- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- pcmasterrace@lemmy.world
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- pcmasterrace@lemmy.world
- technology@beehaw.org
Linus Media Group CEO Terren Tong also responded via email, saying he was “shocked at the allegations and the company described” in Reeve’s posts. He went on to note that “as part of this process, beyond an internal review we will also be hiring an outside investigator to look into the allegations and will commit to publish the findings and implementing any corrective actions that may arise because of this.”
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Wow quick and decisive action by CEO to call in external investigation. Reading Linus’ response, it doesn’t even appear that he would consider external investigation. He states that HR would conduct a thorough review. I’ll be frank, I don’t trust Colton to run the HR review.
I bet once this issue is resolved, we might see Terren bring in external subject matter experts to completely overhaul LMG business operations. HR consultants, Operations and Logistics consultants, Finance, etc. Up until now, LMG was/is run by a self-taught/self-made/learning-on-the-job crew. Can’t do that when you’re now a corp.
Edit: I would love to sub to a channel called TBT (Terren Business Tips) 😂
It is HIGHLY silly to even imply these woes are from a, “learn-on-the-job” crew/etc.
Many of the allegations are about basic factual information being wrong and a terrible work environment.
Those DO NOT naturally show up in any ol’ little work environment. They show up when there’s a lack of professionalism and basic respect for fellow humans.
That culture comes from a lack of process and experience of large organizations. The second that a team grows beyond 7 people it has grown beyond the direct control of any one person and the culture takes on a life of it’s own. If not addressed early in growth, issues typically spiral and are either not caught or are allowed to exist out of a perceived necessity.
Small organizations are nimble so they do not need to formalize cultural and HR processes in the same way that large organizations do. If the leader sees something they don’t like, they address it. It isn’t just about basic respect. We all bring our own cultural issues to an organization. A lack of professionalism comes hand in hand with smaller creative organizations. That’s what makes them entertaining. It also enables the toxic tendencies of some people as they are allowed to slip in and as the pressure builds. Don’t confuse professionalism with respect.
These things don’t happen immediately either. It happens over time as people get tired and impatient so they are not on their best behavior. We all go through a storming process. That’s when toxic culture can set in if good lower level leadership doesn’t catch and address it. That takes training and a formal approach to organizational structure, not just production processes.
I am one of those outside consultants.
Toxic environments can also be brought in by toxic leadership. Like a VP that intentionally pissed workers off because “they work harder”
My sister once worked for a guy who’s management strategy was “Employees should be so unhappy that they are close to quitting but just content enough to not quit.”
He thought, that way he’d get the most value out of the employees.
Needless to say, his business wasn’t going well because all employees were pissed all the time and that’s not a good thing when they all have to work with customers. Also, the turnover was really high. But the boss didn’t really notice.
Absolutely! The training I bring up is for the leadership at all levels. The fun challenge as a consultant is to make changes to the people who are paying you without being fired. It can be frustrating but also really rewarding when it works out.
I need to learn how you do it… I’m not in a position or authority to bring in people of your expertise to my leadership, so trying to make changes in my org without getting fired…
Honestly, you fail a lot before you learn where the line is. You frame the training as industry best practice with a certification that they can sell. You frame them going to the training as leading the organization through it and from the front. You then let them learn and put their own spin on it during the instruction.
The real trick is getting them to think it was their idea. Start with a quantified problem statement. Your recommendations to address the problem should come with multiple courses of action that they can choose from. It helps if these COAs are framed as beneficial to the organization outside of addressing the issue. As long as they accept that the problem exists, they should address it. If your preferred COA has other organizational benefits, they’ll pick it and align behind their decision with resources.
Go look up some industry certifications and congrats, you can now be a (lower level) consultant. Congrats
Post saved. Thank you
Well said. I’m not sure I believe this former employee either. I read the “reasons they left,” and it’s simply too unbelievable. It sounds like more of a personal cry for help than a legitimate accusation. The more I read, the more buzzwords for media I saw. And every community is reacting as those buzzwords intend.
I’m not sure I believe this former employee either. I read the “reasons they left,” and it’s simply too unbelievable
Statements from actual victims often do. That’s part of the problem with the culture of not believing, or even alienating, victims. I’m not saying it should be treated as evidence against the company, but the company absolutely should make sure this believe is not happening internally and those of us on the outside should be charitable towards this former employee’s testimony unless contradictory evidence shows up.
Using the Depp/Heard thing as a point of reference. There were good reasons to suspect her claims were fabricated or exaggerated, but I’ve also known people who have gone through many of the relationship experiences she testified about. Until she had her day in court and showed the world her (probable) dishonesty, even she deserved the benefit of charity. Or else by sheer misfortune we will start telling real victims they made it up.
Yeah. It just seems far too fabricated. For someone who is willing to share their life on social media, it seems very strange that they wouldn’t have told a single person they know about it. Then, all of a sudden, other accusations arise and - oh yeah, look at all the things that happened to me! Too many things to never have been mentioned.
You understand that people who are victims of abuse, especially sexual abuse, are often afraid to come out, to tell anyone? What you are calling evidence of being fabricated is a symptom of abuse, and people who are trained to understand and report on those types of abuse are also trained to do so from victims who will go so far as to deny it had ever happened.
For your own benefit, please read this National Domestic Violence Hotline article on exactly why people’s loved ones never share that they have had situations worse than Reeve alleged. Yes, it’s about domestic abuse and not workplace abuse, but it is the same type of trauma and helplessness.
All of this just solidifies, in my mind and those who can think critically outside of a herd mentality, that this is fabrication. The accusations made didn’t happen in a family behind closed doors, they happened out in the open. Do we think that the LTT facilities don’t have cameras covering every square inch? Get with it. They record everything, I’m sure. This person didn’t go to the police because there probably isn’t anything to go to the police about.
