"We didn't want to hurt this small company. We wanted no one to buy their product" is a wild statement to send out to the world. 2023 is the year of youtubers telling on themselves
So Linus was willing to pay $150,000 to fly out some content creators, but not willing to pay to $200-500 USD to do a proper re-test on the right graphics card for a prototype they got.. and then would not return the prototype and instead auction it off.. makes no sense.
it does now because the fact that he spent that much to fly people out makes good advertisement on his part (its all for show and not out of generosity)
I only started paying attention to LTT this year and it's so funny how Linus goes on these big rants that totally miss the point only for Luke to say one small thing that actually is the point and Linus goes "well, whatever."
This genuinely made me stop watching the WAN show. I used to watch all the time (pretty much every week) but I got sick of earing linus have a massive rant about something while I'm sat thinking "but that isn't the point Linus" for Luke to then say "That's not the point Linus" and Linus usually say "but it is to me" or "well, It doesn't matter" Like the whole "Trust me bro" situation on the warranties. It was never about his reputation or what we believed he would do if something were to go wrong with a backpack but the complete lack of answers and guarantees they were willing to give as a corporation that's selling a product. This is just the biggest example I can think of off the dome
@@willybean9614 he has a multi million dollar company With over 100 staff, why didn’t anyone pick up on this having warranty as requirement? They must be a bunch of yes men, with no Back Bone Or too scared what Linus would do
@@willybean9614Not only that, Linus literally sold a Prototype by putting up in auction that was given to him by a small company for " Review " & to be returned after finishing the review. Now Linus reply is Oh I thought u have given me that, oops. I mean It's straight up robbery.
...ok? they did a pretty bad job then. if it werent for the fact that this is in canada this would be an incredibly easy lawsuit. that would also mean the blame is 100% on LMG for all of it lmao
Them putting another company's one of a kind prototype up for auction is insaneee. Literally how were they able to go through with that?? That's so fucked up
it really feels like it should be illegal giving it away, understandable perhaps, but holding an auction? kind of gross and gives off profiting from another person's work sort of thing
@@bard2555if billet labs has it in writing that lmg agreed to return the prototype after filming the video, then there’s really no question on the legality of what they did. billet should absolutely sue them for damages imo
@@lyleugleman9799 If you look at the e-mail they show in the "Colton" part of their apology-video, BL do mention that LMG had previously agreed to them they would return the prototype before it got auctioned. However... BL originally (when they assumed LMG would use the correct GPU in testing their cooler AND would hopefully like it) said LMG could "keep it for use in future projects". So it is a bit-misleading when some are now saying by not-returning it, BL "could have gone under" when initially they were fine with never having it returned.
@@dftfirethey were fine with him keeping it so that he could use it in future videos for comparison, etc. but they never gave him permission to sell it. That's like getting a PR package, not doing the videos agreed in the PR pack, and then refusing to return it. Yes, he did do the 1sr vid, but the agreement was that he could keep it "if it was for future projects.
@@SavageMinnow Is it like what you say, though? None of us know what was actually agreed in-writing between BL and LMG. I'd argue that if BL wanted a guaranteed glowing-review they should have paid for a sponsored one. If they sent it purely "hoping" that LMG would review it positively, then they have to expect there is always the chance they may not have. Now, that's not to excuse LMG for using the wrong GPU in the video, and so I think it's right for BL to then request it back. And it's a total-failing on LMG's side to then accidentally sell it off. But they did offer to fully compensate BL for the cooler, and during this whole debacle BL has received endlessly goodwill and free-marketing, and I bet gained some extra pre-orders. So... I'm not-really sure why people are still going-on about this issue? 🤷🏻♂
for reference, HR is NOT on the side of the worker. HR as a dept. was incepted on the ideal of keeping business “in-house”. they dont want employees to go public with corporate grievances in the aim of maintaining positive PR for the company and keeping it on-the-low so they, like austin mentioned in the video, “can keep the profits rolling”. they present themselves as being a middleman between the heads and the hands of a business, when they would chop a hand off at the slightest chance of screwing up “the happy little family”. it’s corporate abuse by self-personification/anthropomorphizing a corporate entity at the emotional expense of their workers FOR the fiscal savings they want to keep growing hand-over-fist.
This. The solution is: meticulous note taking. Regular screenshots and forwarding of the communication, with visible participants. Always circling back and confirming verbal arrangements in writing. That and giving yourself a timeframe in which if nothing improves you will leave.
I agree that HR started out with devious intentions, but I don’t think it’s quite fair to villanise an entire career. I have a family member who works in HR and I have seen firsthand how HR SHOULD work. Good HR does exist, they just tend not to hire the people who genuinely care about others and want to make a safe, healthy, and functioning workplace in favour of those who will put profit above people. I do agree with the comment above me though; keep records! Always have copies of emails and keep receipts of how you are being treated if you think something fishy is going on or if your boundaries are/have been crossed. My same family member always keep receipts to protect her ass and make sure people can’t use things against her.
@@haechansabeoji you’ve made a lot of coherent points that i agree with, although in this circumstance i would characterize it differently. we scrutinize police because they act with impunity *even when armed by the state & killing innocent civilians* . here, i’d liken HR as a career to that and be so bold as to claim “good” HR staff to the WORKER is quite different to a “good” HR staff to the corporate owners. even in circumstances where they do the right thing, the over-arching duties of their job are going to regularly pit them against their coworkers at the behest of the execs. and 9 times outta 10, the will of the execs trumps the will of the individual worker involved in any incident where they feel warranted in filing a complaint being referred to HR. the ppl who work in an HR dept. can be great ppl just like cops, but often in acting as a cop, you diametrically oppose the rights of the civilian in front of you for your job’s imposed “duties” upon you. i hope this rant makes sense to anyone else reading lol
@@haechansabeojiit's the ACAB philosophy, really. Yeah, there may be good individuals in the field, but the practice itself is corrupt and abusive. The best any individual in the field can do is IN SPITE of the HR system.
My last job the HR director was a member of the senior leadership and the best friend of the CEO. It was BAD. Particularly cause the CEO was causing a lot of the problems. She’d immediately tell the CEO about any complaints and then the CEO would confront that person by surprise. HR should always be separate from leadership.
And if they were, it would be the HR guys at risk every time they bring a complaint up to the big kahuna instead of properly "managing" the "human resources". You have human rights only if you have leverage and the loss of your contribution would be felt by the company.
@@twoozyuzi2215 HR has a significant role in risk-management but it's not uncommon for executives and senior management to obstinately spurn the advice they receive from HR. HR can be doing its job to protect the company and a lunatic, pervert or cowboy chief executive will cause problems in spite of it.
@@twoozyuzi2215 Absolutely. The difference between good HR and bad HR management is their ability to reduce or eliminate risk. This means they are good at either covering up or preventing abuse. Often it is a mixture of both. It is obvious that HR is enabling Linus's bad behavior, which is bad for the company, hence is not doing a very good job.
The absolute worst part of all this is literally nothing changed. They got away with it and the community supported that. Views were not affected, subscriptions were not affected, and as far as I can tell their video cadence was not affected. They won, their employees lose. Madison lost.
Yeah sadly the core fanbase of LMG is the entitled gamer type who defends crunch and thinks harassment like that is just good business as long as the end product’s good
My partner who didn't know much about the situation watched the apology video with me and he said 'there are way too many jokes for an apology video'. I unsubbed from all the channels after that. That shitty response ended my 12 year stint of being a LTT fan. They got away with this mess because short Canadian man funny. urgh.
They did lose a lot of fp subscriptions, I remember reading about the money they lost due to that. Also, people don't see them the same way as before, even if they still watch their stuff. They are a bunch of clowns entertaining you, not a source of factual information. But I do agree M-Dog (Madison) got zero compensation for how they treated her (or is it "they"? If so, no disrespect meant.), and that is the worst part in all of this.
Linus: Do you really think we're going to ruin our reputation over a $250 backpack? Also Linus: Do you really think we're going to spend another $500 of peoples time to correct a poorly performed, reputation damaging review? 👌
@@jannegrey593 uh, no they did. Edgy ads and product placement are still ads and product placement. I haven't thought about the company they mentioned in probably a year and could've forgotten about them, and now I instinctively think about them when thinking about this drama. It was actually a very successful brand awareness promotion
@@jannegrey593 and don't forget that they actually _paywalled the apology_ as well. "Pay us $5 now if you're curious about the drama and want to see how we wriggle ourselves out of this one before everyone else!"
my husband works in the gaming industry and he has been using ltt for years. i sent it to him and hes passed it on to all his colleagues. no one is happy. thank you for sharing this, its so important and ive seen nothing else about it
? How does one use LTT? It's a channel. Not a product. And why would someone who's in the "gaming industry" rely on some guy on the Internet with no credibility or education? Why would he even NEED to see what LTT is saying about things? If he works for NVIDIA or AMD, he's an Engineer and he doesn't need the word of some random person, since there's plenty of checks/balances in terms of hardware development on a TEAM. If he's a "developer", it's not like LTT understands or gives instructions on how to optimize source code to ensure stability and eek out performance. What are you talking about?
@@marishiten5944 maybe they're talking about the products(the water bottles, mousepads, clothing, bags and screwdrivers) also their reviews impact purchases, and the way the consumers treat their tech as its one of the bigger tech channels here.
Clearly OP meant using LTT as a journalistic and review resource. LTT had a huge sub base and it’s not surprising that people in the industry would be interested in seeing what they have to say about certain products.
She is part owner so she would be partly responsible for how the company is run. Still, the language used is weird. It comes up in the Luke segment and occasionally in other LMG interviews as if it's just accepted that part of working at the company is "dealing with this manbaby" which would explain a lot.
@@randomwerewolf1099Yeah, it’s weird that she was the one apologizing on behalf of him for some things. Obviously, as part owner, she shared responsibility, but some of the allegations and stuff refer to Linus specifically and for her to be speaking about it is weird?
I think that more than anything in any of the videos referenced, the fact that they had his wife apologize for not reining him in is the clearest indication of how they see women. That is a very old fashioned notion, that the role of women is to back up, support, and rein in their men, who are children who can't function without this support (but also when they can't function, it's the woman's fault). This is demeaning to both men (or at least to those men who would like to be perceived as adults) and women, and for the longest time was used as the justification for why women shouldn't have lives outside of the home. The language they had his wife use is a textbook example of 'when someone shows you who they are, believe them'. Cancel Reply
I had a realization and need to put it somewhere people will see it. When the CEO pops up the second time in the apology video and says "creampuff piece"... That was autocorrect. Had to be right? They didn't even proofread their apology script addressing allegations of misconduct and sloppy output. Well, LINUS didn't proofread it or allow anyone to proofread it. The tone of the apologies lines up with how he's "apologised" in the past. Amazing.
something i'm surprised that nobody at all is mentioning with regards to this whole thing is linus' stance on unionizing. maybe not a lot of people remember this, but there was some controversy with LTT in the past because of remarks linus made about unionizing, claiming that "if you have a good boss, you don't need to unionize" which really plays back into this whole attitude he has where he believes the very act of verifying his trustworthiness is a sign of distrust and therefore an insult. it's a huge red flag that really sheds some unsavory light on the way he runs his company.
Two things: 1. I’m sorry if I just happened to miss this in the video but I don’t think it was mentioned. Part of the reason that Linus’ wife was in the “apology” video was likely because she used to be head of HR. Specifically, she would have been head of HR around the time (or shortly before) Morgan worked there. So she very likely intimately knew about the Morgan situation and the complaints that she had tried to lodge. 2. Not a lot of people outside of the company know this, but LTT keeps track of all of their testing data on Microsoft Excel. Which is great for small sets of data, but is notorious for messing up large sets of data, like say the thousands of variables recorded when they do testing for comparison videos. ESPECIALLY if you ever try to copy and paste something. So for anyone who ever worked with those excel spreadsheets, it’s not shocking that the data that ended up in the videos was messed up.
@@ILikeStyx she shouldn't be CFO either... She says it herself... but this is the unfortunate reality of startups that bring people along without properly adjusting them to the expectations of the role that they are taking on.
What a bunch of BS - have you seen what people build in excel? You don't need to like Mickeysoft and that shitty tool BUT to say it messes up data is just hilarious.
If he refers to one more woman’s concern as “gossip” I’m calling incel behaviour what a loser, also if he’s so knowledgeable about Canada labour law why does he not have an HR?
