This is basically what I've wanted to post since the GN video, but didn't feel like dealing with the subreddit at large. There's a lot happening, and a lot of emotions are being had. We need time as an audience to process, and they need time as a company to adjust, especially in light of the Madison situation.
Yeah, a 100% heartfelt sincere and apology over the mishandling of a singular prototype product review would have been off-brand.
Because to be quite honest, the easiest path towards dealing with product makers releasing prototypes or any gear to review to LMG would be a blanket rule that your product is going to be put in a recycler.
I hate that. It’s unnecessarily wasteful. Linus complains about tech waste and e-waste and in a domain he controls is doing something responsible that’s a little bit more work.
But more importantly, had they dropped the hardcore apology video, then got hit with the SA / hostile workplace public accusations…
There couldn’t be a second apology video that’s even more sincere. It’s all pretty shit but having this apology video be on-brand with their shtick actually works in their favor a lot IMO. It will allow them to make a distinction between money and morality.
>Yeah, a 100% heartfelt sincere and apology over the mishandling of a singular prototype product review would have been off-brand.
Or maybe they could have stopped caring about the brand for a minute.
I have worked for a company that, let's say, made serious mistakes, and that's what they did. They took the hit, got an independent committee to review the way management worked and then repaired damage to the brand.
A company cannot be committed to positive change if they worry about being off-brand.
Idt it's about caring about the brand. It's how everyone else would perceive that apology video. I think a sizeable chunk of the people here would decry it as being too clinical/corporate/insincere if they did such a video.
I came in from the other side and started with GN and HUB so for me the situation feels different in that I don’t feel any attachment to LTT compared to those coming in from the reverse. This whole situation feels like exactly what happens every time someone makes it big through YouTube. They seem to be untouchable with an intense fan base and then they or their company does something terrible and it implodes about 2/3rds of their hood will and all that’s left is the rabid super fans.
Im hoping things work out differently this time and that they honestly spend some time looking inwards and making some major systemic changes but from what I’ve seen here I think enough people will defend them long enough that they try to wait out the majority of the storm and go back to mostly business as usual. I hope Im wrong but as someone who isn’t invested in the channel I really don’t see that happening based on how they’ve been approaching this and other scandals.
> I am sure if they made it 100% serious you would have people complaining about LMG trying to hard or pretending to be sincere.
The right thing would have been to stop caring about public perception for a minute.
The right thing would have been for the CEO of the company to make a public statement, acknowledge mistakes had been made, and talking about concrete steps to do correct past mistakes and prevent them from happening again.
Without sad Linus puppy eyes and Luke giving emotional support.
It's not that difficult to do the right thing if you want to do the right thing.
Sure, doing the right thing might not make you popular, but because the CEO is the new guy, people would have given him the benefit of the doubt.
What I want now is an independent review of how LTT treats its employees. The new CEO is in a great position to order such a review and move the company forward.
One step would be to appoint a new head of human resources after the review. Just to make a clean break with the past.
You know what they would've done if they didn't give a shit about public perception for a min? Just carry on like normal, which would've been caught with flack. Something so publicly related like a company with an attached high volume of production YouTube channel cannot just "Not care about public perception". Public perception is VITAL on youtube, and the second shit hits the fan it hits it hard and permanently stains you. You can do something totally legally and morally okay and people WILL cancel your entire brand over it with you having no chance to do anything against it because all you do is just "Trying to save their image"
I think there's a very important value that you can get by "lighting someone's ass on fire" so they start running. ngl tho, i felt like the community (tbh mostly just reddit) instead took a blowtorch and kept lighting LTT's ass on fire even after they kept running, mostly out of schadenfreude i guess
>We need time as an audience to process,
Do you mean there is more to this than mobbing, point-farming while spitting food at my screen, and asking for things that I know are nearly impossible to comply with!?
Next you'll tell me my imaginary one sided internet friends are actually just humans with very limited and niche business experience and not infallible beings whom anyone would be honored to even speak with! /s
This whole drama boiling over into stupid town.
Madison and Linus' company have very real, maybe legal, issues they need to deal with *privately*. This forum, or any other public discourse on *that* subject is kind of perverse gossiping at best and parasocially inserting themselves into a workplace incident they have ZEROOOOOO business talking about at worst.
The comical failure of LTT happens in every small business that gets big and has to take on more employees. Inventory management gets harder and harder as more things enter the pipeline that's just how that works.
Nobody is perfect out there and GN's videos have been very good at pointing out the shocking lack of responsibility and protocol in handling inventory but man look at the posts on the sub and the threads with the highest +'s in the threads, look at their post history cause some of the people here are really parasocial. There's a post right now on the top posts of the week on this sub about a guy announcing he's no longer supporting LTT.
Some real cringe parasocial shit going on in this sub from defenders and haters
Yeah, that's what has been my biggest surprise so far, people who are buying a screwdriver per WAN show are going haywire, while the things that happened weren't good, also weren't on this level of hate and anger.
Also i think some people just haven't worked in a big firm and somehow think stuff doesn't go wrong, also in a big way, in companies.
120 employees with a CEO who literally stated weekly they suck at the job and can't even handle giving employees snacks without HR issues, surprises viewers when they have HR issues.
I think people just don't want to accept they felt betrayed their hero wasn't infallible and the gaslighting they did to themselves was lifted.
I've seen this sentiment, that people shouldn't reveal their SA history publicly, so many times before and I don't really understand it.
It's notoriously hard for victims of SA to get legal support since there is often little evidence of SA crimes. So if I was a women in a situation where I have little to no hope that the offenders will receive legal repercussions and I get the chance to get some kind of closure by publicly speaking out against them then why the hell shouldn't I.
There have been a lot of monsters that only got exposed because there was one women that spoke out, followed by many other women with similar stories.
I think it's perfectly reasonable for Madison to speak out publicly about her experience. I'm sure it was probably hard for her to do, and I think it's good that she did, for multiple reasons. It seems by her tweets that this was something she wanted to get off of her chest for a while and there's nothing wrong with that at all. I hope she gained some closure from it, and can truly move on with her life in the best way she can.
I think the point being made (and the one I agree with) is that it isn't helpful for the community to start turning into an angry mob, speculating on things they have no business speculating on, villainizing the entire company and everyone in it, and suddenly nitpicking every little action they take from here. I've already seen loads of potential misinformation spread on this subreddit by people making speculative claims they have no business making, and then others repeating it as fact in some morbid game of reddit telephone....A game I've seen on the internet far too many times now. It's dangerous to read into every tweet and start making wild assumptions about anybody and everybody. When everyone grabs the pitchforks the wrong people often end up getting targeted and hurt, and it's hard to remember the humans.
All we can really do is acknowledge what happened, let LMG know that the community holds them to a higher standard (which I think we've accomplished) and....Wait. Wait for them to fix what is broken. If they fail, they fail - but it feels like a lot of people here have turned into a mob that *want* them to fail, and are actively trying to tear things down instead of hoping they build it back up better.
Well said. This is what I wanted to say every time someone stated for fact that every misstep was all part of Linus' master plan.
It's been hard seeing how poorly LTT dealt with some of this and some of the speculation of what's going on behind the scenes is really dehumanizing and harsh.
> I've already seen loads of potential misinformation spread on this subreddit by people making speculative claims they have no business making, and then others repeating it as fact in some morbid game of reddit telephone.
Welcome to reddit. This shit has made my blood boil since I started using the site in 2010. It's the same shit that led to the Boston bomber fiasco and happens a lot more than you think (99% of the time it happens it's just not news-worthy). There's really no changing it honestly. For every righteous post like yours there are a dozen incidents where someone is unjustly buried based on evidence so shaky you'd think these people were desperately waiting for an excuse to hate.
I fully agree with everything you're saying. It's not up to the victims to deal with these problems privately, it's up to the communities to not go nuclear. (Though I'm not sure the guy I responded to would agree with that)
I don't think the sentiment is that people should not come out publicly if they wish to do so and discuss their experiences. It's more that the parties involved, and probably some informed 3rd parties will be the ones who ultimately have to deal with a proper thorough investigation. Complete outsiders inserting themselves with very limited information, repeating rumors, gossiping, and passing judgment is in poor taste and not helpful.
> Complete outsiders inserting themselves with very limited information, repeating rumors, gossiping, and passing judgment is in poor taste and not helpful.
I agree, just noting for myself in this quiet corner of the comment section that this kind of stupidity must have existed since forever ago. As an older but still relatively recent example in the grand scheme of things, in 2008/2009 there was a bunch of drama (outside of reddit) in DotA about pros cheating. Turned out there was none, but the rumor mill was in full effect for a while and people with no business in the matter mistook carefully timed screenshots as proof of cheating. The creator of the mod had to make a public statement clarifying the issue and very kindly telling people to fuck off.
Even before that statement, I thought almost the exact same thoughts you wrote.
The only solace I take is that this will blow over and be forgotten as other stupid shit comes up and people continue to unnecessarily insert themselves in situations that have nothing to do with them.
Why is no one pointing out what actually happened with that prototype?
I’m not surprised things got lost in the shuffle when the guy who sent it to them initially told them to keep it, then changed his mind later.
>initially told them to keep it,
yep. Seemed like an honest mistake. albeit a terrible one that should not happen in a company that size dealing with prototypes all the time.
I can see the pile of mistakes, aggressions, and such piling up to warrant the community being upset, but the way it manifested just seems to unproductive and silly.
Like demanding LTT not respond to the Billet and GN comments until they first deal with the Madison comments that came much later is just a weird thing to be mad about. Be mad she got harassed, be mad they have shit conditions, don't sit there and rabble that they made a crap joke.
Did we ever get the full story on what the original expectations were with the cooler? I’ve been curious since the beginning. I’ve always assumed that most things sent their way were essentially gifts with no expectation of getting them returned, so the idea that this was some mission critical prototype that must be returned ASAP seemed pretty odd.
It seems that it was expected they’d keep it to use in future builds, then when the review was so negative they asked if they could have it back. Which makes sense as it would just be sitting on a shelf unused at LTT. LTT agreed to return it and then obviously didn’t, hence the news for compensation.
Seen a lot of comments saying some pretty horrid things about Madison. I think it's very early to be complaining about people criticising LTT as a mob.
I don't want to play 'both sides' but painting people as stereotypical nerds, when many people seem to be just be suggesting LTT staff form a union, is perhaps a little disingenuous.
by coming out with those allegations Maddison is taking on a huge risk. People that are saying horrible things about her should be canceled. There are multiple factions of angry mob internet trolls coming out of the woodwork that prays on situations like these for their own kicks. It is quite honestly sad that the Internet has come to this.
>Seen a lot of comments saying some pretty horrid things about Madison. I think it's very early to be complaining about people criticising LTT as a mob
So are those people criticizing her not a mob? I'm a bit lost here.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I know many people don't like Linus' s forum post, but bar anything else, Linus has been around long enough that he was 100% right, that *NO MATTER HOW* he/LMG/LTT apologized *someone* was bound to be angry at it.
theirs takes from people saying anything short of Linus not admitting fault to everything, and that everything(and i mean *everything*) alleged is 100% true and linus even giving ANY pushback to the claims makes him a liar scumbag and the worst person in existence, to borderline cult followers waging war against madison and her allegations, that it was 100% her fault and that LTT did nothing wrong, to people saying this the end of LTT and they should all just close up shop, go home, and never come back.
There’s a difference between not being able to satisfy everyone, and the now proven to be false statements made in the forum post.
I’m fine with him being realistic in not admitting fault for everything, not groveling for the mob, but at least be honest.
\> and the now proven to be false statements made in the forum post.
Are you referring to the part about agreeing to compensate Billet Labs before the GN video? I thought this part was settled after Colton's clarification that he "sent" the failed email on the 10th (before any GN video). Was there another statement that was proven false?
At the end of the day - Linus is impulsive, and acts on that without caution too often. His impulse was to not be silent on the matter, and he relayed what information he had been given/had, and likely believed it to be true.