Unless we’re all to believe that everything that happened was in the one place where cameras never went, every single time? That none of it occurred on any kind of technology that would or could be audited, right?
Use your brain brochacho. These are the fabrications of someone who is mentally unstable. Not of a victim. Unless… a victim of their own mind.
Her entire story rings very true for my experience at a tech startup that grew from 50 employees to 500 in 3 years. It was 100% believable for me.
Me too, though I’m not female. I’ve seen some of my female friends treated poorly - by clients, though, never my org. I just don’t think it happened to this person. The fact that, well, they’ll share the whole story to the world right now - but never told anyone else while it was occurring? Seems sketch. Doesn’t jive.
That whole notion of, “I was embarrassed and couldn’t tell anyone” to suddenly pronouncing accusations to the whole world over social media; as opposed to the legal authorities… seems damned sketchy to me.
lol what? This just sounds like ignorance to me.
It’s hard for individuals to speak up by themselves, yet we all assume we would in the same situation. This seems like a simple “Gamers Nexus says something and noted complaints by some workers of a bad environment, so now I feel I can say it without more harassment”
Did we all forgot a kid killed himself from the harassment LMG fanboys brought on them?
Look, Madison probably talked to someone about it while it was occurring, but we’re not part of her personal support group. We don’t have that privilege and that’s ok
But we’re privy to the rest of the rant? HR or the local authorities should have been the first step. Not waiting [duration] and then shitposting.
Weak.
I honestly think that it doesn’t matter what we think. Perception is reality for inside the organization and outside. Let the external investigation take place. Implement policies moving forward to protect the employees, leadership, and organizational perception.
It absolutely matters. The employee chose to take accusations public, rather than following appropriate channels of either the corporate HR or legal authorities. I don’t know how it works up there in Canada, but these accusations get taken seriously in the U.S.
corp HR is not your friend, especially in a toxic workplace. HR or the lack thereof is what enables a toxic workplace.
if you can’t understand a victim just want it to blow over and never have to think about it again. then you’re either severely lacking in imagination, or empathy, or both.
So I guess Madison just isn’t a strong person then.
I’ve seen the exact same thing on a company that went from 5 to 50 employees in a similarly short time frame.
The issue happens if you start with a friend group without decent structures or leadership “because we are friends/anyway”. This works if you got 5 people but it doesn’t if you have 50 or 150. Because you don’t just have friends who are enthusiastic about the mission there, but you have to fill the ranks with people who actually want to treat this like a job. Now the “bro” culture starts to fall apart.
With this size you start to get real issues at work that need to be handled with a correct structure, which you don’t have because senior management still feels this is just a startup full of bros.
Bros don’t mind working 60 or even 80h/week, every week, because of the mission. Employees do mind. So now you have a workload designed for 60h/week per employee that is shouldered by a 40h/week employee. So either they work 60h (probably without compensation for the overtime) or they cut corners and deliver crap quality.
Same with the way people interact with each other. Bros don’t mind some rough jokes, but employees usually don’t like it that much if their real concerns get brushed aside with the suggestion to maybe “calm your tits”.
When going from startup to real company, you need to make big changes to the structure and work culture. If you don’t, an LMG ensues.
Also, and this is key, Linus comes from the boom PC hardware market of the late 90s and early to mid 2000s. He learned at the feet of amoral cowboys in an industry that was peaking right before critical mass. He has only seen bad behaviour rewarded and bad actors escaping consequences. And he grew a brand based on being an irresponsible kid who would say literally anything to get views. As authentic as he may seem remember what he learned and how he learned and most importantly who from. His CEO is one of those amoral cowboys.
I’m still not a fan of speaking as if these are small business problems. They ARE NOT “small business” problems. It is a problem of failed management, full stop, regardless of how common or explanable it is.
Yea, startups and groups of “bros” are highly likely to mess things up in this way, but again… It’s a basic lack of professionalism and respect for others. That shouldn’t be accepted as “bro culture”. It’s being an immature twat.
Management is a part of that business and as all small businesses grow they hit a point where they deal with this. It’s extremely well documented.
Precisely! I’ve seen many startups in Berlin that had to fold because they didn’t realise soon enough that they can’t run a company the same way as organising a group of friends. That, and that products have to make a profit sooner rather than later…
This reminds me of sexual misconduct allegations in the electronic music scene. When EDM blew up it elevated a bunch of basement dwelling computer nerds to rock star status. Musicians like Datsik and Bassnectar let that status go to their heads and immediately abused it.
At least if it’s popularity based like with an artist, people are directly supporting them.
It always blows my mind when f*cking business dipsh*ts start acting like rock stars. Yea, money’s attractive to some, but nothing like musical talent! Those f*cking goobers.
Of course, there are many “learn-on-the-job” organizations that have gone forward and done amazing things.
However, while I agree that these issues don’t naturally manifest themselves and stem from unprofessionalism and basic respect, I would argue that specialists and professionals in those functions (HR, Finance, Ops, etc) can help establish policies that mitigates and discourages such behaviors. If people can’t do that voluntarily, then policies and consequences are enacted to enforce it.
This is why many companies (and I’ve worked in a few in the tens/hundred thousands of employees) have clear business conduct guideline policies and enforcement, because people who lack professionalism and basic respect for fellow humans are actually quite prevalent in any and every company. I’ve witnessed a few myself that led to immediate termination of my colleagues.
Oh I agree in that all those things help. I just want to push back against the idea that this is expected in a small business. It should not be.
This only happens when unqualified people become the boss of too many others. Regardless of the sequence of events, unqualified people are in charge of far, far too many businesses.
