Linus Media Group CEO Terren Tong also responded via email, saying he was “shocked at the allegations and the company described” in Reeve’s posts. He went on to note that “as part of this process, beyond an internal review we will also be hiring an outside investigator to look into the allegations and will commit to publish the findings and implementing any corrective actions that may arise because of this.”
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Wow quick and decisive action by CEO to call in external investigation. Reading Linus’ response, it doesn’t even appear that he would consider external investigation. He states that HR would conduct a thorough review. I’ll be frank, I don’t trust Colton to run the HR review.
I bet once this issue is resolved, we might see Terren bring in external subject matter experts to completely overhaul LMG business operations. HR consultants, Operations and Logistics consultants, Finance, etc. Up until now, LMG was/is run by a self-taught/self-made/learning-on-the-job crew. Can’t do that when you’re now a corp.
Edit: I would love to sub to a channel called TBT (Terren Business Tips) 😂
Not to say Colton can’t do the job, but HR is a department that needs to be independent of all other departments and the voice of the HR manager needs to be considered more important than the voice of most of the other managers because they’re the ones dealing with the humans that make the company.
It is HIGHLY silly to even imply these woes are from a, “learn-on-the-job” crew/etc.
Many of the allegations are about basic factual information being wrong and a terrible work environment.
Those DO NOT naturally show up in any ol’ little work environment. They show up when there’s a lack of professionalism and basic respect for fellow humans.
That culture comes from a lack of process and experience of large organizations. The second that a team grows beyond 7 people it has grown beyond the direct control of any one person and the culture takes on a life of it’s own. If not addressed early in growth, issues typically spiral and are either not caught or are allowed to exist out of a perceived necessity.
Small organizations are nimble so they do not need to formalize cultural and HR processes in the same way that large organizations do. If the leader sees something they don’t like, they address it. It isn’t just about basic respect. We all bring our own cultural issues to an organization. A lack of professionalism comes hand in hand with smaller creative organizations. That’s what makes them entertaining. It also enables the toxic tendencies of some people as they are allowed to slip in and as the pressure builds. Don’t confuse professionalism with respect.
These things don’t happen immediately either. It happens over time as people get tired and impatient so they are not on their best behavior. We all go through a storming process. That’s when toxic culture can set in if good lower level leadership doesn’t catch and address it. That takes training and a formal approach to organizational structure, not just production processes.
I am one of those outside consultants.
Toxic environments can also be brought in by toxic leadership. Like a VP that intentionally pissed workers off because “they work harder”
Of course, there are many “learn-on-the-job” organizations that have gone forward and done amazing things.
However, while I agree that these issues don’t naturally manifest themselves and stem from unprofessionalism and basic respect, I would argue that specialists and professionals in those functions (HR, Finance, Ops, etc) can help establish policies that mitigates and discourages such behaviors. If people can’t do that voluntarily, then policies and consequences are enacted to enforce it.
This is why many companies (and I’ve worked in a few in the tens/hundred thousands of employees) have clear business conduct guideline policies and enforcement, because people who lack professionalism and basic respect for fellow humans are actually quite prevalent in any and every company. I’ve witnessed a few myself that led to immediate termination of my colleagues.
I’ve seen the exact same thing on a company that went from 5 to 50 employees in a similarly short time frame.
The issue happens if you start with a friend group without decent structures or leadership “because we are friends/anyway”. This works if you got 5 people but it doesn’t if you have 50 or 150. Because you don’t just have friends who are enthusiastic about the mission there, but you have to fill the ranks with people who actually want to treat this like a job. Now the “bro” culture starts to fall apart.
With this size you start to get real issues at work that need to be handled with a correct structure, which you don’t have because senior management still feels this is just a startup full of bros.
Bros don’t mind working 60 or even 80h/week, every week, because of the mission. Employees do mind. So now you have a workload designed for 60h/week per employee that is shouldered by a 40h/week employee. So either they work 60h (probably without compensation for the overtime) or they cut corners and deliver crap quality.
