm). For workers who are already expected to put in well above 40 hours per week in a stressful environment asking them to cut further into their free time for work events really isn't very helpful. It's just one more obligation to the company that you are now being pressured to fulfill
IMHO, there's anything wrong with the occasional one-off optional event, like a bowling night or picnic. That said, I've always felt like events are more of a risk/liability/personality assessment - if my manager doesn't think I'm a fun activity buddy, does that mean I'm screwed?
I guess its not just anonymous surveys though is it, its that, plus a low turnover, plus 1-1 feedback sessions and other things I'm probably forgetting. But don't overlook the conclusion where if you read between the lines, more personnel changes are likely as a result of this.
I think your last point is highly unlikely, there is too much light on this for the issues alleged by Madison to be true, and for LMG to do nothing. But the tricky thing is that the full truth about Madison's issues is unlikely to be made public, and equally the full action taken by LMG will not be made public. HR, and employment issues kinda require privacy - this isn't a government or public department, its a private company with responsibilities to employees past & present mandated by law.
Agreed on your point regarding Madison/LMG - it really isn't our business to begin with and the best to hope for is that everyone involved is able to resolve it privately.
My company has those surveys. As far as I know they are anonymous but the problem is any feedback falls on your direct supervisor to fix. The first year they did it a lot of us were honest about it and our boss got absolutely wrecked over it even though he had very little control over the organizational problems we were complaining about so the next one we always just based it off things he had a say in which he's a good boss so the surveys no longer aligned with the company as a whole.
A third issue with anonymous surveys is that barely anyone fills them in. Only a certain type of personality likes these things.
Unfortunately structural integrity of the bar was compromised due to proximity to the earth's molten core.
Even James Cameron couldn’t find it. https://media0.giphy.com/media/3o6ZtfJ5VcIvM31NKM/giphy.gif
His name is James, James Cameron The bravest pioneer No budget too steep, no sea too deep Who's that? It's him, James Cameron James, James Cameron explorer of the sea With a dying thirst to be the first Could it be? Yeah that's him! James Cameron
Maybe a petty gripe, but they still couldn't resist flashing their new screwdriver onscreen
A simple "we can't talk about the Madison situation right now, but we will later." would have made this video 10x better.
"Mr. Sebastien, in your video from August 26, 2023 marked as exhibit 23B you referred to "the Madison situation". Can you explain what you meant by 'situation'?"
You may not like it but when there's credible accusations of harassment, constructive dismissal, and possibly up to battery you do not make public statements of any kind beyond, "We are investigating and taking the accusations seriously", which in case you missed it the CEO of LMG already did a week ago.
LMG can legally make any statement they want. There's exceedingly few that they could make that wouldn't be used against them in a lawsuit though. Whether you believe Madison or not, when accusations are made like these you shut the fuck up. No one will be helped if you make statements, not even the accuser.
I would have personally greatly appreciated that he would re-iterate the statements made in writing a week ago, if only that.
I know that "we the public" will always find something wrong about anything that is released, once it is, but given how the community at large was mostly outraged by the "Billet Labs incident" and the "Madison incident" (as opposed, to, say, the lack of employee benefits or egregious errors in data); I believe it would have been a bit more tactful not to dismiss yet again the former point with "procurement/logistics did nothing wrong" (or something of that effect) and entirely failing to mention the latter.
A verbatim quote of
"Regarding the allegations Madison Reeves posted on Twitter, as already announced a week ago, we are taking the allegations very seriously. Our HR team has begun conducting a thorough assessment of the allegations. We've also already begun combing our personnel files and past notes and correspondences to see if we can corroborate any of what's being said. Furthermore, we will also be hiring an outside investigator to look into the allegations and will commit to publishing the findings and implementing any corrective actions that may arise because of this. When we are ready, we will release a statement. For now, we would ask that we allow our team the time they need be as thorough as possible."
(or a shortened version) in video form, would have been absolutely plenty.