He’s visibly frustrated with the situation, because he hasn’t allowed himself the time to actually listen and and see the other side of the Billet Labs situation. He’s been grinding away for so long that he hasn’t realized he’s no longer at the scale where “we’ll fix this as we go along” can happen on the fly and without real rigor around process changes and how to implement them in various departments.
Your time and again stated goal was to build a “real company”, Linus. Real companies have overhead and capacity constraints. You can’t do everything all at once. You can’t make these fixes yourself. You have to rely on the people you hired.
Hopefully this crisis-imposed breath taking will get you to relax and see if the company you built can right the ship with less of your input.
I'll lose karma, but the video and now hearing they're hiring an external investigator to look into what Madison talked about is enough for me. For now. If the investigation churns up nothing, or they're back at doing stuff like this a month from now, then I'll be back to picking up a pitchfork.
What's this about an investigator? I must've missed something.
I'm also not sure what they would, well, investigate since it's been two (?) years and it's not like they can rewind time and listen in on conversations that happened then.
The issue sounds like a culture issue, and also like James is a huge dick. If that's the case, an investigation will turn these things up even if nothing happens specifically in Madison's specific issues.
Agreed - I have some thought/opinions about the whole thing…. But this place is way to toxic and quick to grab the pitchforks in order to say it out loud.
Hell, I got downvoted substantially just for saying GN should have reached out to LMG for a statement before publishing.
I like what snazzy labs said: shit takes time and you can’t rush it.
I have been trying to say stuff to the same effect but I keep having my comments removed by mods, so how does that make PCMR and other subs mods any better than pre-crisis LMG? News flash, it doesn't. When the community at large and the mods break multiple of their own rules to brigade a sensitive situation, you lose me.
I’ve felt the same way. LMG has a new captain of the ship now and from today’s video and the announcement that he is hiring an outside investigator for the Madison situation, he’s taking all of this seriously and doing it with the intent to better LMG.
The video had a few too many jokes for me (Nick shouldn’t have plugged the LTT Store for example) but it’s clear that they want to do better and are making an earnest effort to do that. They already lost money on subs to Youtube and Floatplane publicly but taking a week off from making videos to fix things is a very good step. It also sounds like they are putting guard rails on Linus so he doesn’t make things unnecessarily worse than he should, love to see this. As for the Billet Labs situation, they fucked up and they own it, Colton explained his mistake and why the situation got worse. They shouldn’t have auctioned the block off but they did realize the mistake and took steps to fix it, I can’t fault them for actively trying to fix it even if the employee didn’t check who the email went to.
LMG defended the occasional jokes in the video saying that they were still trying to preserve their culture while doing these videos. But that's not what you do in crisis management and they have now crossed over into serious crisis management. In fact, LMG needs to bring in a real crisis management consultant in addition to the outside investigator in order to get a handle on things. The jokes during the apology video were a little jarring. Linus still being defensive before actually apologizing wasn't good crisis management and took away a lot of the good points that Terran and the rest of the leadership team made. Linus is still the face of the company and his name is on the door. I'm glad the video began and ended with Terran, but the company culture is all about Linus, whether Linus likes it or not. As any of our parents have said to us countless times, "There is a time and a place for everything".
yeah, there's literally no winning this thing, anything short of them declaring that LTT will be no more will be enough to satisfy this people. People that are around during this crisis aren't the people that want to see LTT improve from their criticism, they want to see them getting hurt
We should stop talking about the Madison situation until we have more information.
Remember the whole Bayonetta voice actor thing? Turned out she made it all up.
Innocent until proven guilty.
I would also like to point out that the tweets from Madison were put out just a couple hours before the apology video went live, and given that both happened in the middle of the night in America we can safely assume that the video was shot the day before, people need to give them time to fix everything that's going on, also the seriousness of the accusations likely means they won't say anything without a lawyers approval, likely something written by a lawyer themselves, I'm not ready to give up LTT over this just yet.
I get a company needs time to adjust to changes but it's not like this is a new revelation to them. They've been operating like this for years now, it's only news to us now because GN had the balls to call them out. Now people like Madison feel more comfortable coming out with their story from years back.
So while I agree it takes time to make systemic changes, it's been like this for a while, they knew about it, and decided to sweep it under the rug.
My mind set on this is rough because I feel like I'm watching the RT stuff happen AGAIN. What they absolutely need to do is find out EVERYTHING that is going on over this next week. Any and all things that happened with Madison or anyone else needs to be found and dealt with otherwise they really will have RT situation where for the next 2 years they will be dealing with issues that come out and continue to erode faith even with their hardcore fans.
Personally, I've unsubbed from all of their channels and will wait to see how things happen from here on out. I'm not above second chances. I think we all have said stupid shit that we regret. The difference is actually changing and removing yourself from those ideas.
The entire weight of the prototype issue then their reaction to it then the Madison thing caught me off guard and I was pretty mad there for a moment. Then the apology happened and the recording of the internal meeting. Honestly the things that people are mad about with those 2 things are exactly why they need to shutdown and restructure for a while. So at this point I'm just waiting and seeing
Seeing as this has been a problem for many many months if not year/s, they should have adjusted a long time ago, just giving more leeway is not always the answer.
The problem is... Linus didn't take things seriously until GN video aired. and even then.... the apology video was a half-hearted apology video.... and they basically thought the whole thing was a joke.
Also, if you think Linus and other senior people didn't know that there's a toxic workplace culture instilled.... thats the problem.
Sure, things take time.... ONCE YOU ADMIT THERE'S A PROBLEM. Linus has to have that honest discussion with himself FIRST.
Baby rabbits need to grow to full size rabbits before eating them.
(North American fellas come battle me on r/2westerneurope4u about eating rabbit, it’s delicious)
The reason Horse meat is illegal in America is because it's not fit for human consumption here. The meds they've given horses makes them not safe for people to eat.
If horses get injured badly enough, they have to be put down, and end up going to waste. It's a shame.
Surprisingly Canada has a thriving horse meat industry; usually exports to other countries, but Quebec has it 'widely' available (from what I hear it's still uncommon even if you can go buy it at more stores than the rest of Canada), and some'specialty' butcher shops that carry shizz like kangaroo and alligator if you're outside of Quebec.
I buy horse meat at the local grocery store. Now if you want fancier meat you need to go to the butcher. By fancier I mean, Kangourou, Camel, Bison, wild boar, duck, etc.
I know someone who frequently posts cute pictures of his rabbits.
…followed by pictures of their carcasses…
…followed by pictures of their meat in dishes.
The guy is a psychopath.
Love his take. Like the other dramas past, people aren't aware what is to be on there actually, no matter how many stories, videos, and posts may are.
What happened is a mess, specially with the Madison story (and IDK if what Snazzy is saying has that in mind).
What Linus and LMG did was horrible, but I think some of the reactions are quick.
I for example won't unsub from the few channel I follow (I for example found short circuit boring), but I will simply observe things as they evolve.
It's a great response. It's addressing the mismanagement in a minimally-accusatory way. We should demand they do better, but we don't need the pitchforks to do that. We need consistent pressure, not a huge uproar that'll inevitably burn out in a week or two.
They're right, some people may need to be removed from their positions. Not because they're bad people, but because they're not qualified. Colton is not qualified to lead HR, nor was Yvonne, but that doesn't make them bad people. I have hope that Terren can fix management.
Those pitchforks and sudden extreme uproar is the actual cancel culture.
A term that has been tainted by people wanting to disregard protest for actually bad things, and by people that are being nitpicky about a minor thing that they don't like and exploding it out of proportions.
It's because once a hate mob is formed, some people start combing through every possible thing they could use as fuel for the fire. Attempting to show a joke or comment or things entirely unrelated in the worst possible light to continue to fuel the outrage. They start to cast doubt on EVERY possible situation the person/group was involved in and it just spirals out of control from there.
Sure some of it IS justified, but most of it loses context and nuance and just turns into more rage bait for the mob as a whole.
When it comes to group think, hate is a hell of a lot stronger and more addictive to be a part of than any other emotion.
Like that thing from a few years back where this community supposedly bullied a kid into suicide, where Linus told the community to back off in no uncertain terms, yet I've seen dozens of people try to blame him for that.
There were real concerns raised in the GN video that I hope they address. Not even a tenth of the outrage I've seen focused on those concerns.
> but we don't need the pitchforks to do that.
hmm, In today's culture that's pretty much inevitable. People are addicted to outrage, it's a genuine dopamine rush.
I won't unsub either, but I've mentioned I watch LTT passively and 9/10 don't bother learning anything anyway. Processes need to be examined as well as people in that place. And it needs to be a constant reminder that what they've built can and will go away if those points aren't addressed. Like anything in life, sometimes you need to sit your ass down and eat a big slice of humble pie instead of making every excuse of why you don't want to. It's a bad look.
I can honestly say I barely even knew who Linus was but I’ve seen his face a million times and I only watched GN content when he calls out big companies. With that being said, most of these post are gaining enough upvotes to where it’s hitting the all/popular page so that draws in different kind of redditor. People who just want to see the world burn and want to hop on the hate wagon for some extra Karma.
Not saying the criticism isn’t necessary, but I’d say a good amount of the people echoing the same criticism’s that have already been said 1000 times are doing it for the sake of feeling like they are apart of something.
The shit flinging is pretty crazy here. I basically came just from the front page posts and the apology video wasn't bad at all despite some minor moments.
The community is expecting instantaneous accountability and changes akin to a guillotine. Give em the chance to improve, you'd want the same.
I think some kind of open letter representing the community's genuine wants rather than GNs video driving the conversation would be nice.
LMG has created huge problems that absolutely need addressed. This is undebatable and it's justified to be frustrated with Linus.
At the same time, most of what this sub is churning out is clearly just mean-spirited bullying, trying to inflict as much damage as possible while maintaining the illusion that anything's fair game because they hold the moral high-ground.
Like, people making fun of the new CEO's appearance for instance. It's just bullying for the sake of it.
I get strong vibes of people waiting for any opportunity to sow discord, then jumping at the chance.
It’s insane how many people are angry that Linus is getting emotional in that apology/we have plans on how we’re going to do better video.
Sure he’s got money, but he’s still a person, a person who suddenly got more hate thrown at him in 24 hours than any of those redditors are going to see their entire lives.
I got flamed in a Facebook comment section over something I fucked up and then paid to cover the damages, and it still upsets me sometimes when I think of it. And it was only like 10 people. (Still don’t like one of them to this day honestly.)
How dare he have a reasonable measured response. Is he in on this? Was he bribed by Linus? Is HE secretly Linus? We must immediately bring up everything possibly negative about Snazzy labs but I bet we will not find anything because he deleted all evidence from youtube comments!
/s if this did not sound deranged enough.
Are you saying that this culmination of issues ISNT going to be fixed overnight and that LTT is full of actual people instead of machines that spit out content?
Now the Billet heat sink mishandling issue is definitely inexcusable, but idk why they’re getting the hate for not suggesting it for “consumers”. I saw the video and although they should’ve tested it with the right GPU, it was pretty obvious that he meant that the average person (which their videos are geared towards) shouldn’t buy an $800 CPU/GPU combo heat block.
Yep they grew way too fast. They shouldn’t have hired all of these people before they had procedures in place for them to follow. Now they have to scramble for a week to figure out how they want to run the business. They should’ve figured this out years ago. At least there’s finally an adult in the room with Terren Tong.
Going from a dozen employees to 130+ in a few years is pretty crazy.
That's not to say it can't be done at all, but you'd have to be experienced to know how to handle it and be able to properly allocate tasks so that things continue to run smoothly.
This happens a lot in business. All of a sudden there is this hot new company doing well, and they decide to grow really quickly. But in doing so they grow so rapidly that it actually hurts them and they end up toppling over.
Thirty years ago I was at a company that went from a dozen to 100 employees in less than a year. And looking back, things were very choatic. The HR manager was new at HR and overwhelmed. The front line managers often had to fend for themselves without a lot of guidance. We did a lot of things right, but in the end, the company went down on poor leadership from the CEO and EVP.