Same with the way people interact with each other. Bros don’t mind some rough jokes, but employees usually don’t like it that much if their real concerns get brushed aside with the suggestion to maybe “calm your tits”.
When going from startup to real company, you need to make big changes to the structure and work culture. If you don’t, an LMG ensues.
Gen Zers speedrunning why big corporations have the structures they have
Are you suggesting that Linus Sebastian, age 36, is somehow a Gen Zer?
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I’ll be frank, I don’t trust Colton to run the HR review.
Exactly lol, he seems like the type of dude who closes ranks and thereby perpetuates the culture of misogyny.
Also, and this might just be negative halo effect, but he just gives off really weird vibes to me - but that’s verging into needlessly speculative territory.
Oh yeah, let’s jump to thinking people are creeps because of the way they look.
You’re clearly coming at this from a mature and well thought out area, not one of sexism and abuse.
It’s the other way around; I think the vibe is weird when I see him in videos and I feel like he is weird in interpersonal interactions. He seems pretty awkward and not the best at expressing himself. But at the same time I can admit that my judgement might be unfairly influenced by his looks.
I don’t think he’s weird because of how he looks, but at the same time I need to acknowledge that there’s a chance his looks do affect my impression of him and how he interacts.
So you’re judging a guy for “acting weirdly”?
Oh wow, huge improvement.
And adding your own little disclaimer at the end like “Sorry to poison the well, it’s just my biases in action but I’m going to share it with others in hopes more people can attack this man for nothing but it’s also not something you should do” doesn’t make it better; Admitting your problem and still doing it isn’t a solution, it just makes you look like a bigger arse because you know you shouldn’t yet have decided to.
Up until now, LMG was/is run by a self-taught/self-made/learning-on-the-job crew. Can’t do that when you’re now a corp.
Linus hired an experienced CEO who, I’m sure started these kind of discussions of creating a cohesive work environment several months ago.
Correction to my original comment: up until 7 weeks ago…
But while I’m sure discussions have been started, having been exposed to new leadership in my experience, it does take a while before new leadership can really roll out required changes. Most of the time spent in the first 30-60 days is to listen and understand the lay of the land (which Terren also mentioned). But even then, grave issues like the ones Madison called out usually won’t be known to new leadership until later, unless a report/exposure is made (like what Madison did).
This situation is awfull and, i mean, i know sexual harasement is very serious and its really insensitive to joke about but i really cant help it, so if you are sensible to that type of comments then dont read it and feel free to downvote, ill understeand, so here i go, you have been warned:
Linus sex tips.
Thanks. Though you don’t need to tell oversensitive people to not be offended as they’ll be offended anyways.
The reactions are so… reddit-ey:
I always knew it
I fee so gratified
It’s what I’ve been saying all along
and all that stuff.
Its human nature not exclusive to reddit. You guys sure love talking about that place.
I have made very few posts to Lemmy but a recent one was a neutral-ish post saying that I liked the Madison videos etc. but I’m also not jumping to boycott LTT based on the testimony of one person and also a YouTube expose. The responses I got were negative and I was also told not to “deadname” another creator… who I wager nobody would know who I am talking about if I used that name.
Long story short, the comparisons to reddit seem downright charitable so far. Pitchfork brigade bullshit. How about having a nuanced opinion on literally any topic? Or is the average Lemmy user a sanctimonious 19 year old basement socialist?
The more I read about LMG, the more the structure of the company looks like a mob.
There is one guy with his wife at the top of the pyramid. The CEO and others are below. If the top of the pyramid has what it ask for, nobody will care about what’s happening.
That’s how companies are structured. What you want staff to be higher up the chain of command and CEOs I’m not quite sure what you’re asking for
This is the best response the CEO has, well done for doing it so quickly.
And I think it’s the worst outcome for the ex-employee. Just from a process perspective now these external investigators are going to dig through the entire history, to prove or disprove every claim, which could bring up a lot of traumatic incidents, or reveal personal information that people like to keep private. Even if people get fired for their behavior based on this incident report, it’s going to be traumatic to relive.