They do have an HR, it's just not a proper one as it's people involved with the company and not an unbiased third party, which an HR should be. I really hope that LTT gets investigated by the proper authorities
I think this is a common thing for men. My partner says he "doesn't like gossip," but he still tells me all the juicy details of the "situations at work," like it's somehow not gossiping if you're all men 😂😂😂
Billet Labs is apparently just a two-man operation, so they likely couldn't afford legal-action. And while I'm not justifying LMG's auctioning-off of their prototype, nor their use of the wrong GPU in the video where they featured it... I do wonder why if BL seemingly could not do without their proto, why even send it to LMG in the first-place (given it could easily get lost or damaged during shipping, for starters) and then why initially say that LMG "could keep it for use in future projects"? Again, I do think the two-things LMG did were wrong, and once they agreed to send the proto back to BL then they should have ensured that happened. But I don't get where this narrative of "BL was unable to survive without their proto, and not having it back could tank them" came-from? 🤷🏻♂
@@dftfire - Well, I thought of a couple things. One might loan out a prototype if one was hoping that positive press might bring forth some potential investors, engineers, or other people with the ability to help the company complete its first project. Other than that, I would probably not be willing to loan out a prototype. Plus, what if the prototype "winner" gave the prototype up to a competitor? "First to market" is a real thing.
@@justaskin8523 A positive review was never guaranteed to happen though. They should have paid for a "sponsored review" in that case, and agreed talking-points and video sign-off. And given they are at the stage of letting people pre-order I'm not sure they need backers at this stage. And if they did there are many crowd-funding websites they could use and just upload their own video of the product. But I have to ask... given its just-over two weeks on now from when this drama happened, and you're only now commenting, are you really all that interested in it?
The "narrative" is that selling off the prototype (which wasn't theirs to sell and which they had been asked to return) had the *potential* to tank the company. It could now fall into the hands of a competitor. Not having it could preclude or at least significantly delay them from attracting potential investment due to the lack of a functioning prototype. They sent it to LTT in good faith in the hopes of attracting positive publicity. They made LTT aware of how to use the prototype and what it was compatible with. All they asked was that LTT provide an informed, good faith review, and latterly to return the product. LTT said "eff that shiz" to all of that. They provided an ill informed review based on self evidently flawed use of the product. They doubled down on their slating of the product even when the flaws in how they had tested it were pointed out to them. Then, when asked to return the product they sold it. And when called out for selling the product they said "we didn't sell it, we AUCTIONED it". A defence that will be baffling to people familiar with either: A. The phrase "sold at auction" or B. The English language in general. Their actions are not simply wrong. They are egregious. They have committed an actual severe and continuous lack of judgement. The only thing they should have been saying, from day 1, is "sorry, here's how we're gonna improve". But because they only care about making money, they didn't. LTT is not your friend. They do not care about you. They are not worthy of your sympathy. They are a major corporation, worth tens of millions. Hold them to a higher standard.
He loves throwing around the phrase “journalistic integrity” which simultaneously proves he has no idea what that means. Investigating company malpractice and informing the general public of their findings is exactly what journalism is about.
When most people say "journalistic integrity" they're most commonly referring to "hey, do journalistic things in regard to high ethical standards.. not just any journalism". Removing bias and assessing data and theories fairly to reduce unfair judgement or prejudice.
It's not often that I feel bad for companies, but man, I feel bad for the engineers and the brand managers that tried to sell decent products and had their sales harmed by reckless reviews.
the problem is that i dont watch info videos, i listen to them while tabbed elsewhere. putting up a text correction does nothing if the video isnt on the screen.
luke being in the applogy video made me so angry because he has always tried to rein in linus' bullshit , and then made me angrier by making a fucking stupid joke
Well, yes and no... sometimes on WAN Show he does call Linus out, but not always. Remember that ultimately, Linus is still Luke's boss, so despite their long-friendship there is still that imbalance there. (And Floatplane is a subsidiary of LMG, so while Luke is the head there, again, Linus is still his boss overall. Whether that will change with Terren now being called "CEO" I don't know... but when Linus stepped-down as CEO, he said at the time he is still Terren's boss, as him and Yvonne own the company. So... even if Terren was to become Luke's boss, then Luke's "bosses-boss" is still Linus!) 🙄
The problem is with Linus around, I don't know of we can rightfully judge Luke. You can often see Luke cringing when Linus goes on his more crazy rants. It clear he's uncomfortable taking a hard stance. At the same time, we don't know his exact thoughts on everything
It's clear, that Luke can't speak clearly. He just can't, because of that power imbalance. We saw it in this video, even when Linus is digging himself a hole, and it's clear that what he is saying doesn't make any sense, all Luke can do is clearly being uncomfortable as you can see in his face, and maybe say 2 sentences, that "maybe" it is not "all" like that, that Linus is still a bit right, and perhaps you can see it as X, which is the real point, and then Linus responds with "whatever". Free speaking would be: No, no, that's not right Linus, instead it is X, Y, Z. Even when it is clear how wrong that is what Linus is saying, due to the power imbalance, Luke is not able to clearly oppose Linus' stances. He's merely able to diplomatically weaken them a bit.
Sure. But also, a vlog is NOT the appropriate time to have a frank and serious discussion with your boss that may involve criticism and disagreement. This is all part of the problem of course. Linus is so clueless about what it means to be a manager and CEO, that he doesn't realize you don't get to do that and also be editorializing willy-nilly on impactful topics that directly affect your business relationships, community, staff, customers, etc., @@IroAppe
Linus had an "apology" video years ago where he would kind of acknowledge what he did wrong, but then oddly double down that he was actually right. After watching that, it was pretty clear to me that Linus is incapable of acknowledge being in the wrong.
I'm not really an artist, but I paint paintings. One day, someone stole a single painting from my storage and like... they must have like that particular one. So the guy who bought be block must have like it too.
@@informitas0117 tru. Someone stole my sketchbook but I still want it back. The thought that he might have liked it doesnt help that I lost months of work and prep work
The warranty thing is so baffling. Its not about whether or not you fans trust you, its about having a legal liability with an extremely clear outline of what counts and so you can cover your ass if someone thinks that they are obligated to get their money back but you disagree. This "just trust we will always do the right thing" feels like a good way to get sued
this company is a mess. linus cant humble himself for two seconds to maaaybe save face because his ego is so fragile he cant handle criticism without feeling attacked to the core.
I would highly hope that Terren (the new CEO) advised that no staff are to give-out statements in public forums, or to the media, that aren't pre-approved lines. And that for any personal-posts, they should state "my views are entirely my own, and not that of LMG". That's pretty-normal in most other companies for public-facing staff. Not-sure though how the WAN Show could cope with that change? I would guess they would have to be pre-recorded so edits can be made, which would affect not being able to respond live to incoming messages about an issue or take...
right, that's why he literally essentially fired himself as company CEO/boss, and volunteered to have someone else be HIS boss and tell HIM what to do. man so many people just jumped on the LTT hate bandwagon it's insane... yeah back when this all unfolded a couple of months ago it was BAD, and they (or, *he*) deserved all the heat that came his way, but as soon as people stopped talking about and reporting on it, people lose interest, they don't bother following how LMG have gone about changing how they operate. Meanwhile they've been working extremely hard on improving the things they were previously doing wrong, and they've been doing so extremely publicly, and with as much transparency as possible, precisely to show mindless people like you that they DO respond to criticism. They fucked up, BAD, they know that, Linus knows that, so they're doing the one and only thing that can redeem them: admit the wrongdoing, and try improve. If people can still continue to trash them to the extent seen in these comments while actually knowing how much they've already changed, man go touch some grass or some shit, try improve your life 1/10th the amount that LMG has improved over the last 2 months Can you cite me one example of Linus's ego being "so fragile he can't handle criticism without feeling attacked to the core"? Because I watch the WAN show weekly, which is when Linus (and incidently Luke) are the most natural, the most normal, that they ever are on camera. Linus takes criticism when it makes sense, Luke is PERPETUALLY calling him out on stuff, and telling him to his face when he's saying dumb shit, or expressing bad ideas, or getting something wrong. If you're talking about the halfwits in the comments/chat who spew mindless criticism without understanding 1/10th of the subject matter and Linus dismantling why their message is dumb, then sure, I guess he "can't take criticism". And I want to be clear, I'm not just a braindead Linus fanboy who sees him as perfect, he's not perfect, he can be a literal prick sometimes in my opinion, and the whole recent ordeal was a catastrophe that should never have happened, personally I was genuinely disappointed about it because I love LTT, and I do look up to Linus in many ways, but just spewing mindless hate, carelessly throwing around words like your comment, man what are you achieving..? You obviously don't actually actively watch LTT, let alone the weekly 3+ hour podcast where they discuss 99% of this shit. It just seems like hive mentality "oh we're hating that guy?? ok yeah FUCK HIM!!!"
Which is why he stepped down as CEO. ALL that stress of managing a company for the first time got to him, and he realized just how bad it was. Y’all just wanna hate on him eternally.
I hate it how even Luke has to walk on the eggshells around Linus, when pointing out the stupidity. That's a big red flag that they don't do critisism well.
Luke is the voice of reason. Anthony is by far and away the most talented in the group. The shut he knows about computers he could take you down memory lane on windows 95 just from the back or how head on issues with it. Linus just strikes me as a windy ferret that groans and wails for onscreen drama. He was just annoying throughout the fibre uplink episode and getting in people's way when wiring up the racks
Sebastian is a well-known libertarian who has gone on rants about Canada's tax and gun laws. He's deeply, deeply mentally ill and everyone around him has to deal with that daily.
Linus has always seemed like he is the only right person in the room and when he gets proved that he isnt always right then he just finds some way to dig the hole deeper until luke pulls him out by his toes and linus just goes "oh...well...whatever 🤷"
To be clear, the Colton "firing" thing is a running joke where any time anything goes wrong Linus would blame and "fire" Colton for it. Something which has continued for years even after they transitioned more and more fully into an actual company and not a bunch of random tech dudes making videos together.
Yes, I wanted to mention this too, just to clear this up. On one hand it's better the HR dept. isn't actually run by someone who almost got fired, but on the other, it adds some more out-of-place comedy to the very serious apology video
True, but that doesn't help your cause. Its kind of toxic to have a running joke about firing an employee... there are a few "jokes" that have always felt a little icky with LTT.
"250 bucks is nothing for a company like this" "I don´t know if I can apologize for not spending 100-500 dollars of peoples time...." I am not a tech person... at least not PC tech. But this gets my blood boiling
@@lenaboyer6981 - That's not true everywhere. As a hiring line manager, I was involved in a number of "corrective action efforts" against crude males who couldn't control their urges. And we did get rid of them, especially if they retaliated at the accuser. LMG just wasn't made to have those structures of self-accountability. I could blame Canada for that, but I've decided that Linus is probably the person who allowed those conditions to arise and thrive unchecked.
Unfortunately this general type of untrained, petty, and gross management is prevalent in every industry and every job (in the US anyway, can't say for elsewhere). The amount of absolutely dogwater ass managers I've had to deal with... well, it's a lot. It's sad when the list of legitimately good ones is like 5 people long and the shit ones is so long I can't even begin to list them. We need stronger labor laws in place to ensure people who even do so much as verbally harass those under them get fucked hard. It's an insanely powerful position to hold when you control someone's ability to continue having a home, eating, etc. because our economy and society is setup in an insanely bad and horrific way. But as long as that remains true (we could change that with a few 2x4s and some really sharp blades... *cough*) we need super strong unions and basically.... any? labor laws. Because right now we have essentially zero. I would ideally like to see management JAILED for 1-5 years and owe thousands in compensation for even just bad verbal harassment. I'm not joking at all, and I feel like others who disagree simply do not understand the actual power dynamics at play at how fucking disgusting it is that we allow fat, disgusting cloven hoofed fucksticks waddle in to their nepo jobs daily and talk shit to others. Throw them in the hole rigbt next to all the micro-cocks driving those obnoxiously loud (and already illegal basically everywhere- but oddly cops don't seem to care about this law 🤔) trucks and cars with illegally modified exhausts. And Harley riders.......... open pit executions.... (after legal trials, etc.)
It just show that they believe that whole situation is really not that serious and that what is perceived as a their mistakes are more like consequences of everyone mistakes...
Thing is, Linus auctioning off that prototype, could actually land him in some serious legal trouble, possibly even criminal trouble. If I were one of the creators of that, I'd be talking with a lawyer about hitting LMG, and Linus himself with a massive lawsuit.
Best recap yet. Great work. One part of this story is that LTT had been bragging for a year about their new test lab and how awesome it was going to be, better than anyone else. Maybe on par with UL or Consumer Reports. So the deep hubris captured on that tour video was likely influenced by what they actually thought of themselves. They truly believed the new lab was the future of the company. And understandably, other creators already doing testing and lab work took notice. When an entity the size of LMG crossing onto your turf, you aren't going to ignore it. And once GN started looking at this new competitor, they realized it was all smoke and mirrors. They had to say waitaminute. I know Steve agonized about this. They were friends. It was Steve who called Linus one morning to warn him about his YT channel having been hijacked. He didn't have to look out for his competitor but it was the right thing to do. But make no mistake: LTT brought this on themselves with all the bragging about having the best test lab ever. They threw down and GN had no choice but to call them out.