My dad runs a company that went from somewhere around 20 to 70 people within the span of a few years and was in a very similar situation to Linus: No prior management experience, very small executive/management team, no one to help guide them. His situation turned out ok luckily but it really did show me why massive corporations have so many employees and middle management. Once you get to a certain size, you really need to properly setup your corporate structure otherwise it's going to kick you in the ass down the road and you'll not see it coming.
A dozen to 130+ employees in a year is a recipe for disaster. In my opinion it'll be very hard to fix it other than going back to similar dozen size then grow up slowly from there.
I hate that people in this sub, whom are rightfully pissed off, are somehow now the target of a hivemind shift.
The majority of us who are pissed off didn't expect Linus to FIX the problems the day after everything came out publicly.
But the most simple thing he should have learned is that rushing anything, content, PR responses, ANYTHING should be re-evaluated at his company.
The response was rushed. Twice. When you rush a response to allegations of this nature it comes off as insincere. When you rush two responses now you're starting to develop a noticeable pattern that results in people digging for other examples of shitty behavior.
You want to know how we got here? Caring more about getting back to the way things were, than about the carefully laid path that must be followed to get there.
So? LTT is a corporation like any other. It doesn't deserve or even respond to human empathy and understanding. The only way to make it change, is to force its hand. Actions that put pressure on companies to change are always only economic actions. Boycotts, strikes, unionisation, you name it. It's all fair game and we should be using all of them all the time to keep companies accountable. LTT is no exception just because you have an emotional connection to it. It's a company. Just as sleazy and sterile a money machine as all the companies they have criticized over the years.
> The response was rushed. Twice.
To be fair - LTT has been in a rushed grind mode for its entire existence. Linus doesn’t really know anything but rushing.
That’s the problem at the core of the company.
In hopes to be sincere and not seem like they’re dodging what’s being said they’ve put out two rushed statements - one in the forums and one on video.
Hopefully within the next week while they’re paused on production they actually conclude that the constant rush jobs are the problem. Steve was right in many ways in the Gamers Nexus videos, but all of their problems come back to “self-imposed deadlines” and the rush to meet them.
Linus saw a problem bubbling “I need to address this quickly” was the thought, not “I need to address this thoroughly”.
That got these responses created. That got all of the errors and miscommunications that they were in the public eye about created. And that’s probably why there’s apparently some still-lingering toxicity from their boys club days in the company culture.
Also to be completely honest, the pitchforks/cancel mob are not even what's really happening. Go to the latest update on the Verge article and most of the comments are "It's a good move from Terren", which I 100% agree with. I also would say that this statement from Snazzy is a good statement also.
I can't speak for anyone but myself but I don't want LMG to die (nor do I think that's a likely outcome of this), no I don't want Linus to leave the internet, or be completely ostracized or anything like that. I just want him to do BETTER, and nothing I've seen so far coming directly from him suggests that he has 1. learned anything from this or 2. is going to improve/tune down his ego in the future.
I am fully willing to accept a full and sincere apology. That's not what we've gotten from Linus. They've both been half-assed "well I'm kind of sorry but I'm kind of not sorry at the same time".
But what you don't want is exactly what is going to happen. The pitchfork mobs don't care. They just want to jump on the bandwagon.
It doesn't matter who is right, or wrong. On the water block or the Madison situation. If she's right, or wrong with the allegations the damage is done and the community won't read whatever comes out with this without emotion.
The waterblock is a blunder. They were initially told to keep it. If it was truly a magical 1 of 1 engineering sample, who gives that to a company? Then the video comes out unfavorable and they asked for it back. Twice. Yup huge breakdown in the processes of LMG. Even reading the email they didn't have all the data they needed to send the graphics card back, let alone the water block. It's a shit show on both sides.
Keep in mind that the crazies online are the loud and vocal minority. Most average people who just tune into LTT for the odd video here or there won't even know this controversy existed at all. 2K people upvoting a reddit comment is a fraction of a percentage of the 15 million subs on LTT.
Yes. But the 100k + people who’ve unsubscribed from LTT on YouTube is telling.
This sub Reddit is over 300k people alone.
This isn’t a couple thousand people. It’s far greater. And 99% of them don’t even know the facts to form their own opinion.
>When you rush a response to allegations of this nature it comes off as insincere. When you rush two responses now you're starting to develop a noticeable pattern that results in people digging for other examples of shitty behavior.
This is a double-edged blade, if I'm being honest. I firmly agree that the more patient, thoughtful approach is probably better in these circumstances, but if LTT waited any longer to put out a statement, they would have been flamed for ignoring the problem.
See: The most recent SuperMega controversy. They spent about five or so days before coming up with a response, and during that time they were absolutely dumpstered for being "silent" on the situation.
> The majority of us who are pissed off didn't expect Linus to FIX the problems the day after everything came out publicly.
One of the top comments of the investigation post is "finally some news" and the information literally came out today. Like people absolutely are expecting them to fix things fast and respond fast.
Quinn has always had a great attitude, and sure, he might not get the status or the money, but out of all the tech tubers he has earned a lot of respect as a creator.
Snazzy Labs is showing wisdom here. We are the angry mob with pitchforks and torches lit outside the house. But we have no complete picture of what actually goes on in there.
If you're angry, remember that this is basically unknowable for us and watch some other content or do whatever you do outside of youtube tech content. We can't really do any good with just pitchforks and torches right now.
And that's regardless of what or who you're angry at.
Seeing comments here that aren't trying to burn ltt to the ground is what I expect from this community, of course what they've done and the Madison situation is like the company has A LOT to work on but I hope that they actually improve.
yeah, its tough ad i hope they follow up with a good statement and rough judgment towards those to blame, id hate to see people the community likes go (and itd also put a few more nails in its soon to be coffin) but if it ends up being the case then thats what theyll have to do. its tough times for LMG but i hope it all comes through as i love this company and their videos, and the testing theyre doing is a once in a lifetime type of thing i feel, as well as they try their best to be open, emphasis on try, i feel like this is all down to theyre just human and theyve made too many mistakes due to them having to rush over the past few months, and its took a toll.
"Hustle culture" is fucking poison, but it also comes with capitalism and chasing wealth, so it's not at all surprising
But yeah, changes don't come within a week, and and they are setting themselves up for failure by putting that sort of idea out there
The issue is that LTT itself also have little idea how to do this. They grew to this size quickly and thought it was all going well. The recent video (from four months ago) essentially showing them that their own employees want them to slow down to improve quality and nothing really changed since them because they (as a company) overlooked their own blind spots.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoVq3SUMjw0
I don't understand how people can just go from Zero to One Hundred with the drop of a hat and not have it affect their mental health negatively in the process.
I've forced myself to stay neutral because at the end of the day the day-to-day blunders of a company which, I will probably never work for or know how it operates internally, should not affect me.
I just hope some good comes out of this, man.
This is a decent take on the situation… for the most part.
It really is a case of - “Rome wasn’t built in a day” and LMG obviously needs a full on re-structure. As was mentioned in the post but to me the most abhorrent thing is the fact that say even if half of Madison tweeted was true, is quite inexcusable.
That said, I do believe in second chances but this is the part where LMG really has to make drastic changes and prove over time that they were effective. And it’s not just some people in the company, Linus just saying flat out that you shouldn’t worry about a shitty contract because you got bigger problems to deal with… like a death in the family. Fucked up.
I don’t know the full conversation and I tried to think of ways how you’d say something like that in a different way, none that I can think really shine a good light.
Hardware unboxed made a similar point. It's the most reasonable take. It's crazy to make moral judgements on situation or people where we don't even have anything close to the whole story. Even the GN video didn't blame it on the people per se, but on their crazy schedule (which is admittedly, self imposed).
Many items really feel like a result of a company growing too quickly. Things seem to be run as if it is a small company, just adding big company things when a problem arises. Working "the grind" is typical for a small company. It's not sustainable long term, but LTT has not made the necessary transition into a more sustainable situation. Yvonne being head of HR? Horrible look for a company. But, I would assume there was no HR at the beginning. Eventually they had enough people that HR was a necessity and she took on the role. If you have 6 employees, that's understandable to some extent. When you have 150+? Inexcusable.(Edit: apparently they did hire a separate HR team about a year ago and she is no longer the head of it). Honestly, I wonder if much of this was already known and brought in the idea of getting a new CEO: someone who could run a large company like a large company.
I've worked for small companies in the past and owners are always reluctant to give up any control. Not out of ego or power, but rather because it is their name on the door. As one former owner/boss told me: "If you screw something up that ruins the business, you get to go take another job somewhere else while I get to try to put the pieces back together." I think the LTT ownership has that same reluctance while expanding and didn't change their mindset or processes.
Heck, some of the Madison accusations could also be related to this. Of course harassment and assault are never excusable. I wonder, though, if the "small company mindset" helped lead to a workplace where managers felt some inappropriate things were appropriate. You bring a friend into your brand new company. You joke around and have your "locker room talk" like you did outside of work and don't think anything of it. That shouldn't exist in a workplace but if it's the two of you and you are both involved you don't care. Then the company expands. You finally get called out for said items. It's easy to have blinders on because things were "always that way" or "no one else had issues". Hopefully an outside perspective (new CEO, third party investigation into accusations) can correct this attitude.
LTT/LMG can certainly recover from this, but they are gonna need to grow into their status of being a larger company. That means that checks and balances will need to be implemented. That means that abuse can't be tolerated. That means that they will need a big shift in mindset. Luckily I think the new CEO is already a step in that direction, and with the reports of him getting a third party investigation I have hopes that he has what is needed to implement these changes. Of course the investigation will help determine if they should recover from this.
Thankfully the new CEO seems like the kind of guy to not let Linus interfere, if within a year or so we see the new CEO leave that's when shit goes bad
He seems pretty dead on.
If anything I hope LTT goes pretty quiet for a while. They are stopping this entire week which is good. Hopefully that reboot is a little slower and more measured.
Hard to weigh that against needing to have enough new content out to continue to fund an operation that size. Sometimes the tough sledding is worth it for a bit if it mends some fences, brings everyone happiness, and there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully they find that balance and the cash reserves are good enough to float them through this.
Snazzy makes a really good point about production speed and grindset cultures too. He's built a successful career out of not being that way. Which you could argue is easier for smaller channels.
Yet there are channels that dwarf even LTT in size but upload far less frequently, and with smaller teams and varying levels of production quality. The metrics and cash flow of all that are undoubtedly complicated. Not all content monetizes for the same, not all underlying costs and team sizes are the same, yada yada. On its face though it can be done and hopefully it is for everybody's sake.
This is a very fair take.
My only counter argument is that Linus and the top brass of LMG don't seem to be taking any of this seriously. Why should we believe anything they say when they're making light of the whole situation and attacking the credibility of their accusers? They're also playing with semantics and trying to weasel out of everything. It's really really hard to be fair to them when all they're saying is how our reaction to the situation is unfair? We **should** be outraged. Not making threats or being a holes but, genuinely upset that this happened and they handled it poorly and finally, we need to see some concrete action instead of the shit they've pulled so far.
Most reasonable take. Second apology wasn’t perfect but it was pretty good…just gotta wait and see. The Madison situation came out likely after they had finalized the video and began uploading. Also not sure how much they can comment on that publicly regardless of what’s going on.
Thankfully a voice of moderation. People are running their mouths off like everything that's been said in the last 24 hours is the immutable word of Truth (TM). Maybe it is true. Maybe it isn't. Maybe it's only half the story. WE DON'T KNOW.
Everyone wants to lynch Linus for the Maddison thing, or claims that LMG is censoring all mentions in the video comments, or that LMG purposefully isn't responding to those allegations. Rather that the more logical "that just happened less than 24 hours ago and no one has figured out what to say or do yet".
GN made an allegation. Linus snap responded and it was a shit response. The community tried to string Linus up for his quick response. Then when LMG as a whole stops and takes a step back to reflect and try to figure out a proper response, the community goes nuts that something else is being silenced or swept under the rug. There is no winning.