If I implied that this was expected in a small business, I apologize as that wasn’t my intended message. I was referring to the current maturity of LMG. LMG is worth $100M, with 100+ employees, putting it in the midsize business category.
And in that league and above, it is not just expected, but required. The stakes are just too high for an unstructured/informal approach to running the business, which is what LMG is learning/about to learn, hopefully.
The sad thing is that many orgs go through these exact transitional problems, the only difference is that LMG is under the scrutinizing lens of the internet.
Not to say Colton can’t do the job, but HR is a department that needs to be independent of all other departments and the voice of the HR manager needs to be considered more important than the voice of most of the other managers because they’re the ones dealing with the humans that make the company.
Oh exactly, he oversees many functions that are traditionally held by separate people. You can’t juggle those functions in parallel without degradation in quality and proper oversight… Which seems to be the theme over the past couple of days…
Gen Zers speedrunning why big corporations have the structures they have
Are you suggesting that Linus Sebastian, age 36, is somehow a Gen Zer?
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Are you okay?
They glitched, just give em a reboot and they’ll be fresh again.
Ah yes, how could I forget the age old and time-tested restart trick.
Percussive maintenance sometimes works too
Bro, everyone on Lemmy is highly autistic, they can’t understand jokes. You get my worthless upvote.
You know that a cultural and organizational happy medium somewhere between LMG’s YOLO approach and IBM exists, right? It’s not a binary XOR.
Americans view everything in binary, it’s either right or wrong, no other variables exist.
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From what I can tell, LMG has, for some time, run HR through an outside firm (in the leaked meeting audio, he mentions this firm multiple times), so he’s probably referring to them rather than Colton.
So it isn’t an external audit. They work for him.
Yeah I’ve recently come across the same understanding… In my management career I’ve never worked with a third party HR, so I don’t know how effective that model is.
It is useful for parts of HR like properly filing tax forms, employee leave requests, onboarding/off boarding, etc. Basically they can handle paperwork type things, but are generally not so great at conflict resolution and culture type things.
Up until now, LMG was/is run by a self-taught/self-made/learning-on-the-job crew. Can’t do that when you’re now a corp.
Linus hired an experienced CEO who, I’m sure started these kind of discussions of creating a cohesive work environment several months ago.
Realisticly he was brought in last month so he wouldn’t have had time to properly analyse the corporate side of the company. Right now this is the best time or a fresh face on the top who could create change from the top down where these kind of discussions now has real weight behind them.
I think the best way to discourage misogyny is to suspend Linus who would be looked at as the source of it for 30 days and demote Colton who failed in his duties to protect every employee at LMG. Get someone outside LMG to manage Human Resources. Maybe one day that trust might return.
Realisticly he was brought in last month so he wouldn’t have had time to properly analyse the corporate side of the company.
I understand that. The person I replied to said “up until now” and I pointed out that that wasn’t true as of a couple of months ago.
Correction to my original comment: up until 7 weeks ago…
But while I’m sure discussions have been started, having been exposed to new leadership in my experience, it does take a while before new leadership can really roll out required changes. Most of the time spent in the first 30-60 days is to listen and understand the lay of the land (which Terren also mentioned). But even then, grave issues like the ones Madison called out usually won’t be known to new leadership until later, unless a report/exposure is made (like what Madison did).
Most of the time spent in the first 30-60 days is to listen and understand the lay of the land
I heard the smart thing is to walk in the front door, “let that sink in”, and then immediately burn everything you just inherited to the ground 😅
LMAO
Now I’m just trying to imagine Terren walking into LMG with a sink 😂
You mean Linus hired the amoral cowboy he learned from.
I’ll be frank, I don’t trust Colton to run the HR review.
Exactly lol, he seems like the type of dude who closes ranks and thereby perpetuates the culture of misogyny.
Also, and this might just be negative halo effect, but he just gives off really weird vibes to me - but that’s verging into needlessly speculative territory.
Oh yeah, let’s jump to thinking people are creeps because of the way they look.
You’re clearly coming at this from a mature and well thought out area, not one of sexism and abuse.
It’s the other way around; I think the vibe is weird when I see him in videos and I feel like he is weird in interpersonal interactions. He seems pretty awkward and not the best at expressing himself. But at the same time I can admit that my judgement might be unfairly influenced by his looks.
I don’t think he’s weird because of how he looks, but at the same time I need to acknowledge that there’s a chance his looks do affect my impression of him and how he interacts.
So you’re judging a guy for “acting weirdly”?
Oh wow, huge improvement.
And adding your own little disclaimer at the end like “Sorry to poison the well, it’s just my biases in action but I’m going to share it with others in hopes more people can attack this man for nothing but it’s also not something you should do” doesn’t make it better; Admitting your problem and still doing it isn’t a solution, it just makes you look like a bigger arse because you know you shouldn’t yet have decided to.
You do make a fair point, but I want to emphasise I absolutely wasn’t trying to get anyone to attack him. That’s just a logical leap you made.
As for me judging him for how he acts, it’s the sort of awkward behaviour I’ve seen from dudes who did turn out to not be too swell. But idk, it is true that it’s just speculation and you’re right in calling me out for it being based on too little.
he seems like the type of dude who closes ranks and thereby perpetuates the culture of misogyny.
Perfect for HR then!
Lmaooooooo
Say no more, you’re hired! You had us at closing ranks
Linus’ answer that they have channels for anonymous (or not) reporting of such issues is probably true. They probably do have those systems.
That’s not the root of the issue, though. The root is that the company is entirely managed by Linus and the friends he made way back when. They simply grew tremendously and assigned every friend one of the management roles. That’s it, that’s the company.
So regardless of the system being used - what do you do when the person you need to report is one of them? Who is going to be taking action, their best buddy?