So many young employees can relate to a ‘fast paced’ work environment where you’re encouraged to ‘stick up for yourself’ only to later be penalized for it. Especially women. Because when the employee does stick up for themselves, the boss is rarely ever actually impressed by the integrity and validity of the dissension, but rather incensed that a lowly worker dare ‘talk back and have an attitude’. They never actually want their staff to ‘be honest with them’, they just want to harass their own staff but pretend everybody has the right to do so, when really, they only give themselves the right AND an excuse to fire you.
Because it is. A lot of these issues should have been addressed without getting the public involved. The GPU prototype situation for example. It would have been easier to resolve it between BL and LTT. Instead, BL went public, which leads me to believe that he used the situation for clout. This is not to say that LTT isn't in the wrong, because they absolutely do deserve some of the blame and should take responsibility for their actions. Which they did, by making attempts to reacquire the prototype and return it to its rightful owner.
Linus mistakenly claimed in a video that PhysX is just about particles, a claim reminiscent of a teenager from the '90s. As a developer, I can clarify that PhysX often encompasses the game's entire physics, while particles are managed separately. They really need a game developer's insight, as they seem unaware of the inner workings of game development.
“You want me to spend money to ensure a project is done right and the information delivered from it is sound and accurate? That’s a terrible business decision! No I won’t read the instructions of anything I use!”
So they stole a company’s product and sold it to the highest bidder. Isn’t that illegal? Considering they gave it to them to test, review, and nothing more. Not to mention market manipulation.
She just blacklisted herself from an entire industry. Hopefully something comes of it, otherwise it's all wasted and did nothing but get some likes on a UA-cam video.
Seriously. No woman I know, including myself, has publicly spoken out against workplace/sexual abuse. My ex best friend had some horrifying experiences, only reported the least traumatizing incident (bc as we know the worse an experience is the harder it is to speak about) which was being bitten on the arm by a middle aged superior after he took a photo of her that she asked him to delete. The bite left a mark and at the time she was just focused on rubbing it away as her then-partner was controlling and jealous, didn't get a photo of it as evidence (I've also had the instinct to erase evidence as in the moment you just want to get it off of you - not necessarily a bad instinct as evidence is regularly discounted even if collected). When she reported him to someone in the organization, they were just like "oh well he's kind of more valuable to us so this puts us in an awkward situation.." and nothing came of it. Madison's bravery cannot be understated and you know some of the response is additional harassment rather than support.
My favorite part of their ‘apology’ is that they think having random swears or ‘hip language’ would make them seem more credible or relatable. It just makes them look even worse.
The backpack history is key to understand how messed up LMG got. Also, at the sorry video, the new CEO doesn't feel like in charge at all. As he was speeding I could see the strings attached. He acted as a puppet on Linus hands. All I heard from his mouth sounded like Linus's words.
@@moontrasher7023 It does feel that way, yeah -- remember when he explained the stepping-down, he said he will still own 51% of the company and Yvonne, his partner, the other 49% but Terren wasn't being-given stock. So... Linus is still Terren's boss, and cannot be fired by him 🤷🏻♂ (Oh and Luke doesn't have any stock either, from what I know. And while he is the head over at Floatplane, that is a subsidiary company wholly-owned by LMG.)
@@dftfire exactly!! Wong is simply the CEO In name. He has no real.control. I didn't know Luke didn't have shares. He deserves some for dealing with linus
This is so comprehensive and insightful. I also really appreciate the content warnings for the more sensitive section of the video. It's clear you care a lot about making high quality videos, Austin, your work is so appreciated.
The single biggest issue with the "trust me bro" warranty insanity is that it means Linus literally never gave a single thought to edge cases. He assumed that every issue would be either very clearly a manufacturing or LTT issue, or a customer issue. But what happens when Alice and Bob both drop their screwdriver from 20 meters up, both screwdrivers break, and Alice talks to Chuck, while Bob talks to Daniel. Chuck decides "yeah, that's covered" while Daniel decides "no, it's not" Bob sees a comment from Alice saying she's so happy that dropping her screwdriver was covered by the "trust me" warranty, and now Bob is furious, why wasn't his covered by the warranty? So he goes to check the warranty, and... it just says "trust me"? Does Bob need to keep calling back until he gets ahold of Chuck? If Alice drops her replacement, is it going to be covered this time? How are the people handling the warranty going to be trained to know what should or shouldn't be covered? When Eve calls in saying her screwdriver is broken because she tried to put it though a wood chipper, is that covered? Is that just luck of the draw? How safe do I need to treat a screwdriver if I buy one? If I use it like a chisel, is that allowed? "Trust me bro" also has to mean "I trust every single person on both sides to have exactly the same interpretation of what should and shouldn't be covered", and if you don't trust random people you've never met, and have never talked to, to have exactly the same idea of what's normal usage, and it's frankly absurd that anyone would even consider that as a potential option.
I mean, I don't know what your background is, but having done warranty work for a shockingly large company that has purchases ranging from a few hundred to 10k plus dollars, that is pretty much the process. The only exceptions really are the big cases that we know are going to cost the company money. Those tend to be passed to a "specialist" and presumably have a more standardized process. Beyond that, the only real difference between the real warranty and the "trust me bro" warranty is that we call it the "our discretion" warranty. The Daniel/Chuck scenario is avoided by having case files that we read before speaking to the customer. So if Daniel said one thing, I'm going to see it in his case notes and tell the customer the same thing. Behind the scenes, it's just people deciding based on their own opinions. There are guidelines to follow, of course, but after the shit I have seen, I can assure you that there is no perfect form that will fairly decide if a person qualifies for warranty or not. Our terms are vague on purpose. My entire job is opinion based (believe it or not) precisely because it's going to net a more fair and understandable result than some standardized process that'll have the company either taking back every little thing, or tons of people not qualifying. He's absolutely taking it too personally, and putting way too much stock in "his word," but I think people seeking out the official warranty are putting too much stock into that lmao.
She purposefully cut her leg open? There's something very wrong with that, to even think to seriously do that. I think she was right to leave LMG and I hope things go much better for her from now on. And I agree that she deserves credit for bringing her situation to light
I've seen people do the same and the effects of it. Their ill brain says, "I need a break, and I need a legitimate reason for it to not disappoint them!" and this is the result. Stress and poor mental health is an exceedingly bad combination, especially if you sprinkle on some toxic work conditions. I'm schizophrenic and have seen people just like her in the locked ward, they often hold themselves to an idea of how "they should be" instead of realizing they need to cut back on responsibilities. One girl had made a check list of how her life should be for each year at age 17, at 25 she had missed a lot of "checkmarks" and got so depressed and manic she had tried to end it all as she was so "behind". Pressure can be a very bad thing.
There's a point in the growth of every company where the owner-founder needs to be separated from operations by a layer of executives. And the reason is that the instincts that make you a good founder are in many cases contrary to the instincts of HR and public relations. Now combine that with the instincts that make you want to be a UA-camr, and you get responses like "I could fold this whole company and you couldn't do a thing about it and then you'd have NOTHING! So be grateful for your Chinese sweatshop backpack!"
I didn't watch them enough to know much of the specifics at all but I remember this being almost the exact case it seemed for Rooster Teeth at one point. Like I remember them having to do a TON of executive/job title restructuring. Interesting how a lot of these internet-based companies all seem vulnerable to this kind of leadership flaw once they get big enough
There's no way that they actually said "but the good news is" when writing to a company to say they auctioned off their unique, complicated prototype (after already using it wrong in a negative review) That's just absurd lmao
They should have gone with: "The good news is, at-least it's not just sitting on a shelf somewhere..." "...the bad news is, it's unlikely to ever sit on _your_ shelf ever-again" 🙃
Yea the way he tested and lost the 3090 then sold of someone else’s property, I don’t see anything indicating he had paid for it, but was given specifically for review… and never should have ended up being sold… This effects how I think about him now than anything else.
And the "good news" weren't even good news either. That was quite literally a nice-sounding way of LMG telling Billet that they (LMG) deem the proto-type to be useless to both LTT AND even to Billet themselves! Because why would it "just sit on a shelf somewhere" otherwise? They may as well have written: "wat would you want that useless piece of junk back for anyway?" instead! They're still adding insult to injury even while trying to be nice! 🤦♂️ It also comes off quite belittling to start off an apology for something as egregious as that with "the good news is...", doesn't it?
I assume I was recommended this video because I’m a Gamers Nexus subscriber and former LTT subscriber (I unsubbed quite some time ago when Linus was mortally offended that his 100 employees might want to unionize). So I had already independently watched every single video you covered, and read all of the content. I have to say: you did a great job, and it really makes me think you’re trustworthy to watch on topics I know nothing about. I love finding someone who clearly puts in effort and is seemingly trustworthy!
Unions aren't all that great. They hurt the company as they have to pay the union heads and it makes it really hard to discipline/fire people. Not only that, but Union bosses are the ones who reap the benefits. Not the low guy on the totem pole. Unions are also notorious for being corrupt and thieves. They don't exist to protect you, they exist to extort you.
Sorry to hear about what Billet Labs had to go through. At least small manufacturer's know to stay clear of LTT as there is real risk of them doing damage to your company like that.
The "Trust me Bro" shirts, what the boss doesn't get is that most people got that shirt to make fun of how ridiculous it is, not to support him. As to their limited lifetime warranty, it is *mostly* standard. It covers product defects, not normal wear and tear or misuse. The only thing there that's off is the cosmetic damage part. That's usually a major reason why many items are returned, and a great many places will put stuff at huge discounts if it has cosmetic damage. If I received a new item from them that had cosmetic damage, I'd want to return it, and it looks like I wouldn't be able to.
i've seen linus' face before but had no frame of reference for the LTT channel. i'm super grateful that both you and other people are explaining and analyzing this in plain language and warning consumers about this unethical behavior.
Allegedly. Not saying it did or didn't happen though it's insane that he stated it as 'the truth' only on the fact that he thinks 'the response makes him seem guilty'? I mean Linus might be a jackass, I don't know the man, but that no proof of anything. Even IF there was proof on side claiming this to be false against Madison, there hes not allowed to say it publicy according to privacy laws. When he did he would harm more as well for the 'big tech channel' jumping on a harmless woman. Also when there was sexual unpleasant behavior you go to the manager ( which according to her didn't help, just made it worse) and the police after that. As a manager myself, I have seen instances of both sides of the coin and in this day and age woman are not spotless anymore either. In the past it was an easy, believe her, these days however I encounter more and more false claims ( not saying it's what she does here), so there is another side to all this. Which is just, if not more in some cases, destructive for the other person and their reputation.
@@ronnochopper so anyone can make any random allegation and we'll consider that true? Funny how none of the other female ex-employees have made any such allegations.
I'm confused. Why would Linus Tech Tips auction off something not only that they didn't own, but KNEW they didn't own? That's like me renting a car, then turning around and selling it and being confused why the car rental company was so angry.
They often get sent things to keep. If you're not part of the email chain with the sending company, but are part of the team selecting the auction items, it's easy to see why you would assume that this thing in your warehouse is fair game.
That whole business with the prototype just boggles my mind. What they did is like trying to test a Mac software on a Windows machine and then saying that it's bad because it doesn't work. Like, whut??? It flies in the face of proper testing, or, you know,... properly using tech...
You did a great job! Canadian here, I've always felt bad vibes from LTT, so I'm not surprised at all. I also just wanted to add that the Madison accusations* remind me of what happened culturally at Blizzard where a bunch of loser tech bros thought that their abhorrent behaviour, which highlights their inability to interact appropriately with women, is something they could just get away with indefinitely.
You got one side of what happened. Of course the girl is going to make it sound as bad as possible, she's likely gearing up for a lawsuit. Don't believe all "victims" until they're proven to be one. Too many people lie about this stuff these days looking for a paycheck or revenge. I don't think she's outright lying, but she's not telling the truth, either. I'm sure SOME of those things happened, but I'd imagine blame can be spread around to all parties.
@@wysteria. I wouldn't know. I don't like soft spoken sissies that can't even figure out basic things and accurately report on the most simplistic of things. Just because he's wrong doesn't make the other side right, though. I don't like anyone in this situation and I'd be entertained watching all of them self destruct. Including Linus.
i used to watch LTT back in the day when i had a lot more time to dedicate to gaming and following tech. i started to get weird vibes and unsubscribed in a purge of a lot of tech/gaming channels that gave me the vibe that they probably didn't think i deserve rights lol. it's really unfortunate to see this and i can't pretend to know or remember what specifically made me drop LTT back then but I'm unfortunately not surprised. this feels like something that will continue to happen with these huge youtube media companies. a lot of them were/are established in a non traditional way, with no real HR dept, hiring friends or acquaintances, letting people do conflicting roles. it's inevitable that there's room for mistreatment and mismanagement and with progress comes the ability for more people to come forward and tell their stories. i hope madison finds some resolution out of all of this, i'm glad people aren't letting that experience and story be ignored. thanks for covering this! i didn't know about this situation until you mentioned it in a previous video and was looking forward to your coverage
I think humans have an ability to detect psychos, we just need to trust it more. I used to binge Gus Johnson content including his podcast but I started getting weird vibes from their content so I stopped watching. About a year or two later it came out he had been abusive and generally a dick to his then girlfriend. Trust your gut, folks.