This paragraph I quoted is already legally "potentially problematic" (since I'm sure the reddit LTT moderation team kept the emails featuring this content, coming from an address belonging to LMG), and would have really contributed to making a statement about their seriousness.
Too many times I have witnessed accused parties make written commitments, only to retract/redact them and swipe the whole thing under the rug as soon as the storm had passed. Adding it to such an important video would certainly have been a testament to their commitment. I want to believe that Linus, and the LMG management carefully weighted whether or not to include such a statement in the video; I just wonder what was the rationale for not repeating an already public, already legally "potentially problematic" statement.
I don't know, I kind of think that what most of us really want was for this to be the first video and not that store shilling piece of trash he tried to release first as an 'apology'
The whole we didn't do anything wrong but we're going to put these steps in to make sure that none of that could possibly happen ever comes off frankly tone deaf. Even if that's what's going on even if they absolutely believe that's what's going on that's not the time or the way to say that.
I hate that we're commenting without understanding the nuances you've highlighted above, and building a flawed emotional worldview based on things that are legally inadvisable for LMG to say.
Addressing/preventing future review errors were clearly addressed in this video. I feel like if that was the only thing that came up in the last week then this wouldn't really have blown up the way it has.
Unclear what has really changed with the workplace culture and employees being overworked. They've implemented a bunch of extra processes that is just going to take more time and work, not less. A couple of things Linus has brought to light in this video:
The whole "our fans are the boss" attitude could really go sideways too given some of the fans track records of harassment... They really can not cultivate some in-house ethics with the 100+ people they have?
Most people "only" worked 9-10 hour days and that's not including commute
That's not what was shown at all. They showed that the working hours are flexible with people allowed to arrive when they want within reason.
At my office, some people arrive at 7:30am and leave at 4:30pm. Some people, like me, arrive at 9am and leave at 5:30 (I only do 30 minute lunches usually). Some people at the office come in a 8am and work till after 6pm regularly but they are absolutely not required to. They prefer to work at a slower pace for longer and that's their call.
"Wfh will be even rarer since people will be required to be at more in person"
That's unfortunate
Work from home wasn't mentioned at all in the video. They just said they would have more face to face meetings. You can have a face to face over Zoom. That's in contrast to just sending an email or slack message with instructions that may or may not be complete or understandable.
That bit at the start about addressing the people who want to see them fail... ehhh
I mean, people who actively want to see you fail just because shouldn't really be engaged with at all tbfh, and if he's referrring to who I think he's referring to, then bleah
Otherwise at least they're back, let's see how they improve
That's this community though. This place is still just actively hating. If you are unhappy with LMG and aren't willing to see how they improve moving forward, then just... move on to another channel.
I guess unsubing from this community wasn't enough, gotta actually block it.
Apparently the guy from Gamers Network is just a hater, and him bringing up all this stuff that they have to "introspect" over was just him being a dick. I mean, the fans figured he was right enough to throw a shitfit, but he should know better than to criticize Linus. After all, Linux is infallible except when he's not.
And also, A lot of people want to see him fail because he's simply refusing to fix the years of misogynistic and hustle culture to the point of sexual harassment and a lack of journalistic integrity
Listening to it, there is a lot of focus on saying things alluding to "we were already in the process of fixing this" rather than "we fucked up and this will be fixed".
I'm also a little concerned to see that gender affirming healthcare isn't listed on their health plan when they have trans members of staff. I completely understand why Emily doesn't want to be in the public eye but she is by far my favourite host and I'd love to see her back and producing high quality, well thought out videos where she is given the creative time she needs. The people pressuring her (as well as others) to comment on everything were completely out of order though.
I think the culture of misogyny is demonstrated by the number of male hosts compared to women. Part of the reason people wanted Madison on board was because she would have fit the role perfectly and they just dumped her in the corner on socials. YouTube is a new industry and its disappointing that it is still as male dominated as the tech journo industry that came before it.