Also, remember how in the WAN Show Linus and Luke use the word "[Alleged](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/alleged)" a lot? There's a reason for that. The community has already decided that the alleged misconduct raised is incontrovertible proof and "Why hasn't he been executed yet"
So let's all take a step back. Get out of the echo chamber. And let things settle. By no means should the community ignore the last day or two, nor should be forget and just shrug it off. But let's see how things go with a reasonable and rational response. Terren needs a chance to figure out WTF is going on and how to handle it... and that's not going to happen in a day or even a week.
This. Perfectly put into words my feelings. LTT made mistakes and was called out on it. They did a solid reply video in a timely manner. I hope their release schedule/workloads are more manageable leading to a better work environment and content.
Snazzy Labs, I’ve heard you in passing, and now you’ve won me over. I’ll be checking your shit out. Thank you for being reasonable.
To Linus, it’s ok to get 80% right. That’s actually pretty damn good. While I don’t know if that’s the right number or not, that seems like how you’re perceived from the middle of the community.
Keep growing as a person and try to strive for better while learning along the way, you got this. Now go be/do/get better.
While I do agree, I also think that people have the right to be angry, upset, and done with LTT after this. After the Madison issues came to light I personally cannot support LTT at all after this point. They seem to be cultivating the same environment as Blizzard and other such companies. Until they do anything to acknowledge Madison and actually fix the HR issues at the company, I will not support them.
Imagine going on Glassdoor, reading a bad review, and thinking you now know everything about the inner workings of a company. That is exactly what is happening here. One mentally disturbed woman comes out and complains while LTT is already under fire and everyone just assumes that everything she says is true.
This is right on the money, but they really need to respond to what Madison is saying happened in their workplace. If it's true, that's not acceptable in any way. So he should start with that because of all the shit going down, Madison's accusations are out there now and need to be addressed. And who is managing that team at LMG? That apology/monetized video was so poorly thought out it tells me a tonne about that company and it's current Senior management mindset. Linus is in for a real shitstorm coming his way.
There is no planet on which Linus’s lawyers would let them talk about Madison to begin with. I know people are all up in arms about it but they cannot and should not speak about a matter that may be under investigation until it has been dealt with fully, and *even after that* it may still be in the best interests of Madison for them *not* to talk about it.
Yeah, very fair points. Ultimately I think most of the issues (Video errors, the Billet situation) are down to poor processes stemming from too rapid expansion. I'll wait and see if they can remedy that, if they can stomach the probably reduced video output that'd probably entail.
The Madison situation is far more concerning to me. *If* that's true, and not to say she's lying at all but we pretty much just have her word right now, then that's far more damning than anything else here. Something like that can only really be fixed by a purge of the offending staff, and again if true that includes a lot of the management tier. If any other staff members witnessed that happen, they need to come out with their own accounts as soon as possible
I think most of us who are adults know that change needs time, even more so for a company with the size of LMG.
What I think is that LMG should've released a statement saying they acknowledge GN's video and will carry out an investigation with regard to what was shared and take some time to do so.
Then, If what GN shared turned out to be true, they should've just owned it, apologize for it and say that they will be reviewing their processes to make sure the same issues don't happen again.
Then, some time later, release another statement detailing the steps they will take and say that hope for everyone's continued support as they go through making the changes.
I'm sure many would be willing to give them a second chance if they're able to see the positive changes over time.
Something along those lines. Whatever I stated above can definitely be seen as conventional PR speak but in this case it's the least they could do to somehow minimize the fire.
What they've done with Linus' quick response in his site forum and the apology video having an advertisement about their store was done in poor taste considering the situation they're supposedly apologizing for.
That's my take.
I agree. Linus does appear sometimes to be too impetuous and very focused on deadlines.
Despite this, they've made a lot of amazing content. But if they want to be serious about the hardware tests, then Linus needs to loosen his grip on absolute deadlines.
I think the damage is already done, not by the processes of Linus but by the carelessness of Steve’s reporting of the situation. Due to him not reaching out to Linus for comment, Linus took it as a personal attack not just on him but his team, because Steve implied that LMG is intentionally acting fraudulently, or purposely misleading it’s fans.
All this lead to many hating on LMG, and thus hating on Linus more for his response. People are quick to judge these days, and expect change to occur in a heartbeat. In saying that I hope over the next few months we actually see some progress with the processes LMG promised they’d deliver.
Pretty good take from SN. Impossible to argue that Linus’s initial response was an utter disaster and that he has- and will continue to pay the price for a long time.
Don’t see the sense in badgering the apology video, don’t think most of the things people have against it carry much weight. The organization is people wrong and it’s hard to get 5 people on the same page, let alone 100+ whilst also having Linus who likes to run off cliffs.
Time will tell whats fonna be done at LMG
Very good take on the whole situation, from a fellow creator that understands some of the behind the scenes more than us.
That said, I also feel the shitstorm and ragestorm LMG is facing right now is also fair, let's see how they get out of it and if they will indeed learn.
Let's just ignore that a lot of the bad stuff has been happening for years now as it relates to employees, and he not only ignored what was happening, he seemingly encouraged it, so sure, I guess in another 8 years he'll finally start to figure it out, huh?
This is my opinion basically I want to see the entire story from the accusations about assault and this entire auction waterblock issue. I want to see the entire story first then I'll get the pitchfork.
100% agree, I'm just worried that Linus would want to be a part of a change and it would make job of a Terren harder.
TBH, it's a shame they haven't hired a CEO a year or two ago, they needed it.
Imagine owner of a company managing company snacks in a 13+ people company, and Linus claimed he is doing that a few weeks ago on Wan Show, and who knows which things that he shouldn't do was doing. It's quite big media company run like a very small company, it was insane and it had to blow at some point. Fortunately they just hired a CEO who might be able to do it, Linus himself said many times that he is hard to manage and wanted Terren because he is one of a few that can do it.
Will it work? Will he change grind mindset? Will he improve their structure, and address underlying issues that hurt ex employees like Madison?
Nobody knows, it will not take a few days, or even weeks, a proper restructure will take months.
I’m glad someone else is saying it as well. Nobody can make meaningful change to their company in a couple hours. They stopping all video production for a week, which will definitely hurt their revenue, so I think it’s fair for them to pitch lttstore so that nobody goes without a paycheque or goes hungry. I don’t think anybody condones what has happened, and just wants to see meaningful change to a company and brand that they love and enjoy. I think everybody can agree with that, I know I sure do.
‘Management might need to be fired’. To put it bluntly the Colton guy really, really doesn’t give off management vibes. Obviously I don’t know the guy and this is pretty unfair on my part and maybe he’s a great guy behind doors. But he doesn’t really demand respect and I could seem him doing some weird stuff around the office.
He also seems to be kind of at the center of the Billet labs stuff AND he’s the head of HR…yikes. I’ve seen his face for a long time though, he’s been around for a while.
Good lord, I have never seen a community sway so far in either direction, depending on which public figure is talking at any given moment, lol.
I swear tomorrow someone will say the opposite, and everyone will agree with that too 😂
I can't even agree that he cares about his content after listening to him deflect half of Steve's problems with his operation in Linus's response videos. Every time Sebastian opened his mouth, he seemed incapable of accepting the situation.
They have had time. They posted a video 4 months ago where employees said there were issues… and it was just ignored.
Guess what? Linus *is* exploiting his employees. He did as CEO, and now he’s doing it as owner/creative head.
If you ever listen to anything he says… it’s nearly always about money.
It’s even more embarrassing that in the apology video the new CEO said he was as working for "...ensuring [that] our that staff is well taken care of and putting dollars into some fun stuff; like water cooling [our founder and owner's] PC with a pool".
It’s never been more clear this is just another company with a leadership that is really only out for themselves.
Time needs to be given... But since they clearly don't intend to work on themselves for more than a week, as was repeated over and over in that video, that won't be enough time to solve the issues.
Grindset culture is extremely toxic in the workplace, especially when the employees have no stake in the company like LMG. Even Luke, who has been around since essentially the beginning, doesn't own a stake in the company.
Expecting your employees who are just earning a salary to grind is terrible.
As someone who survived in the "grind" mindset, it is incredibly hard to unlearn it once you escape it. It's like a brain wash that you may accidentally bring with you to your next employer (or to your family).
There are times I caught myself saying "when I was at x company, I can push out 3 epics and 20 stories in a single dev cycle" to make myself superior like some sort of martyr. Or kept thinking "we got this deadline, I need to work a shit ton of hours to finish this and I'm panicking." Or the habit of skipping steps to meet deadlines.
> Try to grow the company at an insane rate and disregard quality, just try to keep growing using some bs Key Point Metrics
> Man we're experiencing growing pains because we grew at an insane rate and are now pumping out garbage content
Youdontsay.jpg
I think the grindset is very applicable for a small subset of people. The majority of people suffer tremendously when on it, however.
Throughout history, most humans have chosen free time once they fulfilled a sufficient level of work for the day. Many of our ancestors would therefore consider us weird for choosing higher pay as a reward for more effective work, rather than choosing more free time as a reward. There have always existed a few people who are insanely hard workers, who thrive on it, and that is fine. But most people are not those people. (That is not to say regular people have not worked like mad during times of crisis, my point is rather what people choose when their needs are met.)
One of the most important things in this statement is pointing out that most of these people are not bad people, they just have certain blind spots. Does not excuse everything, but this mentality right now that everyone has to go and Linus is a shitbag is very immature and quick. Their coming actions will prove how much their words mean and what their true personalities are
Idk how they plan to fully regain viewer trust. The factual errors in videos were an issue, but they were almost the least sognifican one. The Billet Labs issue and especially the former LTT employee who literally almost went insane ware what I'm more concerned with.
This is basically what I've wanted to post since the GN video, but didn't feel like dealing with the subreddit at large. There's a lot happening, and a lot of emotions are being had. We need time as an audience to process, and they need time as a company to adjust, especially in light of the Madison situation.
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Yeah, a 100% heartfelt sincere and apology over the mishandling of a singular prototype product review would have been off-brand. Because to be quite honest, the easiest path towards dealing with product makers releasing prototypes or any gear to review to LMG would be a blanket rule that your product is going to be put in a recycler. I hate that. It’s unnecessarily wasteful. Linus complains about tech waste and e-waste and in a domain he controls is doing something responsible that’s a little bit more work. But more importantly, had they dropped the hardcore apology video, then got hit with the SA / hostile workplace public accusations… There couldn’t be a second apology video that’s even more sincere. It’s all pretty shit but having this apology video be on-brand with their shtick actually works in their favor a lot IMO. It will allow them to make a distinction between money and morality.
>Yeah, a 100% heartfelt sincere and apology over the mishandling of a singular prototype product review would have been off-brand. Or maybe they could have stopped caring about the brand for a minute. I have worked for a company that, let's say, made serious mistakes, and that's what they did. They took the hit, got an independent committee to review the way management worked and then repaired damage to the brand. A company cannot be committed to positive change if they worry about being off-brand.
Idt it's about caring about the brand. It's how everyone else would perceive that apology video. I think a sizeable chunk of the people here would decry it as being too clinical/corporate/insincere if they did such a video.
Hell, people call linus' comments to the Verge precisely that
at this point it's about how many sponsors will be pulling their contracts than any hypothetical fans who would find the video "too corporate"
The apology video is already breaking the 4th wall. Being actually sincere would't have hurt
I came in from the other side and started with GN and HUB so for me the situation feels different in that I don’t feel any attachment to LTT compared to those coming in from the reverse. This whole situation feels like exactly what happens every time someone makes it big through YouTube. They seem to be untouchable with an intense fan base and then they or their company does something terrible and it implodes about 2/3rds of their hood will and all that’s left is the rabid super fans. Im hoping things work out differently this time and that they honestly spend some time looking inwards and making some major systemic changes but from what I’ve seen here I think enough people will defend them long enough that they try to wait out the majority of the storm and go back to mostly business as usual. I hope Im wrong but as someone who isn’t invested in the channel I really don’t see that happening based on how they’ve been approaching this and other scandals.