These people don't know how businesses/corporations run. HR is there for a reason. Legal is there for a reason. Verification and smoke testing exists for a reason. But, they're greedy and they want to run as lean as possible to ensure the people at the top still get their 7 figure salaries. It wouldn't shock me to find out that their business taxes weren't paid or the books were cooked.
@@marishiten5944 LTT has both HR and legal teams lmao. HR is and always has been a way for companies to save face and avoid lawsuits. their entire point is being on the companies side. same with legal. They're under their pay bro... and no way they'd even wanna cook books because business taxes are low as fuck already. and how would smoke tests help anyone lmao
I feel so bad for billet labs. What they did was so unbelievably cruel. Edit 1: Just got to the Madison thing. Dear lord. Edit 2: imagine using your wife as a human shield in a response video about a ton of terrible allegations. This guy is insane. Edit 3: the fucking gut to produce this ...thing as an "apology". Force people who (possibly) know nothing, have nothing to do with this situation, AND try to sell shit is un.fucking.real.
I have one question. Did the Linus Family I mean Earing Dude and his Wife ever shitpost something? No? then please don't be a judge. This all seems like media drama and sympathy is the big weapon.
Not even an apology to the girl who was literally assaulted at work. That’s just messed up. That should of been the first apology. Was to the workers and to her specifically.
Oof that corporate apology video was rough... Thanks for covering this, I don't find myself on the tech side of UA-cam but it's interesting to hear what's going on.
A while back I was looking into getting a new PC and I watched several LTT videos. I quickly became frustrated with the channel because it seemed that whenever he built anything he A)never read any instructions and B) installed a random component wrong. He would then laugh it off. That's when I decided to not trust his opinion. I was not aware of the whole Madison situation, but I'm not really surprised.
I watched several of the pc building shows and I felt Linus was the least informed with the other guy attempting to guide Linus. Yep, some problem comes up and they end up with a Frankenstein monster they're surprised even works instead of ever going to plan because Linus is too much of a wildcard. I thought Linus let go of the business long time ago but totally cringe to see him have fun with his Trust Me Bro t-shirt
Having his wife say that she’s “putting her foot down” about their work life balance strikes me as misogynistic. Rather than accepting the criticism, it frames her as a nag. Linus seems like a massive asshole to say the least
"My brother calls me M-Dog", it sucked to hear her brother passed away and then have untra out-of-touch golden child Linus treat that like it was nothing. He will learn the suffering of losing loved ones one day, and when that happens, I hope he remembers to "Change his priorities" too. Out of all of this, the treatment of Madison is the worst in my eyes. I hope she is doing better.
Dude tech bros make a company and then people realize said company is riddled with dude tech bro behaviour. While we would all like to think people would take a moment to when their business takes off to reflect and mature, and do important HR things... Yeah that doesn't often happen unfortunately. I feel so bad for Madison, it sounds like they played her from before she even signed the contract, and I hope she's able to recover from this and find future success. I've fortunately only watched LTT a few times, and I'm glad it was only a few because...just wow.
Because it doesn't affect them and they clearly didn't care. I've been at 2 startups that grew past the point where they should do something about it but didn't. It's way too common, but it's even worse when you realise they're aware and just don't care at all.
I'm so glad Jenny and Maxine got out when they did. Major props for giving Madison's voice the time and care she deserves. It is such an important indicator of work culture.
More women should have stayed… leaving without correcting the issues concentrate it on the remaining women. They abandoned her and ran away. When it was one dude. Had she not been on her own she would not have been subjected to this bs at all. Perhaps someone else who was more happy with the attention, contact, and promotional attributes. Without feeling abused falsely.
pazsion another grossly wrong statement of yours. No, it's not and never has been these Jenny's and Maxone's duty to stay and continue to take a portion of the abuse, so that it doesn't concentrate as much on Madison! That's just crazy! Try: "more men (ik, not a single one actually did) should have stepped up and tried to stop the abusers", how bout that? It's not women's responsibility to stay in an abusive situation in order to protect one another from more abuse. That just leads to more women being abused! It's the men's responsibility to not abuse their female co-workers and to not tolerate other men doing it! This isn't on the female employees who left LTT before Madison, this on the managers who abused Madison and on anyone in a position of power at LTT who knew about this but did nothing! Honestly, your reply to OP is sickening. In the first two comments I read by you, I did my hardest to give you the benefit of the doubt. But after reading this, I can't believe your being naive anymore. I hate to say this, but it sounds like you kind of *condone* the reported behavior of LTT staff against women.
@@pazsionmake sure you keep that same energy for yourself. when you're in an abusive situation, make sure YOU stay as long as possible and fail to change anything and lose your mental health and feel worthless. Make sure YOU stay.
@@janmaker227it is abuse. if you're afraid of that word in what is clearly abuse and deplorable behaviour, you may also be part of the problem. if you can't see that, you either are a victime, or the perpetrator (or even both but that's not an excuse, just a sad reality).
Truly the new quintessential video on this topic. The only other thing you could have gotten into is Linus's history of acting sketchy, defensive, and making comments that were blatantly anti workers rights, and he dismissed protections that could have prevented situations like this.
By protections, I'll assume you mean allowing the staff to unionise. In which case... _would_ it have definitely prevented the current situations? The Madison issue, perhaps, as a union-rep could represent her in meetings. But for the other stuff, like the BL cooler auction, or data-inaccuracies in videos, or stuff like not offering a warranty on their backpacks from about a year ago -- is any of that the remit of a union? 🤔
@dftfire he was asked about employee protections generally which I would assume includes a safe working environment. He said something along the lines of "if there is an issue so pressing you can take it up with me, and if it's an issue with me you can go to Yvonne." This is obviously absurd, and things like this are what make issues like abuse so rampant and easy to take place under their watch.
32:00 -> That is exacly the misconception about LTT: They are not build on the back of testing and reviewing. They are coming from tech tips, meming, janky builds and mods, they are just in the process of becoming a source of seriuos testing and reviewing. Linus and parts of LTT are very focused on where they want to be in that serious space, and sometimes neglect to tell the viewers, that they are not there yet.
Yes they always seemed "cool" tech and jokey shit with some tech stuff built in. I never thought Linus actually nerded out on the tech stuff, just cool gadgets or components.
Best break-down of the LTT situation i've seen. I personally never got Linus' appeal- i always found him annoying and phony. I hope that he and his company get what they deserve.
I find him tolerable in short-doses, such as quick 10-15 minute reviews or comedy segments. But I have-felt in recent months on the WAN Show, he just seems overly-tired and irritable. By the time they get to the main "Merch Messages" hours in, he's usually so tired he misreads or misunderstands the viewer's questions, then gets snappy, calling it "a dumb question" or "that's just stupid". Remember... these are people who HAVE PAID to ask that question! And if it's not that, it's usually him going on about his wealth (talking about his pool, home-renovations or latest car), or that ever-funny 🙄 anecdote about how his phone doesn't understand his "call Yvonne home" request. Can't wait for when that comes up... yet another 10 minutes we'll spend on that!
I stopped listening to LTT in early Covid. It was just hard to get through Linus's smarmy behaviors, and I kept thinking how he must be all sweaty and smelly under that stocking cap. I'm glad he no longer wears that thing.
From the very beginning LTT has been a comedy/entertainment platform first, and an actual source of tech information a distant second, if at all. Taking LTT seriously on tech is a *very* good filter for weeding out people who don't actually have a clue about tech. I've never met an LTT fan who I'd trust far enough to replace a stick of RAM.
Years ago I watched him as someone unfamiliar with the things he covers, and I don't recall having any issues with him. He came off as personable and intelligent. Very inoffensive. But I fell out of interest with those topics and unsubscribed. Pretty wild I keep hearing about him now only because of controversies...
the Billet Labs situation is INSANE, how could LMG just recklessly sell a prototype owned by a small company without permission??? AND it staled the company's progress?? LMG didn't even bother to test the prototype correctly and just proclaimed it was not worth buying, that kind of comment coming a from a really big youtuber could kill that company in a heartbeat
The BL situation is... a mixed-picture. The two facts overall are: LMG used the wrong GPU in their "video" (some claim it was never supposed to be a review, so let's be neutral), and that when BL asked for it to be returned, they agreed, but later auctioned it off. The grey-areas though are: when BL sent the cooler to begin with, was it on the basis of a proper review, or was that not agreed? And if not-having their proto was such a massive issue for them, why did the initially say that LMG could keep it for use in future-videos?
It’s like austin is the left side of the brain and nick is the right side, together they make intelligent and creative content that informs as much as it entertains. Love this era of UA-cam tea!
Austin does sometimes make mistakes, (pocket station predating the VMU(via US launch date)for example, but at least he makes things fun with Ken and the others. Linus' staff seem tense most of the time
He turned his exploitation into a meme. Hey im not exploiting you, its just a meme guys. Linus is a sociopath, he just hasn't firgured it out yet. Yes sociopaths can be relativly mundane compared to what most people think when they hear the word.
Linus is very much a narcissistic person, is highly competitive (🙄) and cannot see himself being wrong (and if he does, he blames someone else for his actions, or try to minimise his involvement into situations)
It’s seems like he’s being harassed He normally would and has in prevpoints in time taken acccoutability and admitted wrongs. Even on live. Or pre recorded. Why the hell is he so stressed out?
I'm not over how insanely misogynist the entire thing from his wife is. that's not his fucking mother, that's his WIFE. "its wrong and i told him that >:(" so now he can play it off as his bitchy naggy wife correcting him even though really HE didn't think he did anything wrong. the fact that ANYONE agreed to be in this video just speaks to the company culture as a whole. this is almost worse than the fucking ukulele - imagine if colleen hired ed sheeran to sing the first verse
I hate to break it to you. Often being the wife is being the husbands mother somedays, just as the husband often has to be more like the father. You pick eachother up when you are down.
@@HontasFarmer80 i totally get that. IMO i just dont think picking the other up when they're down should mean having your partner go in front of millions of subscribers and scold you like a child...i still dont get his goal with it, its embarrassing
Funny thing was there was a smaller tech channel that actually called Linus out for their mistake with Billet Labs when the video first came out but Steve defended Linus on twitter and attacked that small channel.
I watched LTT a while ago because it was fun. It had the feeling of a bunch of guys who love tech having fun with it. I stopped watching after they lost that feeling by becoming too corporate feeling and when the clickbait titles got too annoying. Hearing all this is saddening and maddening. I hope the victims of this work environment get justice.
the madison stuff breaks my heart. she was my favourite onscreen talent at ltt. i liked her energy, personality, work, and general approach to the videos she was included in a lot. always wondered where she disappeared to. guess i know now. its even worse bc i remember her being a self described fan of Linus. probably rlly looked up to him.
Oh wow, if you injure yourself for no reason… that’s on you, that’s insane… It doesn’t do any good for her story either. It does come off as overly dramatic, but maybe she is a very emotional person.
@pazsion damn, you're naive! 🤢 It's quite common for famous public figures to abuse fans who work for them, both because fans can be annoying, but also because they know they can get away with it, because fans tolerate much more abuse from their idols than they would from anyone else. Getting to work for a public figure you're a big fan of, only for their company and that very public figure themselves to harass and mistreat you and shit all over your work can seriously f@ck a sane person up to the point of self-harm and even worse. Using the fact she committed self-harm as ammunition to discredit her testimony is very misguided and suggests a worrying lack of empathy.
@@pazsionI don't know her nor do you and it sounds disingenuous to dismiss a cry for help. If she had a history of crying wolf or being emotional then it's on you to prove it. A better response would hope to have her seek help. It's less possible to show grace when that person is directly abusive or distructive to you personally. Idk, Not invested in this really but try not to be dismissive when possible. Its a wonderful thing to be heard.
He has a multi million dollar company. I’m sure he would be extremely upset if project farms did not review his screwdriver fairly Also that trust me bro, shenanigans and then trying to profit off It, that was absolutely disgusting shows how much he truly cares about his community; shows his true colours. LTT/LMG has zombie fans that will buy anything from the get go if he says so He even jokes about it saying “if I tell people to buy more screw drivers they do.” Because his company is valued so much it would be expected to have warranty from the get go. He said don’t trust manufacturers or companies they are not your friend. I’m saying that I’m not going to just “trust you bro”
Yeah, about a year ago on "warranty-gate" he said the backpacks wouldn't have one as if he were to die, that would mean his family would then have to burden any return, repair or refund requests, and that he doesn't feel company warranties are usually worth the paper they're printed on, anyway. Yet despite that, he has criticised companies himself in the past for... not offering warranties! 🙃
The thing that angered me the most was the accusation of journalistic malpractice against Steve Burke. In matters of fact, you do not need to reach out to the other side. You do so when you do not have objective facts and there is room for interpretation. And even if so, a wrong fact does not automatically make a whole piece wrong. Like you not getting the roles within LMG right. Head of HR/CFO was Linus Sebastian's wife Yvonne. The insider jokes in the apology video were misplaced because the audience for that was bound to be different. And the introduction of their CEO could have been done differently. The only way to handle this would have been the resignation of Linus Sebastian and that being announced in that video. All of this was so so bad.