This is exactly the reason corporations that are serious have external anonymous reporting channels. Because now there’s a paper trail from your third party, that’s undeniable, so you have to investigate. The process has to be triggered, and if the good old boy network decides to do nothing, there is now an auditable external paper trail that this was reported.
The reason this is a good indicator for an organization is it forces them maybe not to be transparent but to be accountable
The key here is external. HR workers often have an incentive to quiet down such cases.
HR protects the company, not the employee. That’s just a fact. When company culture is great, that can be fine, but when it’s bad, it absolutely sucks. When there’s a culture of misogyny and sexual harassment, HR helps to cover it up to “protect” the company, and it’s awful to see.
All jokes aside, if these allegations are validated by an external source, heads have to roll. A slap on the wrist is disheartening to everyone who may have been belittled and goes further to discourage interest and diversity in tech.
I have worked in IT R&D for a decade, and this is something I have had to address multiple times with my team. Everything from sexually charged comments to just general patronizing. The key is that you can’t let something slip through or that’s the new standard. You have to address it quickly, in the moment, and be decisive about what is acceptable and what is not.
The process has to be triggered, and if the good old boy network decides to do nothing, there is now an auditable external paper trail that this was reported.
This is why I actually like the new CEO’s response, especially since he’s on the “good ol’ boy network”. Let’s rope in a third party that’s impartial. I’m glad he’s not just going the “we investigated ourselves and didn’t find ourselves at fault” route. Let’s hope the report does come out and does make sense for the situation. But there is always the risk of the third party not finding anything because LMG is paying them. I hope whoever they use has a good track record and the reports that come are clear (and most importantly that actual actions are taken to right the wrongs found/identified). That’s the problem with implementing stuff reactionarily, you never really know. But considering the CEO stepped in… what? 7 weeks ago? This is a really good step for him. There might be hope for LMG… but only if Linus stops with the petty shit and stops driving everything into the ground.
If it takes an extra 500$ to test something properly… he should do it. He should know this innately because he’s spend hundreds of thousands on “The Labs”, but this mentality still shows when he talks candidly on WAN show and other spots. Makes it hard to believe him and his responses contradicting Madison’s story when we see this type of mentality elsewhere.
I don’t think the external investigator will find anything that will satisfy the public. It’s just been too long.
Linus is suffering from the classic " what got you here won’t get you there " problem. And there’s going to be an adjustment as the new CEO puts in practices and standards that have been eschewed for a long time.
But this is just part of being human, that’s why in science things need to be reproducible, so that we can hopefully isolate the ego variable across multiple people.
I don’t think the external investigator will find anything that will satisfy the public. It’s just been too long.
I agree, but it’s the best, most transparent answer we’ve gotten so far out of all of this. And I think it’s worth validating the choice that the new guy made. It’s the one glimmer of hope that the company will move forward positively…
Leaked photo of said anonymous channel:
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The root is that the company is entirely managed by Linus and the friends he made way back when. They simply grew tremendously and assigned every friend one of the management roles. That’s it, that’s the company.
This sounds a lot like the bro culture at Uber before they cleared house.
There is nothing wrong with a “bros” company.
Issues appear when such company starts hiring other people.
This situation is awfull and, i mean, i know sexual harasement is very serious and its really insensitive to joke about but i really cant help it, so if you are sensible to that type of comments then dont read it and feel free to downvote, ill understeand, so here i go, you have been warned:
Linus sex tips.
Thanks. Though you don’t need to tell oversensitive people to not be offended as they’ll be offended anyways.
Don’t be so sensitive then, it’s just a joke!
Easy as.
An essay of a premise for a three-word joke, this is the only way forward.
I can’t believe you said that
I can believe.
Do you believe?
I want to believe.
Believen’t.
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
I believe I do believe.
People like you?
Linus give us a sex tip
This is the best response the CEO has, well done for doing it so quickly.
And I think it’s the worst outcome for the ex-employee. Just from a process perspective now these external investigators are going to dig through the entire history, to prove or disprove every claim, which could bring up a lot of traumatic incidents, or reveal personal information that people like to keep private. Even if people get fired for their behavior based on this incident report, it’s going to be traumatic to relive.
The fact that two years have lapsed since the incident isn’t going to make the investigation easier. So in all probability there will be insufficient data to make a determination either way. So the investigation is going to be both traumatic, and probably hollow because a determination won’t be made. And the published report will feel a little empty and almost gaslighting. But that’s what time does, time is like water, it erodes everything.
She’s not an employee and this isn’t a government investigation. She can deny to assist and should if it negatively affects her.
All that said, very happy with this quick, decisive action. This is far more serious to me than all the other shit in the past week. I’m glad they’re addressing the other issues BUT this what would truly kill my desire to watch LMG content. I feel heartbroken for dad who lost everything but unless LMG called for harassment then that’s on the disgusting people that harassed them.
Assuming I will continue watching LTT after this whole fiasco, I just hope James, Riley, Dan, Plouffe, Alex and Jake (of the top of my head. I usually like most of the hosts) are not responsible for the potential allegations and are just the nice tech bros they are presented as. If some of them are, oof :(
Given how the company grew from the talent and the nature of the complaints it’s likely one or more of those telegenic hosts committed, approved of or covered up those acts.
There just isn’t a huge structure independent of the talent on screen.
Assuming a good portion of the company are fans of the olden days now old enough to get employed, they may even look past the issues with rose glasses until it’s pointed out by an outsider. And I could see that actually happening.
TBH… I have a feeling some of who you named are part of who she is calling out.
iirc James would have technically been her boss during her time there.
I will stay optimistic but if anything should come out from the external investigation they supposedly want to do that someone was actually responsible, I stand behind the decision of either termination or at least a proper disciplinary action.
You either die a hero or you live to sexually harass your subordinates.