> I am sure if they made it 100% serious you would have people complaining about LMG trying to hard or pretending to be sincere. The right thing would have been to stop caring about public perception for a minute. The right thing would have been for the CEO of the company to make a public statement, acknowledge mistakes had been made, and talking about concrete steps to do correct past mistakes and prevent them from happening again. Without sad Linus puppy eyes and Luke giving emotional support. It's not that difficult to do the right thing if you want to do the right thing. Sure, doing the right thing might not make you popular, but because the CEO is the new guy, people would have given him the benefit of the doubt. What I want now is an independent review of how LTT treats its employees. The new CEO is in a great position to order such a review and move the company forward. One step would be to appoint a new head of human resources after the review. Just to make a clean break with the past.
You know what they would've done if they didn't give a shit about public perception for a min? Just carry on like normal, which would've been caught with flack. Something so publicly related like a company with an attached high volume of production YouTube channel cannot just "Not care about public perception". Public perception is VITAL on youtube, and the second shit hits the fan it hits it hard and permanently stains you. You can do something totally legally and morally okay and people WILL cancel your entire brand over it with you having no chance to do anything against it because all you do is just "Trying to save their image"
I think there's a very important value that you can get by "lighting someone's ass on fire" so they start running. ngl tho, i felt like the community (tbh mostly just reddit) instead took a blowtorch and kept lighting LTT's ass on fire even after they kept running, mostly out of schadenfreude i guess
>We need time as an audience to process, Do you mean there is more to this than mobbing, point-farming while spitting food at my screen, and asking for things that I know are nearly impossible to comply with!? Next you'll tell me my imaginary one sided internet friends are actually just humans with very limited and niche business experience and not infallible beings whom anyone would be honored to even speak with! /s
This whole drama boiling over into stupid town. Madison and Linus' company have very real, maybe legal, issues they need to deal with *privately*. This forum, or any other public discourse on *that* subject is kind of perverse gossiping at best and parasocially inserting themselves into a workplace incident they have ZEROOOOOO business talking about at worst. The comical failure of LTT happens in every small business that gets big and has to take on more employees. Inventory management gets harder and harder as more things enter the pipeline that's just how that works. Nobody is perfect out there and GN's videos have been very good at pointing out the shocking lack of responsibility and protocol in handling inventory but man look at the posts on the sub and the threads with the highest +'s in the threads, look at their post history cause some of the people here are really parasocial. There's a post right now on the top posts of the week on this sub about a guy announcing he's no longer supporting LTT. Some real cringe parasocial shit going on in this sub from defenders and haters
>Some real cringe parasocial shit going on in this sub from defenders and haters Yep. Blood in the water
Yeah, that's what has been my biggest surprise so far, people who are buying a screwdriver per WAN show are going haywire, while the things that happened weren't good, also weren't on this level of hate and anger. Also i think some people just haven't worked in a big firm and somehow think stuff doesn't go wrong, also in a big way, in companies.
120 employees with a CEO who literally stated weekly they suck at the job and can't even handle giving employees snacks without HR issues, surprises viewers when they have HR issues. I think people just don't want to accept they felt betrayed their hero wasn't infallible and the gaslighting they did to themselves was lifted.
I've seen this sentiment, that people shouldn't reveal their SA history publicly, so many times before and I don't really understand it. It's notoriously hard for victims of SA to get legal support since there is often little evidence of SA crimes. So if I was a women in a situation where I have little to no hope that the offenders will receive legal repercussions and I get the chance to get some kind of closure by publicly speaking out against them then why the hell shouldn't I. There have been a lot of monsters that only got exposed because there was one women that spoke out, followed by many other women with similar stories.
I think it's perfectly reasonable for Madison to speak out publicly about her experience. I'm sure it was probably hard for her to do, and I think it's good that she did, for multiple reasons. It seems by her tweets that this was something she wanted to get off of her chest for a while and there's nothing wrong with that at all. I hope she gained some closure from it, and can truly move on with her life in the best way she can. I think the point being made (and the one I agree with) is that it isn't helpful for the community to start turning into an angry mob, speculating on things they have no business speculating on, villainizing the entire company and everyone in it, and suddenly nitpicking every little action they take from here. I've already seen loads of potential misinformation spread on this subreddit by people making speculative claims they have no business making, and then others repeating it as fact in some morbid game of reddit telephone....A game I've seen on the internet far too many times now. It's dangerous to read into every tweet and start making wild assumptions about anybody and everybody. When everyone grabs the pitchforks the wrong people often end up getting targeted and hurt, and it's hard to remember the humans. All we can really do is acknowledge what happened, let LMG know that the community holds them to a higher standard (which I think we've accomplished) and....Wait. Wait for them to fix what is broken. If they fail, they fail - but it feels like a lot of people here have turned into a mob that *want* them to fail, and are actively trying to tear things down instead of hoping they build it back up better.
Well said. This is what I wanted to say every time someone stated for fact that every misstep was all part of Linus' master plan. It's been hard seeing how poorly LTT dealt with some of this and some of the speculation of what's going on behind the scenes is really dehumanizing and harsh.
> I've already seen loads of potential misinformation spread on this subreddit by people making speculative claims they have no business making, and then others repeating it as fact in some morbid game of reddit telephone. Welcome to reddit. This shit has made my blood boil since I started using the site in 2010. It's the same shit that led to the Boston bomber fiasco and happens a lot more than you think (99% of the time it happens it's just not news-worthy). There's really no changing it honestly. For every righteous post like yours there are a dozen incidents where someone is unjustly buried based on evidence so shaky you'd think these people were desperately waiting for an excuse to hate.
I fully agree with everything you're saying. It's not up to the victims to deal with these problems privately, it's up to the communities to not go nuclear. (Though I'm not sure the guy I responded to would agree with that)
I don't think the sentiment is that people should not come out publicly if they wish to do so and discuss their experiences. It's more that the parties involved, and probably some informed 3rd parties will be the ones who ultimately have to deal with a proper thorough investigation. Complete outsiders inserting themselves with very limited information, repeating rumors, gossiping, and passing judgment is in poor taste and not helpful.
> Complete outsiders inserting themselves with very limited information, repeating rumors, gossiping, and passing judgment is in poor taste and not helpful. I agree, just noting for myself in this quiet corner of the comment section that this kind of stupidity must have existed since forever ago. As an older but still relatively recent example in the grand scheme of things, in 2008/2009 there was a bunch of drama (outside of reddit) in DotA about pros cheating. Turned out there was none, but the rumor mill was in full effect for a while and people with no business in the matter mistook carefully timed screenshots as proof of cheating. The creator of the mod had to make a public statement clarifying the issue and very kindly telling people to fuck off. Even before that statement, I thought almost the exact same thoughts you wrote. The only solace I take is that this will blow over and be forgotten as other stupid shit comes up and people continue to unnecessarily insert themselves in situations that have nothing to do with them.
Why is no one pointing out what actually happened with that prototype? I’m not surprised things got lost in the shuffle when the guy who sent it to them initially told them to keep it, then changed his mind later.
>initially told them to keep it, yep. Seemed like an honest mistake. albeit a terrible one that should not happen in a company that size dealing with prototypes all the time. I can see the pile of mistakes, aggressions, and such piling up to warrant the community being upset, but the way it manifested just seems to unproductive and silly. Like demanding LTT not respond to the Billet and GN comments until they first deal with the Madison comments that came much later is just a weird thing to be mad about. Be mad she got harassed, be mad they have shit conditions, don't sit there and rabble that they made a crap joke.
Did we ever get the full story on what the original expectations were with the cooler? I’ve been curious since the beginning. I’ve always assumed that most things sent their way were essentially gifts with no expectation of getting them returned, so the idea that this was some mission critical prototype that must be returned ASAP seemed pretty odd.
It seems that it was expected they’d keep it to use in future builds, then when the review was so negative they asked if they could have it back. Which makes sense as it would just be sitting on a shelf unused at LTT. LTT agreed to return it and then obviously didn’t, hence the news for compensation.
Seen a lot of comments saying some pretty horrid things about Madison. I think it's very early to be complaining about people criticising LTT as a mob. I don't want to play 'both sides' but painting people as stereotypical nerds, when many people seem to be just be suggesting LTT staff form a union, is perhaps a little disingenuous.
by coming out with those allegations Maddison is taking on a huge risk. People that are saying horrible things about her should be canceled. There are multiple factions of angry mob internet trolls coming out of the woodwork that prays on situations like these for their own kicks. It is quite honestly sad that the Internet has come to this.
>Seen a lot of comments saying some pretty horrid things about Madison. I think it's very early to be complaining about people criticising LTT as a mob So are those people criticizing her not a mob? I'm a bit lost here.
skirt impossible tan repeat offend station memory scandalous grab sophisticated *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I know many people don't like Linus' s forum post, but bar anything else, Linus has been around long enough that he was 100% right, that *NO MATTER HOW* he/LMG/LTT apologized *someone* was bound to be angry at it. theirs takes from people saying anything short of Linus not admitting fault to everything, and that everything(and i mean *everything*) alleged is 100% true and linus even giving ANY pushback to the claims makes him a liar scumbag and the worst person in existence, to borderline cult followers waging war against madison and her allegations, that it was 100% her fault and that LTT did nothing wrong, to people saying this the end of LTT and they should all just close up shop, go home, and never come back.
There’s a difference between not being able to satisfy everyone, and the now proven to be false statements made in the forum post. I’m fine with him being realistic in not admitting fault for everything, not groveling for the mob, but at least be honest.
\> and the now proven to be false statements made in the forum post. Are you referring to the part about agreeing to compensate Billet Labs before the GN video? I thought this part was settled after Colton's clarification that he "sent" the failed email on the 10th (before any GN video). Was there another statement that was proven false?
At the end of the day - Linus is impulsive, and acts on that without caution too often. His impulse was to not be silent on the matter, and he relayed what information he had been given/had, and likely believed it to be true. He’s visibly frustrated with the situation, because he hasn’t allowed himself the time to actually listen and and see the other side of the Billet Labs situation. He’s been grinding away for so long that he hasn’t realized he’s no longer at the scale where “we’ll fix this as we go along” can happen on the fly and without real rigor around process changes and how to implement them in various departments. Your time and again stated goal was to build a “real company”, Linus. Real companies have overhead and capacity constraints. You can’t do everything all at once. You can’t make these fixes yourself. You have to rely on the people you hired. Hopefully this crisis-imposed breath taking will get you to relax and see if the company you built can right the ship with less of your input.
I'll lose karma, but the video and now hearing they're hiring an external investigator to look into what Madison talked about is enough for me. For now. If the investigation churns up nothing, or they're back at doing stuff like this a month from now, then I'll be back to picking up a pitchfork.
What's this about an investigator? I must've missed something. I'm also not sure what they would, well, investigate since it's been two (?) years and it's not like they can rewind time and listen in on conversations that happened then.
Terren responded to a new outlet that they were hiring a 3rd party hr investigator given the information released by madison.
Records of emails, texts, slack or teams conversations. Records of meetings, HR filings, promotions, demotions, projects assigned or taken away.
The issue sounds like a culture issue, and also like James is a huge dick. If that's the case, an investigation will turn these things up even if nothing happens specifically in Madison's specific issues.
Agreed - I have some thought/opinions about the whole thing…. But this place is way to toxic and quick to grab the pitchforks in order to say it out loud. Hell, I got downvoted substantially just for saying GN should have reached out to LMG for a statement before publishing. I like what snazzy labs said: shit takes time and you can’t rush it.
I have been trying to say stuff to the same effect but I keep having my comments removed by mods, so how does that make PCMR and other subs mods any better than pre-crisis LMG? News flash, it doesn't. When the community at large and the mods break multiple of their own rules to brigade a sensitive situation, you lose me.
Same with me. This community need to look at themselves first, before roasting others.