Thanks for the thorough video. I appreciate it all laid out. I will say it rubbed me the wrong way that you criticized the guy whose supposed to be behind the scenes and not be on camera being frog marched to be in the hostage video about how nothing he's responsible for is f'd up. It was cruel to put him there, and a bit cruel to expect him to have camera ready delivery.
Listen. I'm sorry, but the billet labs cooler thingy not being good is the most idiotic point Linus could have ever made. It's a PROTOTYPE. It is not the final product. Not by a mile.
I blocked Linus Tech Tips from being suggested to me 10 YEARS AGO at least! Why? Because I found Linus to be arrogant even back then, always boasting how he gets products for free! I also found that he lied about some things (don't ask me what, it was too long ago for me to remember now) and caught him making mistakes with reviews. And I did not even watch his videos a lot back then, maybe saw about 5-10 before I blocked UA-cam from showing me his content. I used to be a tech professional myself, both as a programmer and as a systems builder (building PCs to match customers needs, not gaming though, business) so I had some insight as to what he was doing. Seeing some of the clips today on this video just confirms my gut instinct about him back then.
Honestly best breakdown I've seen of the situation. It was two hours long but I was genuinely interested and captivated the entire time, good clip selection, long enough you got the pint but not overloading with the amount of info.
Nice Summary. But please stop calling that PR (disaster) video an apology video. They barely apologize to Billet Labs and take no responsibility to thier wrong except pay to cover it.
How is BL supposed to bill them? They've lost time, product, engineering, prototypes, and emotional suffering (not to mention contacts and potential employee's in the industry). How do you even put a price tag on something like that? It'd be several million dollars at the least. I highly doubt LTT is willing to cover those costs.
@@lifequest7453 Linus looks like one of those television/film actors that look happy and a wonderful to be a round but when the cameras are off them they become the worlds biggest assholes.
I've said before we have a manchild epidemic right now. There are a lot. A LOT. Of manchildren. And they have no shame. They want wives who act like their mothers and lack the ability to do anything but line their shelves with Funko Pops and talk about how Starfield having a pronoun selector is an affront to their personhood and ruins their "escapism".
I think it's going to be difficult making a worse apology vid than this...I THINK. I don't know. UA-camrs keep topping it. I really don't think it's that hard to make a genuine apology, but youtubers act like it's rocket science.
So how's the situation now? I'm actively shocked about what is going on. After the apology video, in the first WAN show it's business as usual. I can imagine, that the comments are full of questions, and all I expected from them was, to at least dedicate the first WAN show after the incident, to a Q&A session dedicated only to answer the questions of their community. Because, you know, that's how every other creator does it to gain back trust, and how transparency actually works. And I'm even more shocked, that the community actually doesn't care. I have heard nothing more about any of it, and it seems like it's never happened. Your hope about the CEO addressing all that, and that we will learn more about it, is bust. And it's actually even more shocking, that their views are still there, and their subscriptions are almost at the same number as before. After hearing about what Madison wrote, I went on the channel tab from LTT, and unsubscribed from every channel. It's really hard to engage in any more content of them anymore. And I can't believe how everything we see here goes against "transparency" and "honest apology" "reformation", even the reactions ABOUT (releasing on floatplane first), IN and AFTER the apology video itself. Now I'm just asking myself, at what point did Linus go evil? Was it always like that? Does he have some kind of very "distorted" world view about the whole topic, so that it somehow feels "right" for him? What's the matter? A deep trauma indeed, also for the community that has been following for a long time.
Somewhat unrelated, hopefully funny for you too: that mouse brand that got unfairly bonked in one of those crappy ltt videos should've revisioned their product to include an X-shaped protection sticker that also cover the sensors, so that the mouse wouldn't work at all until you investigated it and removed the sticker, then proceed to call that foolproof revision "LTT Proof" or something hilarious like that. As for the community not caring, my man... This is unfortunately the new normal, fleeting attention spans are getting worse every year and people just move on from branch to branch without a care in the world.
Linus' company seems to still be stuck in a teenager mindset from 2008. Whoever says, "Calm your tits," is already discrediting this company. Game over for Linus, period.
Coming from a corporate environment full of immature abusive management (including my direct manager threatening my job for contradicting him on work related technical details in front of other teammates and all of next level management brushing it off, and then ineffective HR essentially blaming me) the second half was hard to watch 😢 (i finally quit that employer)
I can't believe how many jokes and merch plugs were in what should have been a very serious and professional apology. It's extremely concerning that they are STILL making light of the situation.
i love long form videos so much, and this was such a TREAT! so well researched and made me care about a topic i had NO interest in prior. really happy you’re making content!!!
Is watching random, long-form videos just a thing I've missed or something? I watch long-form videos for stuff I'm interested in... but I'd never watch a random video of this length on a topic I had no-interest in. And yet a lot of people commenting here had no-idea beforehand (1) who Linus was, (2) that there was any drama going on and (3) aren't interested in tech. So... I'm just puzzled what's bring so-many people to this video? 🤷🏻♂
Ikr I normally don’t watch videos on shows I’m not interested in or channels idk but I clicked on it and haven’t considered clicking off and I’m halfway through
@dftfire a lot of people found Austin's channel through his brother Nick, who has a bigger channel/audience (not to say that Austin didn't earn his place as a content creator, I just think most people are watching this video without knowing about the drama as a way of supporting someone just starting out) Either way the video is really well-made and comprehensive though
![CWC 4th Listening Session with Speaker Prof. Dr. Ilia Delio OSF [ENGLISH]](/img/n.gif)
"We didn't want to hurt this small company. We wanted no one to buy their product" is a wild statement to send out to the world. 2023 is the year of youtubers telling on themselves
And 2024 is the year of true colours being shown
So Linus was willing to pay $150,000 to fly out some content creators, but not willing to pay to $200-500 USD to do a proper re-test on the right graphics card for a prototype they got.. and then would not return the prototype and instead auction it off.. makes no sense.
He he was so cheap he didn’t buy a 15$ dollar note book for someone he was employing
Makes sense concerning where priorities lie 😬😬
it does now because the fact that he spent that much to fly people out makes good advertisement on his part (its all for show and not out of generosity)
Was gonna say same.. But there is difference, that prototype wouldn't bring as much money than adverticement from all those content creators.
@@tehhymnofvalefor explains why luke broke off
I only started paying attention to LTT this year and it's so funny how Linus goes on these big rants that totally miss the point only for Luke to say one small thing that actually is the point and Linus goes "well, whatever."
This genuinely made me stop watching the WAN show. I used to watch all the time (pretty much every week) but I got sick of earing linus have a massive rant about something while I'm sat thinking "but that isn't the point Linus" for Luke to then say "That's not the point Linus" and Linus usually say "but it is to me" or "well, It doesn't matter"
Like the whole "Trust me bro" situation on the warranties. It was never about his reputation or what we believed he would do if something were to go wrong with a backpack but the complete lack of answers and guarantees they were willing to give as a corporation that's selling a product. This is just the biggest example I can think of off the dome
now's the perfect time for Scott Tech Tips
@@willybean9614 he has a multi million dollar company
With over 100 staff, why didn’t anyone pick up on this having warranty as requirement?
They must be a bunch of yes men, with no Back Bone
Or too scared what Linus would do
It's why I've been watching for half a decade.
@@willybean9614Not only that, Linus literally sold a Prototype by putting up in auction that was given to him by a small company for " Review " & to be returned after finishing the review. Now Linus reply is Oh I thought u have given me that, oops. I mean It's straight up robbery.
The job of HR is to prevent law suits from employees. Not help employees.
...ok? they did a pretty bad job then. if it werent for the fact that this is in canada this would be an incredibly easy lawsuit. that would also mean the blame is 100% on LMG for all of it lmao
Oh man, Luke looks so uncomfortable in those podcast episodes whenever Linus brought up "trust me bro"
Luke nearly always looks uncomfortable, its why I stopped watching.
Them putting another company's one of a kind prototype up for auction is insaneee. Literally how were they able to go through with that?? That's so fucked up
it really feels like it should be illegal
giving it away, understandable perhaps, but holding an auction? kind of gross and gives off profiting from another person's work sort of thing
@@bard2555if billet labs has it in writing that lmg agreed to return the prototype after filming the video, then there’s really no question on the legality of what they did. billet should absolutely sue them for damages imo
@@lyleugleman9799 If you look at the e-mail they show in the "Colton" part of their apology-video, BL do mention that LMG had previously agreed to them they would return the prototype before it got auctioned.
However... BL originally (when they assumed LMG would use the correct GPU in testing their cooler AND would hopefully like it) said LMG could "keep it for use in future projects". So it is a bit-misleading when some are now saying by not-returning it, BL "could have gone under" when initially they were fine with never having it returned.
@@dftfirethey were fine with him keeping it so that he could use it in future videos for comparison, etc. but they never gave him permission to sell it.
That's like getting a PR package, not doing the videos agreed in the PR pack, and then refusing to return it.
Yes, he did do the 1sr vid, but the agreement was that he could keep it "if it was for future projects.
@@SavageMinnow Is it like what you say, though?
None of us know what was actually agreed in-writing between BL and LMG. I'd argue that if BL wanted a guaranteed glowing-review they should have paid for a sponsored one. If they sent it purely "hoping" that LMG would review it positively, then they have to expect there is always the chance they may not have.
Now, that's not to excuse LMG for using the wrong GPU in the video, and so I think it's right for BL to then request it back. And it's a total-failing on LMG's side to then accidentally sell it off. But they did offer to fully compensate BL for the cooler, and during this whole debacle BL has received endlessly goodwill and free-marketing, and I bet gained some extra pre-orders.
So... I'm not-really sure why people are still going-on about this issue? 🤷🏻♂
for reference, HR is NOT on the side of the worker. HR as a dept. was incepted on the ideal of keeping business “in-house”. they dont want employees to go public with corporate grievances in the aim of maintaining positive PR for the company and keeping it on-the-low so they, like austin mentioned in the video, “can keep the profits rolling”. they present themselves as being a middleman between the heads and the hands of a business, when they would chop a hand off at the slightest chance of screwing up “the happy little family”. it’s corporate abuse by self-personification/anthropomorphizing a corporate entity at the emotional expense of their workers FOR the fiscal savings they want to keep growing hand-over-fist.
This. The solution is: meticulous note taking. Regular screenshots and forwarding of the communication, with visible participants. Always circling back and confirming verbal arrangements in writing. That and giving yourself a timeframe in which if nothing improves you will leave.
I agree that HR started out with devious intentions, but I don’t think it’s quite fair to villanise an entire career. I have a family member who works in HR and I have seen firsthand how HR SHOULD work. Good HR does exist, they just tend not to hire the people who genuinely care about others and want to make a safe, healthy, and functioning workplace in favour of those who will put profit above people.
I do agree with the comment above me though; keep records! Always have copies of emails and keep receipts of how you are being treated if you think something fishy is going on or if your boundaries are/have been crossed. My same family member always keep receipts to protect her ass and make sure people can’t use things against her.
@@haechansabeoji you’ve made a lot of coherent points that i agree with, although in this circumstance i would characterize it differently. we scrutinize police because they act with impunity *even when armed by the state & killing innocent civilians* . here, i’d liken HR as a career to that and be so bold as to claim “good” HR staff to the WORKER is quite different to a “good” HR staff to the corporate owners. even in circumstances where they do the right thing, the over-arching duties of their job are going to regularly pit them against their coworkers at the behest of the execs. and 9 times outta 10, the will of the execs trumps the will of the individual worker involved in any incident where they feel warranted in filing a complaint being referred to HR. the ppl who work in an HR dept. can be great ppl just like cops, but often in acting as a cop, you diametrically oppose the rights of the civilian in front of you for your job’s imposed “duties” upon you. i hope this rant makes sense to anyone else reading lol
@@haechansabeojiit's the ACAB philosophy, really.
Yeah, there may be good individuals in the field, but the practice itself is corrupt and abusive.
The best any individual in the field can do is IN SPITE of the HR system.
@@eneyavorodeckyand unionizing!!