What I think is needed is for the staff to unionize and for the company to stop micromanaging and pushing performance because the "fun" doesn't feel like real fun, it feels like corporate forced fun. McDonalds does a christmas party for their staff and you don't hear people praise them for their workplace culture.
We're a fun company! See the ping pong table? That's how you know you're going to love it here. Now get back to work, slut.
I am so pissed about what they did to Madison, she was my favorite host hefore she even was an employee. To see that get dumpstered and spat on really hurt their reputation permanently for me
Asking for clarification on paragraph 3. Are you saying that the lack of female hosts is solely indicative of misogyny or are you saying that it’s a sign or some other option. I wouldn’t want people to make the assumption that there will always be an even spread of men and women everyone in every role. (There’s ways to look at these statistics on a per industry basis IIRC)
Overall, I agree with all of your points (I think) but just wanted to make sure we weren’t jumping to any conclusions. The Tech industry in large part has been sexist, misogynistic, etc towards women specifically (trans-women too) - sometimes I wonder how bad it is when compared to other industries, mostly because I know it’s hard to get people into Tech to begin with due to other stereotypes of technical people. Sometimes I think tech bros are just projecting and reflecting all that hate they’ve gotten onto women/new kids on the block.
I hope this new generation continues to foster more and more inclusivity and self reflection. Support your local Girls Who Code!
Linus himself has said on the WAN show that they want to employ more women but they still haven't had any real growth or development in that area since. I mean that even if Linus wants there to be women in the roles there are reasons that there aren't.
First off, it sucks to be the only woman in a room. You don't want to feel tokenized but you often will. After being on the receiving end of sexism, you probably will be the one who has to speak out about it the most. Just like how Maddison was called a tattle tale, I've been called bitchy and a professional victim myself for that very reason and that has included in workplaces that are built to be feminist from the ground up.
To properly fight the patriarchal workplace environment means that men should be identifying each other's behaviour as a problem and nipping it in the bud before women have to put up with it. The fact that the inappropriate joke landed in their apology video shows they don't do the due diligence of making those checks. People often meme on the phrase "check your privilege" but I'd say that is what it actually means in practice; unfortunately people tend not to explain that too well.
What a kick ass fuckin response, thanks for reachin back out!
A lot of these problems we face are entirely social and then bleed into the workplace sadly. I hadn’t always understood the purpose of “forced diversity” but you know I think I can feel its use now.
For example, a lot of women ended up working due to the war where there wasn’t a choice and they flooded into the workplace. Proved themselves, held it down, looked out for each other and some men supported them in that battle (not that it’s needed, but classes in power helping the revolutionist never hurt anybody)
Now, to be fair, factory lines are a bit different from writing code but that’s not to say they can’t be learned and that’s not to say that being on a tv show is writing code. There’s no reason not to start here and encourage more young girls (or teens, young adults, women in general) to get into this fucking sick ass cybersphere. Thanks again!
The plan is solid, but forgive me if I give it a few years of "wait and see" how well they keep their word and more importantly handle work place allegations and changes before I re-subscribe to the channel. Still a good plan and I hope it's a sincere one.
Tek Syndicate surprisingly came out with one of the best takes I've seen on this situation. This could be a real damaging moment for LTT, but getting an employee union could address the criticism perfectly.
They're good, old techtuber. Used to be a really big company until one of the guys they hired to help expand just fucked up everything. Very well informed but he's still an entertainer
Yeah they haven’t been relevant since they tried to screw Wendell. Now Wendell has his own successful channel.
Reading the Reddit thread on this, I find it fascinating that, at the beginning of the incident, Lemmy had more balanced conversations vs the crazies on Reddit calling for LTT disbandment. Now after the latest video, it seems like Reddit seems more reasonable and receptive with Linus' plans vs Lemmy being the LTT doomsayers.
We've been very vocal and concerned about workers' rights and working conditions at LTT over here and that has not been adressed as much as we hoped for.
Addressed in the latest video? They literally and legally can't.
What we want, and what is legally required, do not coincide.