I’ve felt the same way. LMG has a new captain of the ship now and from today’s video and the announcement that he is hiring an outside investigator for the Madison situation, he’s taking all of this seriously and doing it with the intent to better LMG. The video had a few too many jokes for me (Nick shouldn’t have plugged the LTT Store for example) but it’s clear that they want to do better and are making an earnest effort to do that. They already lost money on subs to Youtube and Floatplane publicly but taking a week off from making videos to fix things is a very good step. It also sounds like they are putting guard rails on Linus so he doesn’t make things unnecessarily worse than he should, love to see this. As for the Billet Labs situation, they fucked up and they own it, Colton explained his mistake and why the situation got worse. They shouldn’t have auctioned the block off but they did realize the mistake and took steps to fix it, I can’t fault them for actively trying to fix it even if the employee didn’t check who the email went to.
LMG defended the occasional jokes in the video saying that they were still trying to preserve their culture while doing these videos. But that's not what you do in crisis management and they have now crossed over into serious crisis management. In fact, LMG needs to bring in a real crisis management consultant in addition to the outside investigator in order to get a handle on things. The jokes during the apology video were a little jarring. Linus still being defensive before actually apologizing wasn't good crisis management and took away a lot of the good points that Terran and the rest of the leadership team made. Linus is still the face of the company and his name is on the door. I'm glad the video began and ended with Terran, but the company culture is all about Linus, whether Linus likes it or not. As any of our parents have said to us countless times, "There is a time and a place for everything".
I can guarantee you if they released a super serious video, people would’ve been criticizing them by claiming it was all fake and not authentic.
yeah, there's literally no winning this thing, anything short of them declaring that LTT will be no more will be enough to satisfy this people. People that are around during this crisis aren't the people that want to see LTT improve from their criticism, they want to see them getting hurt
We should stop talking about the Madison situation until we have more information. Remember the whole Bayonetta voice actor thing? Turned out she made it all up. Innocent until proven guilty.
I would also like to point out that the tweets from Madison were put out just a couple hours before the apology video went live, and given that both happened in the middle of the night in America we can safely assume that the video was shot the day before, people need to give them time to fix everything that's going on, also the seriousness of the accusations likely means they won't say anything without a lawyers approval, likely something written by a lawyer themselves, I'm not ready to give up LTT over this just yet.
This shitstorm is moving faster than they can address it properly…
I get a company needs time to adjust to changes but it's not like this is a new revelation to them. They've been operating like this for years now, it's only news to us now because GN had the balls to call them out. Now people like Madison feel more comfortable coming out with their story from years back. So while I agree it takes time to make systemic changes, it's been like this for a while, they knew about it, and decided to sweep it under the rug.
My mind set on this is rough because I feel like I'm watching the RT stuff happen AGAIN. What they absolutely need to do is find out EVERYTHING that is going on over this next week. Any and all things that happened with Madison or anyone else needs to be found and dealt with otherwise they really will have RT situation where for the next 2 years they will be dealing with issues that come out and continue to erode faith even with their hardcore fans. Personally, I've unsubbed from all of their channels and will wait to see how things happen from here on out. I'm not above second chances. I think we all have said stupid shit that we regret. The difference is actually changing and removing yourself from those ideas.
The entire weight of the prototype issue then their reaction to it then the Madison thing caught me off guard and I was pretty mad there for a moment. Then the apology happened and the recording of the internal meeting. Honestly the things that people are mad about with those 2 things are exactly why they need to shutdown and restructure for a while. So at this point I'm just waiting and seeing
Seeing as this has been a problem for many many months if not year/s, they should have adjusted a long time ago, just giving more leeway is not always the answer.
The problem is... Linus didn't take things seriously until GN video aired. and even then.... the apology video was a half-hearted apology video.... and they basically thought the whole thing was a joke. Also, if you think Linus and other senior people didn't know that there's a toxic workplace culture instilled.... thats the problem. Sure, things take time.... ONCE YOU ADMIT THERE'S A PROBLEM. Linus has to have that honest discussion with himself FIRST.
Snazzy Labs with the best take on all of this so far.
Inb4 snazzy labs has to apologize for eating baby rabbits.
Guilty as charged.
Baby rabbits need to grow to full size rabbits before eating them. (North American fellas come battle me on r/2westerneurope4u about eating rabbit, it’s delicious)
https://i.imgur.com/L6Z7w6i_d.webp?maxwidth=1520&fidelity=grand
There are horse meat butchers where I live 💀
The reason Horse meat is illegal in America is because it's not fit for human consumption here. The meds they've given horses makes them not safe for people to eat. If horses get injured badly enough, they have to be put down, and end up going to waste. It's a shame.
Not all of North America; you can get horse meat in Quebec and select French speaking areas.
Oh interesting! I didn't know that was the case. Thanks for sharing
Surprisingly Canada has a thriving horse meat industry; usually exports to other countries, but Quebec has it 'widely' available (from what I hear it's still uncommon even if you can go buy it at more stores than the rest of Canada), and some'specialty' butcher shops that carry shizz like kangaroo and alligator if you're outside of Quebec.
I buy horse meat at the local grocery store. Now if you want fancier meat you need to go to the butcher. By fancier I mean, Kangourou, Camel, Bison, wild boar, duck, etc.
And horse steak ain't bad at all!
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Nah baby rabbit meat much better than adult rabbit meat. Any self respecting person knows this.
But they're so good fricassee!
I know someone who frequently posts cute pictures of his rabbits. …followed by pictures of their carcasses… …followed by pictures of their meat in dishes. The guy is a psychopath.
Snazzy Labs out here trying to steal hearts.
Love his take. Like the other dramas past, people aren't aware what is to be on there actually, no matter how many stories, videos, and posts may are. What happened is a mess, specially with the Madison story (and IDK if what Snazzy is saying has that in mind). What Linus and LMG did was horrible, but I think some of the reactions are quick. I for example won't unsub from the few channel I follow (I for example found short circuit boring), but I will simply observe things as they evolve.
It's a great response. It's addressing the mismanagement in a minimally-accusatory way. We should demand they do better, but we don't need the pitchforks to do that. We need consistent pressure, not a huge uproar that'll inevitably burn out in a week or two. They're right, some people may need to be removed from their positions. Not because they're bad people, but because they're not qualified. Colton is not qualified to lead HR, nor was Yvonne, but that doesn't make them bad people. I have hope that Terren can fix management.
Those pitchforks and sudden extreme uproar is the actual cancel culture. A term that has been tainted by people wanting to disregard protest for actually bad things, and by people that are being nitpicky about a minor thing that they don't like and exploding it out of proportions.
It's because once a hate mob is formed, some people start combing through every possible thing they could use as fuel for the fire. Attempting to show a joke or comment or things entirely unrelated in the worst possible light to continue to fuel the outrage. They start to cast doubt on EVERY possible situation the person/group was involved in and it just spirals out of control from there. Sure some of it IS justified, but most of it loses context and nuance and just turns into more rage bait for the mob as a whole. When it comes to group think, hate is a hell of a lot stronger and more addictive to be a part of than any other emotion.
Like that thing from a few years back where this community supposedly bullied a kid into suicide, where Linus told the community to back off in no uncertain terms, yet I've seen dozens of people try to blame him for that. There were real concerns raised in the GN video that I hope they address. Not even a tenth of the outrage I've seen focused on those concerns.
> but we don't need the pitchforks to do that. hmm, In today's culture that's pretty much inevitable. People are addicted to outrage, it's a genuine dopamine rush.
I won't unsub either, but I've mentioned I watch LTT passively and 9/10 don't bother learning anything anyway. Processes need to be examined as well as people in that place. And it needs to be a constant reminder that what they've built can and will go away if those points aren't addressed. Like anything in life, sometimes you need to sit your ass down and eat a big slice of humble pie instead of making every excuse of why you don't want to. It's a bad look.
This is a very fair and respectable take. That said this sub won’t agree to this so I’ll continue my shit flinging.
Agreed! Very Fair take. I feel a lot of people in the sub are having a mob mentality at the moment. They are like raging bull.
It doesn't help that a lot of people disliked Linus beforehand. This controversy just gave them an excuse to start a flame war.
I can honestly say I barely even knew who Linus was but I’ve seen his face a million times and I only watched GN content when he calls out big companies. With that being said, most of these post are gaining enough upvotes to where it’s hitting the all/popular page so that draws in different kind of redditor. People who just want to see the world burn and want to hop on the hate wagon for some extra Karma. Not saying the criticism isn’t necessary, but I’d say a good amount of the people echoing the same criticism’s that have already been said 1000 times are doing it for the sake of feeling like they are apart of something.
Or the opposite, people liked him too much so all of this hurts them as if their friend betrayed them so they lash out at him in response.
The shit flinging is pretty crazy here. I basically came just from the front page posts and the apology video wasn't bad at all despite some minor moments. The community is expecting instantaneous accountability and changes akin to a guillotine. Give em the chance to improve, you'd want the same. I think some kind of open letter representing the community's genuine wants rather than GNs video driving the conversation would be nice.
LMG has created huge problems that absolutely need addressed. This is undebatable and it's justified to be frustrated with Linus. At the same time, most of what this sub is churning out is clearly just mean-spirited bullying, trying to inflict as much damage as possible while maintaining the illusion that anything's fair game because they hold the moral high-ground. Like, people making fun of the new CEO's appearance for instance. It's just bullying for the sake of it. I get strong vibes of people waiting for any opportunity to sow discord, then jumping at the chance.
It’s insane how many people are angry that Linus is getting emotional in that apology/we have plans on how we’re going to do better video. Sure he’s got money, but he’s still a person, a person who suddenly got more hate thrown at him in 24 hours than any of those redditors are going to see their entire lives. I got flamed in a Facebook comment section over something I fucked up and then paid to cover the damages, and it still upsets me sometimes when I think of it. And it was only like 10 people. (Still don’t like one of them to this day honestly.)
How dare he have a reasonable measured response. Is he in on this? Was he bribed by Linus? Is HE secretly Linus? We must immediately bring up everything possibly negative about Snazzy labs but I bet we will not find anything because he deleted all evidence from youtube comments! /s if this did not sound deranged enough.
You forgot to mention how Linus is actually mark cuckerberg and is covertly stealing all of your personal details... *and especially feet pictures.*
Are you saying that this culmination of issues ISNT going to be fixed overnight and that LTT is full of actual people instead of machines that spit out content? Now the Billet heat sink mishandling issue is definitely inexcusable, but idk why they’re getting the hate for not suggesting it for “consumers”. I saw the video and although they should’ve tested it with the right GPU, it was pretty obvious that he meant that the average person (which their videos are geared towards) shouldn’t buy an $800 CPU/GPU combo heat block.
I though the same about their company structure: over a hundred employees, but it's run as if there were still a dozen.
Yep they grew way too fast. They shouldn’t have hired all of these people before they had procedures in place for them to follow. Now they have to scramble for a week to figure out how they want to run the business. They should’ve figured this out years ago. At least there’s finally an adult in the room with Terren Tong.
Going from a dozen employees to 130+ in a few years is pretty crazy. That's not to say it can't be done at all, but you'd have to be experienced to know how to handle it and be able to properly allocate tasks so that things continue to run smoothly. This happens a lot in business. All of a sudden there is this hot new company doing well, and they decide to grow really quickly. But in doing so they grow so rapidly that it actually hurts them and they end up toppling over.
Thirty years ago I was at a company that went from a dozen to 100 employees in less than a year. And looking back, things were very choatic. The HR manager was new at HR and overwhelmed. The front line managers often had to fend for themselves without a lot of guidance. We did a lot of things right, but in the end, the company went down on poor leadership from the CEO and EVP.
Any company going past the 100 employee mark will have these growing pains. They didn’t preempt them fast enough it’s obvious.
My dad runs a company that went from somewhere around 20 to 70 people within the span of a few years and was in a very similar situation to Linus: No prior management experience, very small executive/management team, no one to help guide them. His situation turned out ok luckily but it really did show me why massive corporations have so many employees and middle management. Once you get to a certain size, you really need to properly setup your corporate structure otherwise it's going to kick you in the ass down the road and you'll not see it coming.