My last job the HR director was a member of the senior leadership and the best friend of the CEO. It was BAD. Particularly cause the CEO was causing a lot of the problems. She’d immediately tell the CEO about any complaints and then the CEO would confront that person by surprise. HR should always be separate from leadership.
And if they were, it would be the HR guys at risk every time they bring a complaint up to the big kahuna instead of properly "managing" the "human resources". You have human rights only if you have leverage and the loss of your contribution would be felt by the company.
If the CEO is a problem then HR that isn't on his side will be ignored or treated as an obstacle.
@@WiggaMachiavelliyea, the main point of HR is to protect the company. Everything else is just based off the morals of who's working there
@@twoozyuzi2215 HR has a significant role in risk-management but it's not uncommon for executives and senior management to obstinately spurn the advice they receive from HR. HR can be doing its job to protect the company and a lunatic, pervert or cowboy chief executive will cause problems in spite of it.
@@twoozyuzi2215 Absolutely. The difference between good HR and bad HR management is their ability to reduce or eliminate risk. This means they are good at either covering up or preventing abuse. Often it is a mixture of both. It is obvious that HR is enabling Linus's bad behavior, which is bad for the company, hence is not doing a very good job.
The absolute worst part of all this is literally nothing changed. They got away with it and the community supported that. Views were not affected, subscriptions were not affected, and as far as I can tell their video cadence was not affected. They won, their employees lose. Madison lost.
Millions flies can't be wrong: shit is good!
Yeah sadly the core fanbase of LMG is the entitled gamer type who defends crunch and thinks harassment like that is just good business as long as the end product’s good
My partner who didn't know much about the situation watched the apology video with me and he said 'there are way too many jokes for an apology video'.
I unsubbed from all the channels after that. That shitty response ended my 12 year stint of being a LTT fan.
They got away with this mess because short Canadian man funny. urgh.
They did lose a lot of fp subscriptions, I remember reading about the money they lost due to that. Also, people don't see them the same way as before, even if they still watch their stuff. They are a bunch of clowns entertaining you, not a source of factual information.
But I do agree M-Dog (Madison) got zero compensation for how they treated her (or is it "they"? If so, no disrespect meant.), and that is the worst part in all of this.
Linus: Do you really think we're going to ruin our reputation over a $250 backpack?
Also Linus: Do you really think we're going to spend another $500 of peoples time to correct a poorly performed, reputation damaging review?
👌
He is such a fkn knob....
them literaly putting sponsors in a apology video is acually insane😭😭
They didn't. They joked about it, which is only slightly better. They also initially monetized this video.
@@jannegrey593they plugged their merch, which is the same thing as a sponsorship
@@jannegrey593 uh, no they did. Edgy ads and product placement are still ads and product placement. I haven't thought about the company they mentioned in probably a year and could've forgotten about them, and now I instinctively think about them when thinking about this drama. It was actually a very successful brand awareness promotion
@@jannegrey593 and don't forget that they actually _paywalled the apology_ as well. "Pay us $5 now if you're curious about the drama and want to see how we wriggle ourselves out of this one before everyone else!"
iconic
my husband works in the gaming industry and he has been using ltt for years. i sent it to him and hes passed it on to all his colleagues. no one is happy. thank you for sharing this, its so important and ive seen nothing else about it
? How does one use LTT? It's a channel. Not a product. And why would someone who's in the "gaming industry" rely on some guy on the Internet with no credibility or education? Why would he even NEED to see what LTT is saying about things? If he works for NVIDIA or AMD, he's an Engineer and he doesn't need the word of some random person, since there's plenty of checks/balances in terms of hardware development on a TEAM. If he's a "developer", it's not like LTT understands or gives instructions on how to optimize source code to ensure stability and eek out performance.
What are you talking about?
@@marishiten5944 maybe they're talking about the products(the water bottles, mousepads, clothing, bags and screwdrivers) also their reviews impact purchases, and the way the consumers treat their tech as its one of the bigger tech channels here.
@@marishiten5944damn calm down
@@marishiten5944👶🍼
Clearly OP meant using LTT as a journalistic and review resource. LTT had a huge sub base and it’s not surprising that people in the industry would be interested in seeing what they have to say about certain products.
Why did they make Linus's wife apologize for him as if it was her fault for not reining him in...
She is part owner so she would be partly responsible for how the company is run. Still, the language used is weird. It comes up in the Luke segment and occasionally in other LMG interviews as if it's just accepted that part of working at the company is "dealing with this manbaby" which would explain a lot.
@@randomwerewolf1099Yeah, it’s weird that she was the one apologizing on behalf of him for some things. Obviously, as part owner, she shared responsibility, but some of the allegations and stuff refer to Linus specifically and for her to be speaking about it is weird?
I think that more than anything in any of the videos referenced, the fact that they had his wife apologize for not reining him in is the clearest indication of how they see women. That is a very old fashioned notion, that the role of women is to back up, support, and rein in their men, who are children who can't function without this support (but also when they can't function, it's the woman's fault). This is demeaning to both men (or at least to those men who would like to be perceived as adults) and women, and for the longest time was used as the justification for why women shouldn't have lives outside of the home. The language they had his wife use is a textbook example of 'when someone shows you who they are, believe them'.
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She's the other CFO. That's why. Tho apologising for not keeping her man child husband under control is weird.
I had a realization and need to put it somewhere people will see it.
When the CEO pops up the second time in the apology video and says "creampuff piece"...
That was autocorrect. Had to be right? They didn't even proofread their apology script addressing allegations of misconduct and sloppy output. Well, LINUS didn't proofread it or allow anyone to proofread it. The tone of the apologies lines up with how he's "apologised" in the past. Amazing.
something i'm surprised that nobody at all is mentioning with regards to this whole thing is linus' stance on unionizing. maybe not a lot of people remember this, but there was some controversy with LTT in the past because of remarks linus made about unionizing, claiming that "if you have a good boss, you don't need to unionize" which really plays back into this whole attitude he has where he believes the very act of verifying his trustworthiness is a sign of distrust and therefore an insult. it's a huge red flag that really sheds some unsavory light on the way he runs his company.
Yes, I remember that. He thinks he was such a fantastic boss that people must be insane to not give him absolute power.
@@informitas0117it’s his business….
Two things:
1. I’m sorry if I just happened to miss this in the video but I don’t think it was mentioned. Part of the reason that Linus’ wife was in the “apology” video was likely because she used to be head of HR. Specifically, she would have been head of HR around the time (or shortly before) Morgan worked there. So she very likely intimately knew about the Morgan situation and the complaints that she had tried to lodge.
2. Not a lot of people outside of the company know this, but LTT keeps track of all of their testing data on Microsoft Excel. Which is great for small sets of data, but is notorious for messing up large sets of data, like say the thousands of variables recorded when they do testing for comparison videos. ESPECIALLY if you ever try to copy and paste something. So for anyone who ever worked with those excel spreadsheets, it’s not shocking that the data that ended up in the videos was messed up.
His wife shouldn't be the head of HR - especially if she isn't an actual HR professional. Linus' corporate business is a shit-show of amateurs....
@@ILikeStyx"hr professional" LOL!
@@ILikeStyx she shouldn't be CFO either... She says it herself... but this is the unfortunate reality of startups that bring people along without properly adjusting them to the expectations of the role that they are taking on.
What a bunch of BS - have you seen what people build in excel? You don't need to like Mickeysoft and that shitty tool BUT to say it messes up data is just hilarious.
@@HobokerDev Whata funny about this?
If he refers to one more woman’s concern as “gossip” I’m calling incel behaviour what a loser, also if he’s so knowledgeable about Canada labour law why does he not have an HR?
They do have an HR, it's just not a proper one as it's people involved with the company and not an unbiased third party, which an HR should be. I really hope that LTT gets investigated by the proper authorities
@@Haishiyuthat’s such a conflict of interest.. imagine trying to report issues to your boss wife
you know HR doesn't protect employees right HR is there to protect the company from lawsuits aslo HR is his wife soooooo
I think this is a common thing for men. My partner says he "doesn't like gossip," but he still tells me all the juicy details of the "situations at work," like it's somehow not gossiping if you're all men 😂😂😂
@@CuriousKeyTrue, when men gossip it's called "the news", "journalism", "Intel", "inside info" but when women do it its called "drama" ffs. 😂
The fact Billet Labs didn’t try to sue them to hell and back amazes me. That’s fucking insane that they just sold their only prototype like that
Billet Labs is apparently just a two-man operation, so they likely couldn't afford legal-action.
And while I'm not justifying LMG's auctioning-off of their prototype, nor their use of the wrong GPU in the video where they featured it... I do wonder why if BL seemingly could not do without their proto, why even send it to LMG in the first-place (given it could easily get lost or damaged during shipping, for starters) and then why initially say that LMG "could keep it for use in future projects"?
Again, I do think the two-things LMG did were wrong, and once they agreed to send the proto back to BL then they should have ensured that happened. But I don't get where this narrative of "BL was unable to survive without their proto, and not having it back could tank them" came-from? 🤷🏻♂
@@dftfire - Well, I thought of a couple things. One might loan out a prototype if one was hoping that positive press might bring forth some potential investors, engineers, or other people with the ability to help the company complete its first project. Other than that, I would probably not be willing to loan out a prototype. Plus, what if the prototype "winner" gave the prototype up to a competitor? "First to market" is a real thing.
@@justaskin8523 A positive review was never guaranteed to happen though. They should have paid for a "sponsored review" in that case, and agreed talking-points and video sign-off.
And given they are at the stage of letting people pre-order I'm not sure they need backers at this stage. And if they did there are many crowd-funding websites they could use and just upload their own video of the product.
But I have to ask... given its just-over two weeks on now from when this drama happened, and you're only now commenting, are you really all that interested in it?
The "narrative" is that selling off the prototype (which wasn't theirs to sell and which they had been asked to return) had the *potential* to tank the company.
It could now fall into the hands of a competitor. Not having it could preclude or at least significantly delay them from attracting potential investment due to the lack of a functioning prototype.
They sent it to LTT in good faith in the hopes of attracting positive publicity. They made LTT aware of how to use the prototype and what it was compatible with.
All they asked was that LTT provide an informed, good faith review, and latterly to return the product.
LTT said "eff that shiz" to all of that. They provided an ill informed review based on self evidently flawed use of the product. They doubled down on their slating of the product even when the flaws in how they had tested it were pointed out to them.
Then, when asked to return the product they sold it.
And when called out for selling the product they said "we didn't sell it, we AUCTIONED it".
A defence that will be baffling to people familiar with either:
A. The phrase "sold at auction" or
B. The English language in general.
Their actions are not simply wrong. They are egregious. They have committed an actual severe and continuous lack of judgement.
The only thing they should have been saying, from day 1, is "sorry, here's how we're gonna improve".
But because they only care about making money, they didn't.
LTT is not your friend. They do not care about you. They are not worthy of your sympathy. They are a major corporation, worth tens of millions. Hold them to a higher standard.
@@dftfire the case is so clear that the legal action would more than pay for itself
He loves throwing around the phrase “journalistic integrity” which simultaneously proves he has no idea what that means. Investigating company malpractice and informing the general public of their findings is exactly what journalism is about.
When most people say "journalistic integrity" they're most commonly referring to "hey, do journalistic things in regard to high ethical standards.. not just any journalism". Removing bias and assessing data and theories fairly to reduce unfair judgement or prejudice.
Journalism doesn't exist, and hasnt for over three decades.
It's not often that I feel bad for companies, but man, I feel bad for the engineers and the brand managers that tried to sell decent products and had their sales harmed by reckless reviews.
the problem is that i dont watch info videos, i listen to them while tabbed elsewhere. putting up a text correction does nothing if the video isnt on the screen.
luke being in the applogy video made me so angry because he has always tried to rein in linus' bullshit , and then made me angrier by making a fucking stupid joke
Well, yes and no... sometimes on WAN Show he does call Linus out, but not always. Remember that ultimately, Linus is still Luke's boss, so despite their long-friendship there is still that imbalance there. (And Floatplane is a subsidiary of LMG, so while Luke is the head there, again, Linus is still his boss overall. Whether that will change with Terren now being called "CEO" I don't know... but when Linus stepped-down as CEO, he said at the time he is still Terren's boss, as him and Yvonne own the company. So... even if Terren was to become Luke's boss, then Luke's "bosses-boss" is still Linus!) 🙄
The problem is with Linus around, I don't know of we can rightfully judge Luke. You can often see Luke cringing when Linus goes on his more crazy rants. It clear he's uncomfortable taking a hard stance. At the same time, we don't know his exact thoughts on everything
It's clear, that Luke can't speak clearly. He just can't, because of that power imbalance. We saw it in this video, even when Linus is digging himself a hole, and it's clear that what he is saying doesn't make any sense, all Luke can do is clearly being uncomfortable as you can see in his face, and maybe say 2 sentences, that "maybe" it is not "all" like that, that Linus is still a bit right, and perhaps you can see it as X, which is the real point, and then Linus responds with "whatever".