The fact that two years have lapsed since the incident isn’t going to make the investigation easier. So in all probability there will be insufficient data to make a determination either way. So the investigation is going to be both traumatic, and probably hollow because a determination won’t be made. And the published report will feel a little empty and almost gaslighting. But that’s what time does, time is like water, it erodes everything.
Is it safe to say if the dude in the video wasn’t passively crapping on HUB and GN this would never have happened?
Probably not. All the issues were there, someone would have pointed it out for some reason at some point.
I dont understand why this needed to be pointed out. LTT was always a joke, but somewhat mindlessly entertaining. I didn’t know he was meant to be taken seriously, I thought he was in on how horribly flawed everything he puts out is.
GN probably would’ve done it anyway. He is not completely in the right because as unbiased as he wants to be, at the end of the day, he is still criticizing a competitor. I doubt those comments actually prompted his response. They had a lot of examples in their video and have probably been compiling it for a while.
Linus’ fan base drove a little boy to suicide, and the mother subsequently took her own life as well.
Citing an article that cites a Reddit post isn’t great. Let’s link to the original https://old.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/t1e1if/you_destroyed_my_life/
While the story is tragic, somebody running a million plus sub YouTube channel is going to get the full Internet experience. It’s pure muckracking to say Linus was responsible for this. It’s just sensationalism.
I remember the video that this stems from. He wasn’t exactly a “little boy”, and I don’t mean by size. I mean that he was near or at adulthood.
Linus gave up the plaque to him realizing that he had won the auction fair and square and even plugged his channel on the video.
We don’t know how much Linus knew about his community doing this. Scouring the comments of Mindchop’s channel shows no harassment that I can see so far. However, I do admit the harassment could have taken place through DMs and other private communication.
The plugging of the channel and Linus voicing his upset about losing the plaque…
…caused his weird, creepy fanboys to target him.
How about just not saying anything about it, eh, Linus?
“This person upset me, btw here’s his channel.”
Out of the loop, can someone give me a tl;dr on who this guy is why I keep seeing this everywhere?
Linus Sebastian is a YouTube tech guru that rose to prominence in the last few years with his channel, Linus Tech Tips, and has created something of an enterprise around his content called Linus Media Group
More recently his work has become somewhat…sloppy, with errors here and there, recommended practices ignored on the odd occasion, but nothing so big as to cause anyone major damage. Linus has a default PR mode for when these issues come about, and it usually worked…
Until last month.
Last month, Linus reviewed a prototype of an all new type of water-cooling block (basically a replacement for a fan that can be way more efficient) for GPUs. This block was expensive, and expensive to make, but by all reasonable measures, has a very good cooling impact to show for it. It was made by a startup firm of two people, and they sent Linus a prototype with a supported GPU.
The GPU ended up disappearing into the aether, and Linus opted to use an unsupported GPU to test the cooling block, which resulted in inferior cooling performance. Linus ended up trashing the block in his review.
He then went and auctioned off the prototype without the knowledge of the manufacturer, only offering to make them whole once it had already been auctioned off.
Linus tried to deal with it in his usual PR way, once Gamers Nexus started reporting on the goings on. But these weren’t small errors, these were the mother of all PC tech journalistic fuckups, and he refused to acknowledge them as such. That is not only enough to get someone immediately fired, it’s enough to get them industry-blacklisted.
It’s gotten so bad that the CEO and CFO of Linus Media Group have come out directly and thrown Linus under the bus for his fuckery.
And that’s before we come on to the topic of this post, the SA allegations…
Edit: minor name corrections.
He then went and auctioned off the prototype without the knowledge of the manufacturer, only offering to make them whole once it had already been auctioned off.
There’s a few bits more around this that have come to light that makes it even worse…
The manufacturer emailed asking for the cooling block to be returned as it was their only prototype and LMG said they would return it, with the manufacturer chasing several times before LMG admitted that they had auctioned it off for charity.
They only offered compensation once the situation had been revealed in that expose video the other day.