Worst sex tip ever Linus
what
It’s a play on the Dark Knight quote.
“You either die a hero or you live long enough to become a villain”
Ah I see. For my taste, still a bit out of place though…
It’s a reference to Steve Jobs
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YOU EITHER DIE A HERO OR YOU LIVE TO SEXUALLY HARASS YOUR SUBORDINATES.
Is it safe to say if the dude in the video wasn’t passively crapping on HUB and GN this would never have happened?
Probably not. All the issues were there, someone would have pointed it out for some reason at some point.
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imo it’s the natural outcome of the kind of growth they’ve experienced while not putting significant effort into using outside consultants or hires to get their corporate structure right.
I think the problem was the lab idea. When they started going along the lab idea I did feel like it was not really there area of expertise and I thought it was odd that other companies were so interested. In order for the lab results to be trustworthy the company has to be far more open and professional than LTT really is. They probably have to allow external auditors to come in and have a look from time to time which wasn’t something they really seem to account for.
Like don’t get me wrong, it’s a great idea and it’s probably something the world needs, but I wouldn’t have thought that they were the people to carry it out. I’ve always seen LTT as Top Gear but with computers.
GN probably would’ve done it anyway. He is not completely in the right because as unbiased as he wants to be, at the end of the day, he is still criticizing a competitor. I doubt those comments actually prompted his response. They had a lot of examples in their video and have probably been compiling it for a while.
Edit: I mean to say that criticizing a competitor can damage your reputation. I think GN was entirely justified in creating the video. The point I was trying to make is that, after the backpack warranties scandal, Steve basically came out saying that they would be paying closer attention to LMG’s credibility. So I think this video would’ve come out eventually regardless of whether or not staff at LMG made those remarks about GN.
Yes, how dare he criticize a competitor in the hopes of making them a better competitor
What unassailable logic.
I worded my original comment poorly. It can be bad for your reputation to criticize a competitor, but GN was completely right to make this video. It just has a lot of potential to backfire.
He is not completely in the right because as unbiased as he wants to be, at the end of the day, he is still criticizing a competitor.
You can use this to question whether his motives are pure, but suggesting he is “not completely in the right” is just weird. He is well within his rights to criticise a competitor. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I agree. I worded my initial comment poorly. I just meant that it can be damaging to your own reputation to criticize competitors. GN is completely in the right.
So it’s basically wrong to criticize a competitor?
I worded that poorly. In general it is not in your best interest to criticize a competitor. GN was absolutely right to make that video, I’m just saying that due to them being competitors, it has more potential to backfire.
Steve pointed out that most of the errors were caught by himself and not addressed previously. I’d imagine with their previously close ties that the GN crew planned on reaching out privately, but after being thrown under the bus they decided to go full on ass blast.
My point was that Steve has probably been keeping these examples on hand for a while, because he seemed pretty skeptical of the ethics at LMG after the backpack scandal. At most, I think the comments from LMG might have pushed GN to release that video sooner than they had originally planned.
GN gave LMG a rope to pull them up with so they could be better, LMG tied it into a noose and hung themselves. GN did pretty much exactly the right thing to allow LMG to improve themselves.
True, Linus is absolutely terrible at handling criticism. Dude needs to just lets himself cool off for 24 hours and have some people read things before he posts and it wouldn’t have become such a mess.
I mean they were already starting the process of changing things, though not as much as they should have. In reality LTT should have started restructuring years ago to account for their bigger size. If they had started around 2021 the allegations probably could have been avoided. Unfortunately hindsight is 20/20 so they are stuck with the consequences of past mistakes and being reactive, an almost always worst position to be in, instead of proactive. I really do hope that everyone emerges on the other side of this okay, and by everyone I do mean the victims as well, provided the allegations are true.
What are you talking about; is your brain broken!? Them throwing shade at established testing sources has nothing to do with allegations of sexual harassment! That’s not how causation works…
Or are you one of those “she’s lying!” people that never believes women, despite the fact that 81% of US women experience sexual assault/harassment in their lifetime? Glad their new CEO is taking this more seriously than people like you…
No, but the comments by their staff that op was referring to stoked the fire that created all the exposure and I imagine prompted her to come forward too.
Exactly. Thanks for getting it
Jesus Christ you’ve got a problem. You’re picking fights which aren’t there.
You have to admit the timing is interesting. Why come forward now, perhaps, if it is true, she never would have felt comfortable coming forward unless she felt that there was public support. I literally think that is the only point the comment was making, and here you are, going off the rails accusing somebody of not caring. That is absolutely not what I read from the comment.
Thank you
I care a lot about this shit. I make damn sure I’m not toxic at work. Especially around women. I’ve worked as a minority as a man on teams and they are absolutely always just bracing for some dude to be a shithead to them. It’s just constantly in the back of their heads, if not the front
I’ve been a part of a sexual harassment investigation as a witness to someone’s terrible treatment and I hope my testimony helped get the guy ultimately fired.
It’s something we all have to be good about and speak up about
What in the god damned milky way are you going on about?
Linus’s dude shitting on GN about testing -> GN responding with a very thorough takedown of how bad they are with their mistakes, largely because they focus on content quantity even though the employees all say they’re too fast and kinda burned out on it -> People chat around how LTT is probably a bad place to work and Linus doesn’t care about employees -> Madison sees that the narrative of a bad LTT workplace being accepted and it is a good time to bring up her terrible experience with a very good chance she’ll be listened to this time
That’s it. The original comment in LTT’s video set it in motion. And if Steve never responded I seriously doubt we’d be at a place where people would be talking about how employees there are treated.
But please, continue on with the insults, I’m sure in your not-broken brain it all makes sense.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The company has currently paused all production to improve its review processes, and CEO Terren Tong tells The Verge an outside investigator will be hired to examine the harassment allegations.