Free speaking would be: No, no, that's not right Linus, instead it is X, Y, Z. Even when it is clear how wrong that is what Linus is saying, due to the power imbalance, Luke is not able to clearly oppose Linus' stances. He's merely able to diplomatically weaken them a bit.
Sure. But also, a vlog is NOT the appropriate time to have a frank and serious discussion with your boss that may involve criticism and disagreement. This is all part of the problem of course. Linus is so clueless about what it means to be a manager and CEO, that he doesn't realize you don't get to do that and also be editorializing willy-nilly on impactful topics that directly affect your business relationships, community, staff, customers, etc., @@IroAppe
I actually feel a bit bad for Luke. Imagine having to apologise for a plonker who keeps trying to ruin his own company
Well, Linus _is_ his boss, so not much he can do.
Luke runs Floatplane, but that company is a subsidiary of LMG, which Linus and Yvonne own outright
When did he make a sex joke during an apology video that Austin is referring to?
@@bvedant who Luke?
@@MadeleineSwannSurrealyeah. 13:33
@@bvedant I watched this a day ago I think, I don't really remember a lot of it
Linus had an "apology" video years ago where he would kind of acknowledge what he did wrong, but then oddly double down that he was actually right. After watching that, it was pretty clear to me that Linus is incapable of acknowledge being in the wrong.
👸 divas are everywhere
@@bluedark7724 you mean narcissists
He’s a class a narcissist.
@@allmycarsisbrokebingo!
It may be NPD behavior
Im so sad that they stole the copper cooler prototype. As an artist I feel so distrought at the thought that my item of pride was just taken and lost
I'm not really an artist, but I paint paintings. One day, someone stole a single painting from my storage and like... they must have like that particular one.
So the guy who bought be block must have like it too.
@@informitas0117 tru. Someone stole my sketchbook but I still want it back. The thought that he might have liked it doesnt help that I lost months of work and prep work
The warranty thing is so baffling. Its not about whether or not you fans trust you, its about having a legal liability with an extremely clear outline of what counts and so you can cover your ass if someone thinks that they are obligated to get their money back but you disagree. This "just trust we will always do the right thing" feels like a good way to get sued
this company is a mess. linus cant humble himself for two seconds to maaaybe save face because his ego is so fragile he cant handle criticism without feeling attacked to the core.
I would highly hope that Terren (the new CEO) advised that no staff are to give-out statements in public forums, or to the media, that aren't pre-approved lines. And that for any personal-posts, they should state "my views are entirely my own, and not that of LMG". That's pretty-normal in most other companies for public-facing staff.
Not-sure though how the WAN Show could cope with that change? I would guess they would have to be pre-recorded so edits can be made, which would affect not being able to respond live to incoming messages about an issue or take...
I work in tech. I can confirm tech attracts the creepiest cluster B people...
I can’t trace when this toxic additude began to surface, he has been open to criticism before and actually listened…
right, that's why he literally essentially fired himself as company CEO/boss, and volunteered to have someone else be HIS boss and tell HIM what to do.
man so many people just jumped on the LTT hate bandwagon it's insane... yeah back when this all unfolded a couple of months ago it was BAD, and they (or, *he*) deserved all the heat that came his way, but as soon as people stopped talking about and reporting on it, people lose interest, they don't bother following how LMG have gone about changing how they operate. Meanwhile they've been working extremely hard on improving the things they were previously doing wrong, and they've been doing so extremely publicly, and with as much transparency as possible, precisely to show mindless people like you that they DO respond to criticism. They fucked up, BAD, they know that, Linus knows that, so they're doing the one and only thing that can redeem them: admit the wrongdoing, and try improve. If people can still continue to trash them to the extent seen in these comments while actually knowing how much they've already changed, man go touch some grass or some shit, try improve your life 1/10th the amount that LMG has improved over the last 2 months
Can you cite me one example of Linus's ego being "so fragile he can't handle criticism without feeling attacked to the core"? Because I watch the WAN show weekly, which is when Linus (and incidently Luke) are the most natural, the most normal, that they ever are on camera. Linus takes criticism when it makes sense, Luke is PERPETUALLY calling him out on stuff, and telling him to his face when he's saying dumb shit, or expressing bad ideas, or getting something wrong. If you're talking about the halfwits in the comments/chat who spew mindless criticism without understanding 1/10th of the subject matter and Linus dismantling why their message is dumb, then sure, I guess he "can't take criticism".
And I want to be clear, I'm not just a braindead Linus fanboy who sees him as perfect, he's not perfect, he can be a literal prick sometimes in my opinion, and the whole recent ordeal was a catastrophe that should never have happened, personally I was genuinely disappointed about it because I love LTT, and I do look up to Linus in many ways, but just spewing mindless hate, carelessly throwing around words like your comment, man what are you achieving..? You obviously don't actually actively watch LTT, let alone the weekly 3+ hour podcast where they discuss 99% of this shit. It just seems like hive mentality "oh we're hating that guy?? ok yeah FUCK HIM!!!"
Which is why he stepped down as CEO. ALL that stress of managing a company for the first time got to him, and he realized just how bad it was.
Y’all just wanna hate on him eternally.
I hate it how even Luke has to walk on the eggshells around Linus, when pointing out the stupidity. That's a big red flag that they don't do critisism well.
Luke is the voice of reason. Anthony is by far and away the most talented in the group. The shut he knows about computers he could take you down memory lane on windows 95 just from the back or how head on issues with it. Linus just strikes me as a windy ferret that groans and wails for onscreen drama. He was just annoying throughout the fibre uplink episode and getting in people's way when wiring up the racks
*Emily @@Babihrse
even as a child it was obvious Luke was the one with his head on his shoulders. when he faded away from the main videos I stopped watching
@@Babihrse just letting you know Anthony is no longer a he. Actually I don't know what they call themselves now.. maybe they or she.
Sebastian is a well-known libertarian who has gone on rants about Canada's tax and gun laws. He's deeply, deeply mentally ill and everyone around him has to deal with that daily.
Linus has always seemed like he is the only right person in the room and when he gets proved that he isnt always right then he just finds some way to dig the hole deeper until luke pulls him out by his toes and linus just goes "oh...well...whatever 🤷"
To be clear, the Colton "firing" thing is a running joke where any time anything goes wrong Linus would blame and "fire" Colton for it. Something which has continued for years even after they transitioned more and more fully into an actual company and not a bunch of random tech dudes making videos together.
Yes, I wanted to mention this too, just to clear this up. On one hand it's better the HR dept. isn't actually run by someone who almost got fired, but on the other, it adds some more out-of-place comedy to the very serious apology video
True, but that doesn't help your cause. Its kind of toxic to have a running joke about firing an employee... there are a few "jokes" that have always felt a little icky with LTT.
"250 bucks is nothing for a company like this"
"I don´t know if I can apologize for not spending 100-500 dollars of peoples time...."
I am not a tech person... at least not PC tech. But this gets my blood boiling
I'm genuinely horrified that Madison had to go through this...like this is just evil behaviour
Say it with me ladies…”disappointed but not surprised.” Tech is hell for women.
@@lenaboyer6981 - That's not true everywhere. As a hiring line manager, I was involved in a number of "corrective action efforts" against crude males who couldn't control their urges. And we did get rid of them, especially if they retaliated at the accuser. LMG just wasn't made to have those structures of self-accountability. I could blame Canada for that, but I've decided that Linus is probably the person who allowed those conditions to arise and thrive unchecked.
Unfortunately this general type of untrained, petty, and gross management is prevalent in every industry and every job (in the US anyway, can't say for elsewhere). The amount of absolutely dogwater ass managers I've had to deal with... well, it's a lot. It's sad when the list of legitimately good ones is like 5 people long and the shit ones is so long I can't even begin to list them. We need stronger labor laws in place to ensure people who even do so much as verbally harass those under them get fucked hard. It's an insanely powerful position to hold when you control someone's ability to continue having a home, eating, etc. because our economy and society is setup in an insanely bad and horrific way. But as long as that remains true (we could change that with a few 2x4s and some really sharp blades... *cough*) we need super strong unions and basically.... any? labor laws. Because right now we have essentially zero. I would ideally like to see management JAILED for 1-5 years and owe thousands in compensation for even just bad verbal harassment. I'm not joking at all, and I feel like others who disagree simply do not understand the actual power dynamics at play at how fucking disgusting it is that we allow fat, disgusting cloven hoofed fucksticks waddle in to their nepo jobs daily and talk shit to others. Throw them in the hole rigbt next to all the micro-cocks driving those obnoxiously loud (and already illegal basically everywhere- but oddly cops don't seem to care about this law 🤔) trucks and cars with illegally modified exhausts. And Harley riders.......... open pit executions.... (after legal trials, etc.)
she should sue them
@@justaskin8523imagine thinking this proves your point and not Lena’s
Them treating the apology like it's a quirky corporate team building workshop sketch is a real bad look
Notice how there's no leaders who are women in his "company". Just mostly white men.
It just show that they believe that whole situation is really not that serious and that what is perceived as a their mistakes are more like consequences of everyone mistakes...
This video rocked! This guy actually kept my ADHD ass engaged for 2 hours and on a subject I had 0 prior interest in. So well done!
Same here!😂
Me too!🙋♀️
The pacing and well-placed conclusions naturally carries your attention, great video
Literally same lol 😂him and his brother Nick are for the neurodivergiesss
Ummm....I'm pretty sure your ass isn't the part that has ADHD. 😉 But you're right, he did a very good job.
Thing is, Linus auctioning off that prototype, could actually land him in some serious legal trouble, possibly even criminal trouble. If I were one of the creators of that, I'd be talking with a lawyer about hitting LMG, and Linus himself with a massive lawsuit.
They ain't in the US bud.
Best recap yet. Great work. One part of this story is that LTT had been bragging for a year about their new test lab and how awesome it was going to be, better than anyone else. Maybe on par with UL or Consumer Reports. So the deep hubris captured on that tour video was likely influenced by what they actually thought of themselves. They truly believed the new lab was the future of the company. And understandably, other creators already doing testing and lab work took notice. When an entity the size of LMG crossing onto your turf, you aren't going to ignore it. And once GN started looking at this new competitor, they realized it was all smoke and mirrors. They had to say waitaminute. I know Steve agonized about this. They were friends. It was Steve who called Linus one morning to warn him about his YT channel having been hijacked. He didn't have to look out for his competitor but it was the right thing to do. But make no mistake: LTT brought this on themselves with all the bragging about having the best test lab ever. They threw down and GN had no choice but to call them out.
great comment dude...Linus is a fucking ass in my humble opinion. He clearly has no chops for running a company, although he THINKS he has...
So many young employees can relate to a ‘fast paced’ work environment where you’re encouraged to ‘stick up for yourself’ only to later be penalized for it. Especially women. Because when the employee does stick up for themselves, the boss is rarely ever actually impressed by the integrity and validity of the dissension, but rather incensed that a lowly worker dare ‘talk back and have an attitude’. They never actually want their staff to ‘be honest with them’, they just want to harass their own staff but pretend everybody has the right to do so, when really, they only give themselves the right AND an excuse to fire you.
I feel so bad for Billet Labs my god what a nightmare and what happened to Madison is disgusting
"I owe you guys better and I'm sorry *shrugs*". He is so not sorry and thinks this situation is stupid and unnecessary to even address
Because it is. A lot of these issues should have been addressed without getting the public involved.
The GPU prototype situation for example. It would have been easier to resolve it between BL and LTT. Instead, BL went public, which leads me to believe that he used the situation for clout.
This is not to say that LTT isn't in the wrong, because they absolutely do deserve some of the blame and should take responsibility for their actions. Which they did, by making attempts to reacquire the prototype and return it to its rightful owner.
The billet labs things makes me mad. I hope they can sue the undeserved self esteem off this malicious thief.
Sadly it’s doubtful.
Linus mistakenly claimed in a video that PhysX is just about particles, a claim reminiscent of a teenager from the '90s. As a developer, I can clarify that PhysX often encompasses the game's entire physics, while particles are managed separately. They really need a game developer's insight, as they seem unaware of the inner workings of game development.
“You want me to spend money to ensure a project is done right and the information delivered from it is sound and accurate? That’s a terrible business decision! No I won’t read the instructions of anything I use!”
So they stole a company’s product and sold it to the highest bidder. Isn’t that illegal? Considering they gave it to them to test, review, and nothing more. Not to mention market manipulation.
my heart goes out to madison and i am so impressed with her courage to share her story
Hi, Haley. I agree, and I hope Madison was able to find work for an organization that would value her and her contributions.
She just blacklisted herself from an entire industry. Hopefully something comes of it, otherwise it's all wasted and did nothing but get some likes on a UA-cam video.
@@marishiten5944 If she's smart she has an attorney and is currently working to sue them. I hope she kept records.