Refer to: https://lemmy.world/comment/2825024
I can't get your link to load, whatever I try.
What makes you think then, that he is in any way unable to put forward an honest plan to increase his staff's wellbeing and speak about it on camera? That's a very puzzling take for me.
To be clear, I am not saying he should adress the specific harassment allegations on camera before they finish the investigation (nor should he ever do it, as it would just put everyone involved in the public's spotlight and we don't need everyone's opinion about what did or did not happen there).
Can you explain why you think his staff's well-being is in jeopardy or in which ways his employees' working conditions need to be improved?
Are you kidding me? Have we not watched the same video? The man put out numbers detailing the employee turnover rate, benefits package, and even security footage detailing that his employees are not being overworked. Did you not watch the video?
His turnover rate is BELOW Canadian average, meaning his employees haven't quit at the rate Canadian employees have on average. His benefits packages for his employees are ABOVE MANY Fortune 500 companies. His employees are not being forced to work overtime.
Your premise has no weight, with the currently available evidence (the investigations may change that, but we don't know for a fact currently). Refute the evidence put forth with actual evidence, not more guesses and claims.
Lemmy somehow went into a deranged rambeling mode after some time. I do not understand why, but I mostly switched over to Reddit after that.
You are a stronger person than I. I still refuse to go back to Reddit after the bs they tried to pull lol. I've been looking at other ltt communities, but this is still the biggest community..
Yeah, this is the only big LTT sub. I also frequent reddit for /r/rabbits.Not everything can be replaced with lemmy and that is to be expected. Tho, I am normally not logged into my reddit account.
You mean literally only calling out Linus repeatedly dodging the waterblock issue and stating that Unionisation would resolve most of the other employee dissatisfaction issues?
How deranged. Much Ramble.
I am still not very impressed with the response from Linus and company. It is quite clear that they decided to slave themselves to the YouTube algorithm without regard for the humans involved. So many of their videos devolve into an unintentional Abbott and Costello comedy routine because they clearly did not decide to spend the time preparing properly or realizing they missed something and starting again. They just plow through without regard for the quality of people involved.
Sometimes this is entertaining, but more often than not, it is just low quality and a waste of their time.
I want entertaining tech content, but not at the expense of the people involved. Honestly, it is fascinating to see the sausage being made. I would love for them to show the difficult process of making a high quality video and getting the process corrected. Then have the final produced video. Full transparency, warts and all.
Alternative take - playing up to the YouTube algorithm is what has allowed LMG to expand to the point where it provides jobs for over 100 (is it near 200 now?) people. Those people work hard, yet the majority seem to stay with the company which suggests any alternative employment isn't attractive enough to motivate them to leave their current work conditions.
Work conditions suck just about everywhere these days. I wouldn't consider what I have seen from employee interviews to be ringing endorsements nor total loathing. It is probably worse than you think and better than I expect. I still think they are chasing the wrong metrics regardless of whether it is a good place to work. The fact that Linus burned himself out gives you more than a hint of what it is like for others working there.
I am glad that they plan to improve and made steps towards it, but i still have a sour taste in my mouth:
TL;DR: I will most likely continue to watch Linus tech tips for entertainment purposes, but will no longer trust them on any technical details, and would go to other channels for tutorials on how to build a pc and such.
They hardly touched upon the whole Madison situation, except for some boasting about employee benefits.
My impression was that they were trying to keep that and the testing and workload issues mostly separate. They hired an independent firm to investigate them, and I doubt the results are in yet. So I wouldn't be surprised if there was a separate update later on.
But they did mention their turn over rate might increase in the short term. I took that as meaning they would fire the people guilty in the allegations, but we don't know for sure yet.
Sad some else mentioned, the issue with the Madison situation is that it's become an hr/legal issue and they can't openly discuss stuff like that.
Also new CEO isn't working...