“We’ve been seeing an alarming amount of conflicts from Linus Tech Tips as it relates to their corporate connections, their flow of money, and the potential bias as a result of those things,” said Gamers Nexus host Steve Burke.
According to Gamers Nexus, Linus Tech Tips reviewed a copper cooling block from Billet Labs on the wrong GPU, then auctioned it off at a recent fan event without the company’s permission.
The afternoon after Gamers Nexus posted its video, Sebastian began responding to concerned fans in the Linus Tech Tips forums.
Reeve went on to accuse the company of barring her from videos after she reported being “grabbed multiple times in the office” and being told to “calm my tits” and “stop being such a bitch.”
He went on to note that “as part of this process, beyond an internal review we will also be hiring an outside investigator to look into the allegations and will commit to publish the findings and implementing any corrective actions that may arise because of this.”
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
good bot
“we hired”: there’s going to be the findings they tell management, the report with the findings management allows them to add, and the findings that management tells us about.
This means nothing until you hear independently from the employees themselves about substantive changes.
The reactions are so… reddit-ey:
I always knew it
I fee so gratified
It’s what I’ve been saying all along
and all that stuff.
Its human nature not exclusive to reddit. You guys sure love talking about that place.
I knew it all along.
I feel so gratified
It’s what I’ve been saying all along
And my axe!
That sounds exactly like what a Redditor would say
It’s almost as if we’re on a platform that imitates it.
Feels like the pitchforks are out. People want blood and don’t care if the allegations are true or not.
People are leaning into the hate circlejerk way too hard, apart from the forum rant they have handled this situation pretty well. They addressed GN’s concerns in their apology video by improving their workflows and communication, and are now hiring an investigator for Madison’s claims. I can’t really think of anything more that they could do, but I guess some people just want to be mad.
They already did the damage. If someone steals something from me and slanders my name, I’m still going to be mad after they say sorry.
Yeah, what are the chances that a company mismanaged by a bunch of incompetent unrepentant techbros also fostered a culture of sexual harassment?
Are we even living in the same reality? Tech bros? They’re a bunch of goofy nerds.
Are these labels mutually exclusive?
LTT is down, the community has made clear what they expected and they’ve acknowledged it. It’s time to let them grow and recover from the situation.
People who are just looking at a reason to hate on them and fuel their anger are just gonna be left behind once everyone moves forward without them.
I thought people loved LTT. Theres only hatred now in the internet.
I really like LTT. All the stuff about mistakes and inaccuracies dont feel that bad to me personally and I feel like LTT would be in a better place regarding accuracy and testing after this.
Regarding the sell of the cooling system, yeah its bad. But I do believe it was a miscommunication and mismanagement within LTT. And int that case at least money can solve it.
Regarding the sexual harassments or “sexually bad environment” yeah this is really bad. I do attribute this to their male dominant eviornent. All those little sexual jokes are so fucking lame and really belong to the distant past of history. They behave like they are 16. The fact that they dont have women in the front of as presenters really shows they are all so sexist. Or at least the one at the top. I do hope justice will be done and everyone accountable gets the proper punishment. And I hope that after this the company will finally grow up and realize they can be still funny and with high quality without the need to oppress women.
I want to keep having fun and getting informed from LTT and i hope they can solve all that.
No pitchforks and no hatred.
I thought most people stopped liking LTT years ago after they started going full corpo.
Why so many people watch them then? And put a lot of time into watching them…. Literally 4 hours of a podcast
I think an important thing people forget is even if they hate Linus, there are a lot of other people who work there that will be negatively impacted if LTT is “burnt to the ground”. I am hoping they step up, take the criticism professionaly and improve. Anything else is a major disappointment.
No one today plans on staying with their company for 20+ years. Every working adult should have an exit strategy for any job from day one.
If the allegations are true, even more so if you’re working at LTT. If they’re competent, they’ll find another job.
If they’re competent, they’ll find another job.
Ironically, one of the things Madison claims is that it was said to her that her coworkers could afford that, while she could not.
I don’t believe you ever suddenly lost your job.
And that’s a huge red flag. If they thought so low of her work, they would have fired her.
Did I claim to? I’m looking at the pattern followed by people who jumped ship from Channel Awesome and Rooster Teeth.
I am the one claiming that if it happened to you once, you’d have a different opinion.
Are we obligated to support a company they we dont like just because they’re “job creators”?
I have made very few posts to Lemmy but a recent one was a neutral-ish post saying that I liked the Madison videos etc. but I’m also not jumping to boycott LTT based on the testimony of one person and also a YouTube expose. The responses I got were negative and I was also told not to “deadname” another creator… who I wager nobody would know who I am talking about if I used that name.
Long story short, the comparisons to reddit seem downright charitable so far. Pitchfork brigade bullshit. How about having a nuanced opinion on literally any topic? Or is the average Lemmy user a sanctimonious 19 year old basement socialist?
Arent the most refugees from reddit? M That would explain why so many being the culture with them.
Yes and no. Only a fraction of Redditors migrated, and that fraction is overrepresented by people who care about privacy, ethical business models, community projects and stewardship. And we’ve seen that the Lemmy discussions have been a lot more humane and productive.
I myself have remained pretty silent through this entire LMG saga. Maybe I represent a silent majority? Or maybe just a few? It’s time to put down the pitchforks. The company has responded, let’s wait and see what comes of it. At the end of the day, vote with your wallets. The LMG fanbase is starting to move out of “concerned citizenry” territory and into “self perpetuating angry mob” territory.
I think you’re right about the silent majority. This whole amplifying rage over thing is wild to see in real time. It’s scary how many people have Internet brain rot, check these ratios on most any push back to the rabid behaviour.