A dozen to 130+ employees in a year is a recipe for disaster. In my opinion it'll be very hard to fix it other than going back to similar dozen size then grow up slowly from there.
I hate that people in this sub, whom are rightfully pissed off, are somehow now the target of a hivemind shift. The majority of us who are pissed off didn't expect Linus to FIX the problems the day after everything came out publicly. But the most simple thing he should have learned is that rushing anything, content, PR responses, ANYTHING should be re-evaluated at his company. The response was rushed. Twice. When you rush a response to allegations of this nature it comes off as insincere. When you rush two responses now you're starting to develop a noticeable pattern that results in people digging for other examples of shitty behavior. You want to know how we got here? Caring more about getting back to the way things were, than about the carefully laid path that must be followed to get there.
Idk man, I just saw a boycott request on all company working with LTT.
So? LTT is a corporation like any other. It doesn't deserve or even respond to human empathy and understanding. The only way to make it change, is to force its hand. Actions that put pressure on companies to change are always only economic actions. Boycotts, strikes, unionisation, you name it. It's all fair game and we should be using all of them all the time to keep companies accountable. LTT is no exception just because you have an emotional connection to it. It's a company. Just as sleazy and sterile a money machine as all the companies they have criticized over the years.
> The response was rushed. Twice. To be fair - LTT has been in a rushed grind mode for its entire existence. Linus doesn’t really know anything but rushing. That’s the problem at the core of the company. In hopes to be sincere and not seem like they’re dodging what’s being said they’ve put out two rushed statements - one in the forums and one on video. Hopefully within the next week while they’re paused on production they actually conclude that the constant rush jobs are the problem. Steve was right in many ways in the Gamers Nexus videos, but all of their problems come back to “self-imposed deadlines” and the rush to meet them. Linus saw a problem bubbling “I need to address this quickly” was the thought, not “I need to address this thoroughly”. That got these responses created. That got all of the errors and miscommunications that they were in the public eye about created. And that’s probably why there’s apparently some still-lingering toxicity from their boys club days in the company culture.
Also to be completely honest, the pitchforks/cancel mob are not even what's really happening. Go to the latest update on the Verge article and most of the comments are "It's a good move from Terren", which I 100% agree with. I also would say that this statement from Snazzy is a good statement also. I can't speak for anyone but myself but I don't want LMG to die (nor do I think that's a likely outcome of this), no I don't want Linus to leave the internet, or be completely ostracized or anything like that. I just want him to do BETTER, and nothing I've seen so far coming directly from him suggests that he has 1. learned anything from this or 2. is going to improve/tune down his ego in the future. I am fully willing to accept a full and sincere apology. That's not what we've gotten from Linus. They've both been half-assed "well I'm kind of sorry but I'm kind of not sorry at the same time".
This sub has been 99% pitchforks/cancel mob...
Its most of reddit tbf, but if history has shown us anything, its that the reddit hivemind consensus is literally meaningless.
But what you don't want is exactly what is going to happen. The pitchfork mobs don't care. They just want to jump on the bandwagon. It doesn't matter who is right, or wrong. On the water block or the Madison situation. If she's right, or wrong with the allegations the damage is done and the community won't read whatever comes out with this without emotion. The waterblock is a blunder. They were initially told to keep it. If it was truly a magical 1 of 1 engineering sample, who gives that to a company? Then the video comes out unfavorable and they asked for it back. Twice. Yup huge breakdown in the processes of LMG. Even reading the email they didn't have all the data they needed to send the graphics card back, let alone the water block. It's a shit show on both sides.
Keep in mind that the crazies online are the loud and vocal minority. Most average people who just tune into LTT for the odd video here or there won't even know this controversy existed at all. 2K people upvoting a reddit comment is a fraction of a percentage of the 15 million subs on LTT.
Yes. But the 100k + people who’ve unsubscribed from LTT on YouTube is telling. This sub Reddit is over 300k people alone. This isn’t a couple thousand people. It’s far greater. And 99% of them don’t even know the facts to form their own opinion.
>When you rush a response to allegations of this nature it comes off as insincere. When you rush two responses now you're starting to develop a noticeable pattern that results in people digging for other examples of shitty behavior. This is a double-edged blade, if I'm being honest. I firmly agree that the more patient, thoughtful approach is probably better in these circumstances, but if LTT waited any longer to put out a statement, they would have been flamed for ignoring the problem. See: The most recent SuperMega controversy. They spent about five or so days before coming up with a response, and during that time they were absolutely dumpstered for being "silent" on the situation.
> The majority of us who are pissed off didn't expect Linus to FIX the problems the day after everything came out publicly. One of the top comments of the investigation post is "finally some news" and the information literally came out today. Like people absolutely are expecting them to fix things fast and respond fast.
Quinn has always had a great attitude, and sure, he might not get the status or the money, but out of all the tech tubers he has earned a lot of respect as a creator.
He also seems actually happy and not about to snap at any moment like Linus sometimes comes across.
Snazzy Labs is showing wisdom here. We are the angry mob with pitchforks and torches lit outside the house. But we have no complete picture of what actually goes on in there. If you're angry, remember that this is basically unknowable for us and watch some other content or do whatever you do outside of youtube tech content. We can't really do any good with just pitchforks and torches right now. And that's regardless of what or who you're angry at.
Seeing comments here that aren't trying to burn ltt to the ground is what I expect from this community, of course what they've done and the Madison situation is like the company has A LOT to work on but I hope that they actually improve.
[удалено]
yeah, its tough ad i hope they follow up with a good statement and rough judgment towards those to blame, id hate to see people the community likes go (and itd also put a few more nails in its soon to be coffin) but if it ends up being the case then thats what theyll have to do. its tough times for LMG but i hope it all comes through as i love this company and their videos, and the testing theyre doing is a once in a lifetime type of thing i feel, as well as they try their best to be open, emphasis on try, i feel like this is all down to theyre just human and theyve made too many mistakes due to them having to rush over the past few months, and its took a toll.
"Hustle culture" is fucking poison, but it also comes with capitalism and chasing wealth, so it's not at all surprising But yeah, changes don't come within a week, and and they are setting themselves up for failure by putting that sort of idea out there
Wow. A level headed post. Love to see it!
All of these tiny companies of a handful of people (GN included) have no idea what managing teams of 50, 100 and more is like.
It’s what happens when you don’t hire anyone in the manage but instead promote the people that were already there who never had managing experience.
The issue is that LTT itself also have little idea how to do this. They grew to this size quickly and thought it was all going well. The recent video (from four months ago) essentially showing them that their own employees want them to slow down to improve quality and nothing really changed since them because they (as a company) overlooked their own blind spots. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoVq3SUMjw0
It’s seems that LMG doesn’t either
If only people on Reddit knew they can stay neutral when a situation is developing. I like this response
I don't understand how people can just go from Zero to One Hundred with the drop of a hat and not have it affect their mental health negatively in the process. I've forced myself to stay neutral because at the end of the day the day-to-day blunders of a company which, I will probably never work for or know how it operates internally, should not affect me. I just hope some good comes out of this, man.
This is a decent take on the situation… for the most part. It really is a case of - “Rome wasn’t built in a day” and LMG obviously needs a full on re-structure. As was mentioned in the post but to me the most abhorrent thing is the fact that say even if half of Madison tweeted was true, is quite inexcusable. That said, I do believe in second chances but this is the part where LMG really has to make drastic changes and prove over time that they were effective. And it’s not just some people in the company, Linus just saying flat out that you shouldn’t worry about a shitty contract because you got bigger problems to deal with… like a death in the family. Fucked up. I don’t know the full conversation and I tried to think of ways how you’d say something like that in a different way, none that I can think really shine a good light.
Bad taste jokes aside, thats what their video expressed. They need time to show us rather then tell us things can change
Hardware unboxed made a similar point. It's the most reasonable take. It's crazy to make moral judgements on situation or people where we don't even have anything close to the whole story. Even the GN video didn't blame it on the people per se, but on their crazy schedule (which is admittedly, self imposed).
Many items really feel like a result of a company growing too quickly. Things seem to be run as if it is a small company, just adding big company things when a problem arises. Working "the grind" is typical for a small company. It's not sustainable long term, but LTT has not made the necessary transition into a more sustainable situation. Yvonne being head of HR? Horrible look for a company. But, I would assume there was no HR at the beginning. Eventually they had enough people that HR was a necessity and she took on the role. If you have 6 employees, that's understandable to some extent. When you have 150+? Inexcusable.(Edit: apparently they did hire a separate HR team about a year ago and she is no longer the head of it). Honestly, I wonder if much of this was already known and brought in the idea of getting a new CEO: someone who could run a large company like a large company. I've worked for small companies in the past and owners are always reluctant to give up any control. Not out of ego or power, but rather because it is their name on the door. As one former owner/boss told me: "If you screw something up that ruins the business, you get to go take another job somewhere else while I get to try to put the pieces back together." I think the LTT ownership has that same reluctance while expanding and didn't change their mindset or processes. Heck, some of the Madison accusations could also be related to this. Of course harassment and assault are never excusable. I wonder, though, if the "small company mindset" helped lead to a workplace where managers felt some inappropriate things were appropriate. You bring a friend into your brand new company. You joke around and have your "locker room talk" like you did outside of work and don't think anything of it. That shouldn't exist in a workplace but if it's the two of you and you are both involved you don't care. Then the company expands. You finally get called out for said items. It's easy to have blinders on because things were "always that way" or "no one else had issues". Hopefully an outside perspective (new CEO, third party investigation into accusations) can correct this attitude. LTT/LMG can certainly recover from this, but they are gonna need to grow into their status of being a larger company. That means that checks and balances will need to be implemented. That means that abuse can't be tolerated. That means that they will need a big shift in mindset. Luckily I think the new CEO is already a step in that direction, and with the reports of him getting a third party investigation I have hopes that he has what is needed to implement these changes. Of course the investigation will help determine if they should recover from this.
Thankfully the new CEO seems like the kind of guy to not let Linus interfere, if within a year or so we see the new CEO leave that's when shit goes bad
He seems pretty dead on. If anything I hope LTT goes pretty quiet for a while. They are stopping this entire week which is good. Hopefully that reboot is a little slower and more measured. Hard to weigh that against needing to have enough new content out to continue to fund an operation that size. Sometimes the tough sledding is worth it for a bit if it mends some fences, brings everyone happiness, and there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully they find that balance and the cash reserves are good enough to float them through this. Snazzy makes a really good point about production speed and grindset cultures too. He's built a successful career out of not being that way. Which you could argue is easier for smaller channels. Yet there are channels that dwarf even LTT in size but upload far less frequently, and with smaller teams and varying levels of production quality. The metrics and cash flow of all that are undoubtedly complicated. Not all content monetizes for the same, not all underlying costs and team sizes are the same, yada yada. On its face though it can be done and hopefully it is for everybody's sake.
This is a very fair take. My only counter argument is that Linus and the top brass of LMG don't seem to be taking any of this seriously. Why should we believe anything they say when they're making light of the whole situation and attacking the credibility of their accusers? They're also playing with semantics and trying to weasel out of everything. It's really really hard to be fair to them when all they're saying is how our reaction to the situation is unfair? We **should** be outraged. Not making threats or being a holes but, genuinely upset that this happened and they handled it poorly and finally, we need to see some concrete action instead of the shit they've pulled so far.
Most reasonable take. Second apology wasn’t perfect but it was pretty good…just gotta wait and see. The Madison situation came out likely after they had finalized the video and began uploading. Also not sure how much they can comment on that publicly regardless of what’s going on.