"As happy as I am that Terren is here, he can't make these changes alone [... many paragraphs later ...] That's also why we brought in an experienced manager, Terren who is offsite this week or I would have brought him in to chat with you guys as well"
So "all hands" in "crisis time"... And the CEO isn't there and hasn't been for the whole week? This is literally where a good CEO should be in house looking at EVERYTHING. Not away on a golf trip or whatever the fuck he's doing.
I think I'm on the same TL;DR... I might find a video interesting enough to watch for entertainment here and there... But at this point I will no longer treat anything I hear from them as actually data. And if the Madison thing turns out to be true, will simply hard block their channel.
I don't think anyone's dumb enough to go on a golf trip during a crisis. Linus wouldn't have defended that and would have fired anyone who would've gone on a golf trip while the rest of the company works their asses off to get LMG back in shape.
I would prefer to assume good faith. Maybe a family member is in critical care? Maybe collaboration with investigators? Maybe legal consultation? All of those are pretty good reasons not to be in the video.
All of those are pretty good reasons not to be in the video.
That's not what I said... Nor what was communicated in the video. I quoted specifically what was stated. Terren who is offsite this week
This week != this video. Nor did I pass judgement on him not being in the video (he's a CEO after all... not talent.). I made my judgement based on what was communicated. Not on some wild ass assumption.
You can assume good faith all you want. You certainly didn't bother to read what I wrote in good faith.
If you think that video took them a week to produce then you're delusional. That likely took them literally a couple hours total that morning.
Right? So the CEO is offsite this week. A week runs Mon-Sun. They shot the video probably on Friday.
Right... What's your point? Why is the CEO offsite for a crisis event for his company? His lack of presence in the the video is irrelevant, I'm not sure why you keep bringing it up.
They had 9 days outage... 9 days of effectively no income or work. CEO is not present.
I mean if you are talking about the last timestamp I think its implying if the findings of the investigation find out some pretty heavy misdeed by some staff members probably in relation to Madison comments and possibly or other things they found while going through fact finding may mean some people (maybe even very notable personalities) may get fired.
That's the impression I was getting too. A way of saying that they're not afraid to dismiss anyone the investigation finds to be at fault.
Lmao he’s the owner, so he ain’t going anywhere. They would water down whatever negative impact he had in order to keep him clean. He’s not been implicated directly by the victim anyway, if that matters. In a way all of this is his fault because he pushed his workers to burnout because of the ridiculous release schedule.
The more I hear and see about and of Linus' off-camera persona, the more it's becoming clear to me that he is the problem. I'm not saying he personally said all the horrible things to Madison, but I would not be surprised if he said some of them. I think it's the same personality flaw that's behind all the shit at LMG.
It's a culture issue. If Linus is on camera and makes a sex joke about his wife, Yvonne, the 49% company stake-holder, CFO, and head of HR, it sets a standard of the kinds of things that can be said in the workplace, even if it was unintentional. It may be all for show, scripted, and Yvonne may have even approved the joke, but someone new, or not party to it, may come to the conclusion that that kind of behavior is acceptable at LTT, because it is acceptable and done frequently on camera.
There are so many examples of this in LTT videos. Tee-hee sex number, dick joke, that's what she said, and more run rampant. I get they're catering to a fairly juvenile audience with that content, but the environment of a ligma joke is much different coming from a situationally and emotionally unaware teenager instead of your 37 year old boss. One has mush and hormones for brains, and the other determines if you get a raise this year.
The thing is, it's a small company. Drama and gossip runs hot and heavy all the time. While drama and gossip is not always true, it doesn't take long to find out where it comes from.
If it took an outside investigator to identify and get people fired, their culture is fundamentally broken.
They aren't having issues identifying the origin of "drama and gossip". Dealing with sexual assault allegations internally is NOT the way to deal with such issues. Having a third party come in and act as human resources is standard and unquestionably the correct choice.
No. It's always easier for an outsider to see and bring up problems especially in a small group of people.
Everyone in that group is biased to one way or another
I mean, they should (and are) probably be scared of NOT letting people go if the investigation found something nasty.