Agreed. I will stay subbed (for now) and see what comes from it.
The more I read about LMG, the more the structure of the company looks like a mob.
There is one guy with his wife at the top of the pyramid. The CEO and others are below. If the top of the pyramid has what it ask for, nobody will care about what’s happening.
That’s how a lot of small businesses operate, unfortunately.
That’s how companies are structured. What you want staff to be higher up the chain of command and CEOs I’m not quite sure what you’re asking for
I mean… Yeah? CEOs suck if you’ve been paying attention. Most “chains of command” are just privileged people with connections. Then you have the lower management (let’s be real fuck middle management they’re almost always useless) and workers doing the actual labor and making the least. That always feels stupid to me 🤷♀️
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Citing an article that cites a Reddit post isn’t great. Let’s link to the original https://old.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/t1e1if/you_destroyed_my_life/
While the story is tragic, somebody running a million plus sub YouTube channel is going to get the full Internet experience. It’s pure muckracking to say Linus was responsible for this. It’s just sensationalism.
The reason for the harassment was that the kids channel was purchased from someone else and also had paid subscriptions/views, hence why he never got a silver play button.
Linus wasn’t responsible directly, and it’s completely unfair to imply he’s the one who did this. He did not drive this poor person into suicide, this is not on him.
But absolutely there’s something to be said about how big YouTubers use their platform to mobilize their audiences. When was the last time fans of a Disney Channel actor drove someone to suicide? On YouTube, that’s actually so frequent it’s scary.
If you know you’re on a live stream with thousands listening, and millions watching the recording, you can’t simply start implying things about a kid with a public channel. Regardless of your intentions, you know what’s about to happen.
And Linus did, in fact, keep hyping that useless plaque and did, in fact, act like it was stolen from him. It was only later on that his tone changed.
I think watching that auction video is very illuminating about his personality. He’s in full narcissist mode, but you can see him work out what he’s doing. And then he starts to backpedal, because I don’t think he’s a bad human being. He doesn’t want to hurt this guy. He just needed to time to stop being a narcissist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDZfh5IjGv8
All that being said I think it’s incredibly unfair to bring normal people onto a large media platform. Just fucking going into the auction and recording people for the channels just not cool.
Edit: I originally said videotape, but I realize nobody does that anymore
Oh yeah, I absolutely do no want to imply malice - I don’t know him, but would never think Linus would purposely do something like that.
But he is massively narcissistic, for sure.
I think we can go beyond the malice standard and talk about reasonableness. I didn’t see anything in that entire auction scenario that was unreasonable. We can nitpick about lots the specifics but nothing was unreasonable. Even managing the audience was all reasonable.
To bring this scenario up at this time, as that article does, is just trying to add field to the fire. And not actually be constructive.
If that article, " journalist", had done some fact checking research, then at least they’d be adding to the discussion, and it’d be maybe not reasonable but justifiable to bring it up… Like finding the name of the deceased, verifying they died, verifying they died at that time for that reason. Verifying the story about the mother also being dead. All of this should be discoverable public record to a journalist who wants to verify a story. Talking to the father getting their position. What were the contributing factors to the event. What evidence of systemic harassment was there? Like all of this would be fundamental to journalism. But no it’s just shit posting pointing to somebody’s post on the internet which they haven’t done any verification of…
The fanbase is insane considering it’s a slightly snarky tech review channel. Like how do you get rabid fans doing that??
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Cultish tribalism like this exist for any sort of wannabe celeb.
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I remember the video that this stems from. He wasn’t exactly a “little boy”, and I don’t mean by size. I mean that he was near or at adulthood.
Linus gave up the plaque to him realizing that he had won the auction fair and square and even plugged his channel on the video.
We don’t know how much Linus knew about his community doing this. Scouring the comments of Mindchop’s channel shows no harassment that I can see so far. However, I do admit the harassment could have taken place through DMs and other private communication.
Mindchop’s channel shows no harassment that I can see so far.
Even now his most recent video is 10:1 dislike to like ratio:
I meant verbal harassment. Votes can be from anywhere.
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god that’s heartbreaking. i had never heard of any of this before today. what a massive implosion.
maybe i’m too dumb or old, but i cannot wrap my head around why “fans” are loyal to some sponsored content/native marketing organization like this enough to follow some kid around youtube and crap on their content. or harass someone doing their job. having to do tons of social media content professionally seems soul destroying… especially because “the bosses” only think about The Algorithm and maybe saw some SEO snakeoil pub telling them it’s better to generate 8 weak outputs than 2 strong outputs worth watching, because the “goal” is to harvest all those passive clicks and views of people who are bored out of their skull barely playing on their phone… instead of maybe targeting someone actively engaged and searching for something well made and relevant to their interests.
so you get overpaid bozos who don’t know fuck about shit leaning heavy on underpaid young people to make more internet garbage for the sake of making more internet garbage, and then later complaining that views per output are down or reactions are lukewarm or engagement is off. imagine that job and then a handful of fuckups following you around and shitting on your online presence because you’re doing what you’re told in order to have a roof over your head and food to eat and dreams of a mildly secure future.
as someone who was once idealistic and full of energy and stamina that was taken advantage of by ego-driven and deceptive exploiters: beware assholes, the rest of us can come together and build a world without a place for you in it.
Omg that’s awful
This doesn’t feel right. The post seems very lacking in proof, and sounds incredibly farfetched. I remember seeing the NCIX auction video and thought I recall it being a young man buying the play button, not a child, but I could certainly be remembering wrong. The source is pretty bad too, I’ve never heard of that site, were there not more reputable sites with this story? I’m not saying it couldn’t have happened, and I’m certainly not a Linus Stan, but it seems really fake.