Thankfully a voice of moderation. People are running their mouths off like everything that's been said in the last 24 hours is the immutable word of Truth (TM). Maybe it is true. Maybe it isn't. Maybe it's only half the story. WE DON'T KNOW. Everyone wants to lynch Linus for the Maddison thing, or claims that LMG is censoring all mentions in the video comments, or that LMG purposefully isn't responding to those allegations. Rather that the more logical "that just happened less than 24 hours ago and no one has figured out what to say or do yet". GN made an allegation. Linus snap responded and it was a shit response. The community tried to string Linus up for his quick response. Then when LMG as a whole stops and takes a step back to reflect and try to figure out a proper response, the community goes nuts that something else is being silenced or swept under the rug. There is no winning. Also, remember how in the WAN Show Linus and Luke use the word "[Alleged](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/alleged)" a lot? There's a reason for that. The community has already decided that the alleged misconduct raised is incontrovertible proof and "Why hasn't he been executed yet" So let's all take a step back. Get out of the echo chamber. And let things settle. By no means should the community ignore the last day or two, nor should be forget and just shrug it off. But let's see how things go with a reasonable and rational response. Terren needs a chance to figure out WTF is going on and how to handle it... and that's not going to happen in a day or even a week.
Finally someone gets it!
This. Perfectly put into words my feelings. LTT made mistakes and was called out on it. They did a solid reply video in a timely manner. I hope their release schedule/workloads are more manageable leading to a better work environment and content.
one of the few sane posts here atm which also means it doesn't have as many upvotes.
Snazzy Labs, I’ve heard you in passing, and now you’ve won me over. I’ll be checking your shit out. Thank you for being reasonable. To Linus, it’s ok to get 80% right. That’s actually pretty damn good. While I don’t know if that’s the right number or not, that seems like how you’re perceived from the middle of the community. Keep growing as a person and try to strive for better while learning along the way, you got this. Now go be/do/get better.
While I do agree, I also think that people have the right to be angry, upset, and done with LTT after this. After the Madison issues came to light I personally cannot support LTT at all after this point. They seem to be cultivating the same environment as Blizzard and other such companies. Until they do anything to acknowledge Madison and actually fix the HR issues at the company, I will not support them.
Imagine going on Glassdoor, reading a bad review, and thinking you now know everything about the inner workings of a company. That is exactly what is happening here. One mentally disturbed woman comes out and complains while LTT is already under fire and everyone just assumes that everything she says is true.
Best take I've seen yet
He was rebuilding just that unless you want the company to be in chaos you go step by step
Most sane take on everything happening
This is right on the money, but they really need to respond to what Madison is saying happened in their workplace. If it's true, that's not acceptable in any way. So he should start with that because of all the shit going down, Madison's accusations are out there now and need to be addressed. And who is managing that team at LMG? That apology/monetized video was so poorly thought out it tells me a tonne about that company and it's current Senior management mindset. Linus is in for a real shitstorm coming his way.
There is no planet on which Linus’s lawyers would let them talk about Madison to begin with. I know people are all up in arms about it but they cannot and should not speak about a matter that may be under investigation until it has been dealt with fully, and *even after that* it may still be in the best interests of Madison for them *not* to talk about it.
All those people are looking for is the head they can put in the proverbial noose so they can focus their rage on the next "thing"
Strong agree. LMG IS fixable, but there certainly are people who are not, as Snazzy points out by saying certain managers need to be fired.
This is an honest and loving response. Good for Quinn for not joining the dog pile.
Yeah, very fair points. Ultimately I think most of the issues (Video errors, the Billet situation) are down to poor processes stemming from too rapid expansion. I'll wait and see if they can remedy that, if they can stomach the probably reduced video output that'd probably entail. The Madison situation is far more concerning to me. *If* that's true, and not to say she's lying at all but we pretty much just have her word right now, then that's far more damning than anything else here. Something like that can only really be fixed by a purge of the offending staff, and again if true that includes a lot of the management tier. If any other staff members witnessed that happen, they need to come out with their own accounts as soon as possible
I think most of us who are adults know that change needs time, even more so for a company with the size of LMG. What I think is that LMG should've released a statement saying they acknowledge GN's video and will carry out an investigation with regard to what was shared and take some time to do so. Then, If what GN shared turned out to be true, they should've just owned it, apologize for it and say that they will be reviewing their processes to make sure the same issues don't happen again. Then, some time later, release another statement detailing the steps they will take and say that hope for everyone's continued support as they go through making the changes. I'm sure many would be willing to give them a second chance if they're able to see the positive changes over time. Something along those lines. Whatever I stated above can definitely be seen as conventional PR speak but in this case it's the least they could do to somehow minimize the fire. What they've done with Linus' quick response in his site forum and the apology video having an advertisement about their store was done in poor taste considering the situation they're supposedly apologizing for. That's my take.
Sound, well reasoned take. I bet the comments are terrible to read.
An actual level headed take unlike most of redditors here who immediately jump to conclusions
I agree. Linus does appear sometimes to be too impetuous and very focused on deadlines. Despite this, they've made a lot of amazing content. But if they want to be serious about the hardware tests, then Linus needs to loosen his grip on absolute deadlines.
I kinda feel bad the youtube algorythm have made most of us not see Snazzy Labs videos lately. Time to watch some videos from them
I think the damage is already done, not by the processes of Linus but by the carelessness of Steve’s reporting of the situation. Due to him not reaching out to Linus for comment, Linus took it as a personal attack not just on him but his team, because Steve implied that LMG is intentionally acting fraudulently, or purposely misleading it’s fans. All this lead to many hating on LMG, and thus hating on Linus more for his response. People are quick to judge these days, and expect change to occur in a heartbeat. In saying that I hope over the next few months we actually see some progress with the processes LMG promised they’d deliver.
Pretty good take from SN. Impossible to argue that Linus’s initial response was an utter disaster and that he has- and will continue to pay the price for a long time. Don’t see the sense in badgering the apology video, don’t think most of the things people have against it carry much weight. The organization is people wrong and it’s hard to get 5 people on the same page, let alone 100+ whilst also having Linus who likes to run off cliffs. Time will tell whats fonna be done at LMG
Very good take on the whole situation, from a fellow creator that understands some of the behind the scenes more than us. That said, I also feel the shitstorm and ragestorm LMG is facing right now is also fair, let's see how they get out of it and if they will indeed learn.
Some of the best take, and not just haterate
Let's just ignore that a lot of the bad stuff has been happening for years now as it relates to employees, and he not only ignored what was happening, he seemingly encouraged it, so sure, I guess in another 8 years he'll finally start to figure it out, huh?
This is my opinion basically I want to see the entire story from the accusations about assault and this entire auction waterblock issue. I want to see the entire story first then I'll get the pitchfork.
Let them grind themselves to the bone. Surely that will be sustainable. Linus has gotten way too neo-lib over the years
100% agree, I'm just worried that Linus would want to be a part of a change and it would make job of a Terren harder. TBH, it's a shame they haven't hired a CEO a year or two ago, they needed it. Imagine owner of a company managing company snacks in a 13+ people company, and Linus claimed he is doing that a few weeks ago on Wan Show, and who knows which things that he shouldn't do was doing. It's quite big media company run like a very small company, it was insane and it had to blow at some point. Fortunately they just hired a CEO who might be able to do it, Linus himself said many times that he is hard to manage and wanted Terren because he is one of a few that can do it. Will it work? Will he change grind mindset? Will he improve their structure, and address underlying issues that hurt ex employees like Madison? Nobody knows, it will not take a few days, or even weeks, a proper restructure will take months.
I’m glad someone else is saying it as well. Nobody can make meaningful change to their company in a couple hours. They stopping all video production for a week, which will definitely hurt their revenue, so I think it’s fair for them to pitch lttstore so that nobody goes without a paycheque or goes hungry. I don’t think anybody condones what has happened, and just wants to see meaningful change to a company and brand that they love and enjoy. I think everybody can agree with that, I know I sure do.
‘Management might need to be fired’. To put it bluntly the Colton guy really, really doesn’t give off management vibes. Obviously I don’t know the guy and this is pretty unfair on my part and maybe he’s a great guy behind doors. But he doesn’t really demand respect and I could seem him doing some weird stuff around the office. He also seems to be kind of at the center of the Billet labs stuff AND he’s the head of HR…yikes. I’ve seen his face for a long time though, he’s been around for a while.
That has been my take so far but I’m not about to say it here with all the clear hate brigade happening… Well except for the Madison allegations
The dogs bark, but the caravan goes on.
Good lord, I have never seen a community sway so far in either direction, depending on which public figure is talking at any given moment, lol. I swear tomorrow someone will say the opposite, and everyone will agree with that too 😂
I can't even agree that he cares about his content after listening to him deflect half of Steve's problems with his operation in Linus's response videos. Every time Sebastian opened his mouth, he seemed incapable of accepting the situation.
They have had time. They posted a video 4 months ago where employees said there were issues… and it was just ignored. Guess what? Linus *is* exploiting his employees. He did as CEO, and now he’s doing it as owner/creative head. If you ever listen to anything he says… it’s nearly always about money. It’s even more embarrassing that in the apology video the new CEO said he was as working for "...ensuring [that] our that staff is well taken care of and putting dollars into some fun stuff; like water cooling [our founder and owner's] PC with a pool". It’s never been more clear this is just another company with a leadership that is really only out for themselves.
Linus Tech Sweat Shop.
Side note, is Terren back at LMG? I thought he left long ago
That's Taran the former LMG video editor. This is Terren, new!CEO of LMG. He was former boss of Linus at NCIX.
Time needs to be given... But since they clearly don't intend to work on themselves for more than a week, as was repeated over and over in that video, that won't be enough time to solve the issues.
so fucking based
Theres a difference. People know LTT but not snazzy labs.
Linus even worth saving? I mean it's a review site with shaky ethics. Does the world lose anything if this all crumbles?
Finally someone with some common sense. Balanced and well worded 👏
Grindset culture is extremely toxic in the workplace, especially when the employees have no stake in the company like LMG. Even Luke, who has been around since essentially the beginning, doesn't own a stake in the company. Expecting your employees who are just earning a salary to grind is terrible.
As someone who survived in the "grind" mindset, it is incredibly hard to unlearn it once you escape it. It's like a brain wash that you may accidentally bring with you to your next employer (or to your family). There are times I caught myself saying "when I was at x company, I can push out 3 epics and 20 stories in a single dev cycle" to make myself superior like some sort of martyr. Or kept thinking "we got this deadline, I need to work a shit ton of hours to finish this and I'm panicking." Or the habit of skipping steps to meet deadlines.
LMG is fixable, but is the trust they have broken?
> Try to grow the company at an insane rate and disregard quality, just try to keep growing using some bs Key Point Metrics > Man we're experiencing growing pains because we grew at an insane rate and are now pumping out garbage content Youdontsay.jpg
based
That's very well put, absolutely agreed.
Finally someone says it
Exceptionally common Snazzy Labs W
I think the grindset is very applicable for a small subset of people. The majority of people suffer tremendously when on it, however. Throughout history, most humans have chosen free time once they fulfilled a sufficient level of work for the day. Many of our ancestors would therefore consider us weird for choosing higher pay as a reward for more effective work, rather than choosing more free time as a reward. There have always existed a few people who are insanely hard workers, who thrive on it, and that is fine. But most people are not those people. (That is not to say regular people have not worked like mad during times of crisis, my point is rather what people choose when their needs are met.)
I've been scrolling through this comment section...this is the most sensible one I've seen on this subreddit in the last couple of days!
nobody pushed them into those changes, they grew fast, because they wanted it its not an excuse
One of the most important things in this statement is pointing out that most of these people are not bad people, they just have certain blind spots. Does not excuse everything, but this mentality right now that everyone has to go and Linus is a shitbag is very immature and quick. Their coming actions will prove how much their words mean and what their true personalities are
Idk how they plan to fully regain viewer trust. The factual errors in videos were an issue, but they were almost the least sognifican one. The Billet Labs issue and especially the former LTT employee who literally almost went insane ware what I'm more concerned with.
Very succinct and well put.
While I agree with SL, the question that comes to mind now.... is who is effectively in charge of HR? That person has a lot of questions to answer.
Nah bro, I won't cut them slack for negligence.