I mean, they fucked themselves by being bad journalists and having a shitty, workaholic, misogynistic culture. Those things weren't fated to happen.
Haven't watched it yet, but it'll be a while before I'll be willing to give LTT my views again
He really needs to take a step back and let Teran do his what they hired him to do. He has stated multiple times that he is no a CEO. he has no actual training or education and it has been showing for years now. Every talking head episode he pushes out like this just seems to dig his legacy further into this hole.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this whole "plan" was concocted and deployed by the entire leadership team, with Reran giving the final approval. Linus is still the face of the company, so it's no surprise he is the one telling us about this plan.
And LMG would likely be blasted if it wasn't Linus presenting it as well. Damned if you do / don't.
Are there any better youtube channels than LTT. Hes too big now and bigger dramas. I am not learning anything of value these days from his videos.
Then they need to preface every video with that. "We ran all these benchmarks and testing using hundred-thousand-dollar equipment and are presenting this as a factual review, but please keep in mind this is all entertainment and not educational and the numbers are made up so just disregard this whole video."
I would contend that most of the YouTube tech channels, even the ones with great reputations for quality such as Hardware Unboxed and Gamers Nexus are barely educational as well.
While they can point to fewer mistakes made as a result of their methodologies, I don't believe there is any real scientific value in the conclusions they reach from testing that is far too limited with far too small a sample size. They can paint broad recommendations - product A should be better than product B because our testing showed 20% better numbers.
But when the metric variances between products are small, none of the testing methodologies can really tell you which of the products will work better in your system. They haven't tested enough of them, and in enough situations to have a clue. And I think any of them claiming that there is inherent value to their methods are really just defending their product which is the video they're getting eyeballs in front of so they can make money from advertising.
Yes, if you buy product X tested on whatever YouTube channel, your mileage may vary.
However, LTT had several graphs where they showed egregious performance increases in newer models of graphics cards compared to older ones. Somebody drawing a conclusion just from the relative performance increase of over 200%, even if the numbers would've been slightly off otherwise, will be more likely to make a bad decision based on the relative (non-existent) insane performance increase.
Check out Gamers Nexus. In their last ITX case review, you can see just the level of immense detail, specifications and testing for a simple computer case.
No thanks. If I wanted to pore over detailed specs, I'll rather read it. His videos are boring as fuck.
I sighed ... but only because I agree. GN is very into dense, which is totally fine and I'm happy they're doing what they do, but I am not thier audience.
I don't think their reviews are generally intended to be watched from beginning to end. I watch the introduction, the conclusion and any parts I'm specifically interested in. But yeah, it's not entertainment :)
Otherwise I like kitguru for some more lightweight information
They're staying smaller. I don't know if they could maintain that quality while growing wildly. But they are doing a really good job. I think the issues in ltt came from the bigger size and huge growth.
Think of LTT as top gear for computers. If you want to learn stuff I don't know look at tutorials?
Part of their problem is that they are a bit ambiguous in what they're actually aiming at. If they just went full throttle let's water cool a computer with mountain dew, or in the other end of the scale actually bring in their labs to the forefront of the content that would be fine, but at the moment this kind of weird mix in the middle and it's hard to pin them down on anything, it changes from video to video and without any real indicator to tell you what type of video this is going to be.
Maybe the labs stuff should be split off onto its own channel. That way, people that want that kind of content, and only that kind of content, can go subscribe there. Without having to deal with all the, let's see if I can heat my pool with my giant rich guy server rack stuff.
Dawid Does Tech Stuff is as least as entertaining as LLT but without the inaccuracies or the drama: https://youtube.com/@DawidDoesTechStuff
Dave2D is great for laptop and mobile phone coverage: https://youtube.com/@Dave2D
Paul’s Hardware is good for tech news and build guides: https://youtube.com/@paulshardware
Kit Guru has consistently good hardware reviews: https://youtube.com/@KitGuruTech
Sara Dietschy has probably my favorite general tech channel on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@saradietschy