Oh wow I never heard about this. That is awful.
give me the unsubstantiated allegations
These YouTube companies almost always end up like this. Reminds me of the rooster teeth shit
Which time? lmao
Hope we can get some more memes out of Linus now that he’s more useless.
Watched YT vid, not looking good for LTT.
Looks like a PR response politians make, with sponsors and store shoutout, just like any other video they post…
Hopefully the pressure keeps coming and LMG workers start a union, a the minimum.
Out of the loop, can someone give me a tl;dr on who this guy is why I keep seeing this everywhere?
Linus Sebastian is a YouTube tech guru that rose to prominence in the last few years with his channel, Linus Tech Tips, and has created something of an enterprise around his content called Linus Media Group
More recently his work has become somewhat…sloppy, with errors here and there, recommended practices ignored on the odd occasion, but nothing so big as to cause anyone major damage. Linus has a default PR mode for when these issues come about, and it usually worked…
Until last month.
Last month, Linus reviewed a prototype of an all new type of water-cooling block (basically a replacement for a fan that can be way more efficient) for GPUs. This block was expensive, and expensive to make, but by all reasonable measures, has a very good cooling impact to show for it. It was made by a startup firm of two people, and they sent Linus a prototype with a supported GPU.
The GPU ended up disappearing into the aether, and Linus opted to use an unsupported GPU to test the cooling block, which resulted in inferior cooling performance. Linus ended up trashing the block in his review.
He then went and auctioned off the prototype without the knowledge of the manufacturer, only offering to make them whole once it had already been auctioned off.
Linus tried to deal with it in his usual PR way, once Gamers Nexus started reporting on the goings on. But these weren’t small errors, these were the mother of all PC tech journalistic fuckups, and he refused to acknowledge them as such. That is not only enough to get someone immediately fired, it’s enough to get them industry-blacklisted.
It’s gotten so bad that the CEO and CFO of Linus Media Group have come out directly and thrown Linus under the bus for his fuckery.
And that’s before we come on to the topic of this post, the SA allegations…
Edit: minor name corrections.
He then went and auctioned off the prototype without the knowledge of the manufacturer, only offering to make them whole once it had already been auctioned off.
There’s a few bits more around this that have come to light that makes it even worse…
The manufacturer emailed asking for the cooling block to be returned as it was their only prototype and LMG said they would return it, with the manufacturer chasing several times before LMG admitted that they had auctioned it off for charity.
They only offered compensation once the situation had been revealed in that expose video the other day.
The way I see it, this could well be a career ender for Linus. He gets his hands on novel, unreleased hardware, and then he botches the review and gives it to the highest bidder. Potentially a competing company.
No one is going to trust him with their pre-release hardware ever again after this.
Heck, if this was any reasonably sized company, I suspect we’d already be hearing about lawsuit settlements of significant sums of cash.
Its definitely going to wipe out any standing he has with others in the industry: he gave a scathing review about a prototype that they had failed to correctly install, despite clear instructions with a compatible GPU card sent to them. Add that to the constant incorrect and misinformation that is often caught in post production with on-screen corrections
It seems that allure of increasing revenue streams with a ridiculous production turnaround had a direct impact on their quality and integrity and now with the allegations that Madison has come forward with, it would appear the rot had set in long before it was noticeable to external parties.
Its going to play out over the next week or so whether LMG is in a death spiral.
Yeah…any one of these issues would be bad enough…the whole trifecta does not bode well at all for Linus.
This is my best summary, it is long so sorry about that but there’s a lot to it.
Linus is probably the largest tech youtuber there is.
He’s been rapidly expanding his company, building out a full lab that is trying to rigorously test products (mostly in an automated way) so that consumers can have confidence that a $50 power supply isn’t going to shit the bed, or that this GPU will get you the same performance in these games at this resolution so save your money, etc.
The initial controversy is that they have issue with the automated testing where results were often super wrong and that slipped it’s way to multiple videos and instead of taking the videos down and correcting them, they left them up and just had a little text graphic over the video with the correction. Many youtubers do that kind of post video correction, but LTT does it a lot. Additionally they tested an $800 prototype watercooler on a 4090 when it was built only for a 3090ti which pretty much invalidates the entire test, but they still gave a conclusion that the watercooler sucked and was a bad product. That could tank that company. They did not bother re-testing with the proper GPU because Linus felt no one should buy an $800 watercooler block anyway. Additionally(x2) they reviewed a mouse and said it was terrible because the glide was really bad. Turns out there were protective stickers on the mouse feet that needed to be removed. They took multiple days to correct the video and by that point the damage was done.
The second controversy is around a Madison (former employee) where she received tons of verbal abuse, degradation, from various LMG employees/management and some even sexual harassment. There was a lot of hand-waving of her raising those complaints as “causing drama” and to “calm your tits” and other various things. She suffered a lot mentally from it and even “cut her own leg” just to go to the ER to have a day off. Her write up is pretty long and fairly brutal.
I think a large part of the issue is everyone is incredibly overworked at that company and crunching every day to release as much content as possible which leads to a fuck ton of errors, very heated and emotionally charged employees and lack of oversight over serious issues. Couple that with rapid expansion of employees without a functional HR (I think someone was hired recently) and the vast majority of people effectively “learning on the job” how to be a manager, director, leader, etc. and it’s just an explosion waiting to happen. And it has exploded quite spectacularly.
I’ll be curious to see if they turn it around and also what comes from the outside investigation.
Large tech reviewer. Runs his own company called Linus Media Group (LMG). Called out another review channel called Gamer Nexus(GN). GN hit back with a video detailing gross inaccuracies in LMG published test results. For example outliers of 300%. This has opened the flood gates for people to remind the Internet what a horrific company LMG has been for many years. Basically LMG glorifies the grind mindset and promote the typical hostile work environment that is the epitome of startups