Seriously. No woman I know, including myself, has publicly spoken out against workplace/sexual abuse. My ex best friend had some horrifying experiences, only reported the least traumatizing incident (bc as we know the worse an experience is the harder it is to speak about) which was being bitten on the arm by a middle aged superior after he took a photo of her that she asked him to delete. The bite left a mark and at the time she was just focused on rubbing it away as her then-partner was controlling and jealous, didn't get a photo of it as evidence (I've also had the instinct to erase evidence as in the moment you just want to get it off of you - not necessarily a bad instinct as evidence is regularly discounted even if collected). When she reported him to someone in the organization, they were just like "oh well he's kind of more valuable to us so this puts us in an awkward situation.." and nothing came of it. Madison's bravery cannot be understated and you know some of the response is additional harassment rather than support.
Who is Madison?
The Billet Labs and Pwnage video are still up, you'd have thought if they were really sorry they'd have taken them down
My favorite part of their ‘apology’ is that they think having random swears or ‘hip language’ would make them seem more credible or relatable. It just makes them look even worse.
The backpack history is key to understand how messed up LMG got. Also, at the sorry video, the new CEO doesn't feel like in charge at all. As he was speeding I could see the strings attached. He acted as a puppet on Linus hands. All I heard from his mouth sounded like Linus's words.
Agreed
dude looked like he was in a hostage video reading that out lol 100% Linus's words.
We all know that linus stepping down was just a way to control the company without the responsabilités an.concequences of the role.
@@moontrasher7023 It does feel that way, yeah -- remember when he explained the stepping-down, he said he will still own 51% of the company and Yvonne, his partner, the other 49% but Terren wasn't being-given stock. So... Linus is still Terren's boss, and cannot be fired by him 🤷🏻♂
(Oh and Luke doesn't have any stock either, from what I know. And while he is the head over at Floatplane, that is a subsidiary company wholly-owned by LMG.)
@@dftfire exactly!! Wong is simply the CEO In name. He has no real.control.
I didn't know Luke didn't have shares. He deserves some for dealing with linus
This is so comprehensive and insightful. I also really appreciate the content warnings for the more sensitive section of the video. It's clear you care a lot about making high quality videos, Austin, your work is so appreciated.
The single biggest issue with the "trust me bro" warranty insanity is that it means Linus literally never gave a single thought to edge cases.
He assumed that every issue would be either very clearly a manufacturing or LTT issue, or a customer issue.
But what happens when Alice and Bob both drop their screwdriver from 20 meters up, both screwdrivers break, and Alice talks to Chuck, while Bob talks to Daniel. Chuck decides "yeah, that's covered" while Daniel decides "no, it's not"
Bob sees a comment from Alice saying she's so happy that dropping her screwdriver was covered by the "trust me" warranty, and now Bob is furious, why wasn't his covered by the warranty?
So he goes to check the warranty, and... it just says "trust me"? Does Bob need to keep calling back until he gets ahold of Chuck?
If Alice drops her replacement, is it going to be covered this time?
How are the people handling the warranty going to be trained to know what should or shouldn't be covered?
When Eve calls in saying her screwdriver is broken because she tried to put it though a wood chipper, is that covered? Is that just luck of the draw?
How safe do I need to treat a screwdriver if I buy one? If I use it like a chisel, is that allowed?
"Trust me bro" also has to mean "I trust every single person on both sides to have exactly the same interpretation of what should and shouldn't be covered", and if you don't trust random people you've never met, and have never talked to, to have exactly the same idea of what's normal usage, and it's frankly absurd that anyone would even consider that as a potential option.
Hmm
I mean, I don't know what your background is, but having done warranty work for a shockingly large company that has purchases ranging from a few hundred to 10k plus dollars, that is pretty much the process. The only exceptions really are the big cases that we know are going to cost the company money. Those tend to be passed to a "specialist" and presumably have a more standardized process.
Beyond that, the only real difference between the real warranty and the "trust me bro" warranty is that we call it the "our discretion" warranty. The Daniel/Chuck scenario is avoided by having case files that we read before speaking to the customer. So if Daniel said one thing, I'm going to see it in his case notes and tell the customer the same thing. Behind the scenes, it's just people deciding based on their own opinions. There are guidelines to follow, of course, but after the shit I have seen, I can assure you that there is no perfect form that will fairly decide if a person qualifies for warranty or not. Our terms are vague on purpose. My entire job is opinion based (believe it or not) precisely because it's going to net a more fair and understandable result than some standardized process that'll have the company either taking back every little thing, or tons of people not qualifying.
He's absolutely taking it too personally, and putting way too much stock in "his word," but I think people seeking out the official warranty are putting too much stock into that lmao.
She purposefully cut her leg open? There's something very wrong with that, to even think to seriously do that. I think she was right to leave LMG and I hope things go much better for her from now on. And I agree that she deserves credit for bringing her situation to light
just sounds like an unnecessary amount of stress all for a sub par yt channel, garbage workplace
I've seen people do the same and the effects of it. Their ill brain says, "I need a break, and I need a legitimate reason for it to not disappoint them!" and this is the result. Stress and poor mental health is an exceedingly bad combination, especially if you sprinkle on some toxic work conditions.
I'm schizophrenic and have seen people just like her in the locked ward, they often hold themselves to an idea of how "they should be" instead of realizing they need to cut back on responsibilities. One girl had made a check list of how her life should be for each year at age 17, at 25 she had missed a lot of "checkmarks" and got so depressed and manic she had tried to end it all as she was so "behind". Pressure can be a very bad thing.
There's a point in the growth of every company where the owner-founder needs to be separated from operations by a layer of executives. And the reason is that the instincts that make you a good founder are in many cases contrary to the instincts of HR and public relations. Now combine that with the instincts that make you want to be a UA-camr, and you get responses like "I could fold this whole company and you couldn't do a thing about it and then you'd have NOTHING! So be grateful for your Chinese sweatshop backpack!"
I didn't watch them enough to know much of the specifics at all but I remember this being almost the exact case it seemed for Rooster Teeth at one point. Like I remember them having to do a TON of executive/job title restructuring. Interesting how a lot of these internet-based companies all seem vulnerable to this kind of leadership flaw once they get big enough
There's no way that they actually said "but the good news is" when writing to a company to say they auctioned off their unique, complicated prototype (after already using it wrong in a negative review)
That's just absurd lmao
They should have gone with:
"The good news is, at-least it's not just sitting on a shelf somewhere..."
"...the bad news is, it's unlikely to ever sit on _your_ shelf ever-again"
🙃
Yea the way he tested and lost the 3090 then sold of someone else’s property, I don’t see anything indicating he had paid for it, but was given specifically for review… and never should have ended up being sold…
This effects how I think about him now than anything else.
And the "good news" weren't even good news either. That was quite literally a nice-sounding way of LMG telling Billet that they (LMG) deem the proto-type to be useless to both LTT AND even to Billet themselves!
Because why would it "just sit on a shelf somewhere" otherwise?
They may as well have written: "wat would you want that useless piece of junk back for anyway?" instead!
They're still adding insult to injury even while trying to be nice! 🤦♂️
It also comes off quite belittling to start off an apology for something as egregious as that with "the good news is...", doesn't it?
I assume I was recommended this video because I’m a Gamers Nexus subscriber and former LTT subscriber (I unsubbed quite some time ago when Linus was mortally offended that his 100 employees might want to unionize).
So I had already independently watched every single video you covered, and read all of the content.
I have to say: you did a great job, and it really makes me think you’re trustworthy to watch on topics I know nothing about. I love finding someone who clearly puts in effort and is seemingly trustworthy!
Unions aren't all that great. They hurt the company as they have to pay the union heads and it makes it really hard to discipline/fire people. Not only that, but Union bosses are the ones who reap the benefits. Not the low guy on the totem pole. Unions are also notorious for being corrupt and thieves. They don't exist to protect you, they exist to extort you.
A union is not the same as it once was… nowadays it is often used to exploit people and try to get your way instead of a new job
Sorry to hear about what Billet Labs had to go through. At least small manufacturer's know to stay clear of LTT as there is real risk of them doing damage to your company like that.
The "Trust me Bro" shirts, what the boss doesn't get is that most people got that shirt to make fun of how ridiculous it is, not to support him. As to their limited lifetime warranty, it is *mostly* standard. It covers product defects, not normal wear and tear or misuse. The only thing there that's off is the cosmetic damage part. That's usually a major reason why many items are returned, and a great many places will put stuff at huge discounts if it has cosmetic damage. If I received a new item from them that had cosmetic damage, I'd want to return it, and it looks like I wouldn't be able to.
i've seen linus' face before but had no frame of reference for the LTT channel. i'm super grateful that both you and other people are explaining and analyzing this in plain language and warning consumers about this unethical behavior.
my heart breaks for Madison, what a horrible thing to go through
Huh?
yep, it's disgusting....
Allegedly. Not saying it did or didn't happen though it's insane that he stated it as 'the truth' only on the fact that he thinks 'the response makes him seem guilty'? I mean Linus might be a jackass, I don't know the man, but that no proof of anything. Even IF there was proof on side claiming this to be false against Madison, there hes not allowed to say it publicy according to privacy laws. When he did he would harm more as well for the 'big tech channel' jumping on a harmless woman.
Also when there was sexual unpleasant behavior you go to the manager ( which according to her didn't help, just made it worse) and the police after that.
As a manager myself, I have seen instances of both sides of the coin and in this day and age woman are not spotless anymore either.
In the past it was an easy, believe her, these days however I encounter more and more false claims ( not saying it's what she does here), so there is another side to all this. Which is just, if not more in some cases, destructive for the other person and their reputation.
@@MC-wd5ko Yup, definitely sounds like something a manager would say...
@@ronnochopper so anyone can make any random allegation and we'll consider that true? Funny how none of the other female ex-employees have made any such allegations.
This situation is crazy af.
Thanks for covering the topic! I had no clue this was happening... people are fuckin crazy, man.
I'm confused. Why would Linus Tech Tips auction off something not only that they didn't own, but KNEW they didn't own?
That's like me renting a car, then turning around and selling it and being confused why the car rental company was so angry.
They often get sent things to keep. If you're not part of the email chain with the sending company, but are part of the team selecting the auction items, it's easy to see why you would assume that this thing in your warehouse is fair game.
That whole business with the prototype just boggles my mind. What they did is like trying to test a Mac software on a Windows machine and then saying that it's bad because it doesn't work. Like, whut??? It flies in the face of proper testing, or, you know,... properly using tech...
You did a great job! Canadian here, I've always felt bad vibes from LTT, so I'm not surprised at all. I also just wanted to add that the Madison accusations* remind me of what happened culturally at Blizzard where a bunch of loser tech bros thought that their abhorrent behaviour, which highlights their inability to interact appropriately with women, is something they could just get away with indefinitely.
You got one side of what happened. Of course the girl is going to make it sound as bad as possible, she's likely gearing up for a lawsuit. Don't believe all "victims" until they're proven to be one. Too many people lie about this stuff these days looking for a paycheck or revenge.
I don't think she's outright lying, but she's not telling the truth, either. I'm sure SOME of those things happened, but I'd imagine blame can be spread around to all parties.
@@marishiten5944 Actual idiocy at it's finest, ladies and gents.
@@marishiten5944 how does linus's boot taste buddy?
@@wysteria. I wouldn't know. I don't like soft spoken sissies that can't even figure out basic things and accurately report on the most simplistic of things.
Just because he's wrong doesn't make the other side right, though.
I don't like anyone in this situation and I'd be entertained watching all of them self destruct. Including Linus.
i used to watch LTT back in the day when i had a lot more time to dedicate to gaming and following tech. i started to get weird vibes and unsubscribed in a purge of a lot of tech/gaming channels that gave me the vibe that they probably didn't think i deserve rights lol. it's really unfortunate to see this and i can't pretend to know or remember what specifically made me drop LTT back then but I'm unfortunately not surprised.
this feels like something that will continue to happen with these huge youtube media companies. a lot of them were/are established in a non traditional way, with no real HR dept, hiring friends or acquaintances, letting people do conflicting roles. it's inevitable that there's room for mistreatment and mismanagement and with progress comes the ability for more people to come forward and tell their stories. i hope madison finds some resolution out of all of this, i'm glad people aren't letting that experience and story be ignored.
thanks for covering this! i didn't know about this situation until you mentioned it in a previous video and was looking forward to your coverage
Money and fame changes people if kept unchecked. Or it's actually the real him all along and it surfaces now that he have power
I think humans have an ability to detect psychos, we just need to trust it more. I used to binge Gus Johnson content including his podcast but I started getting weird vibes from their content so I stopped watching. About a year or two later it came out he had been abusive and generally a dick to his then girlfriend.
Trust your gut, folks.
These people don't know how businesses/corporations run. HR is there for a reason. Legal is there for a reason. Verification and smoke testing exists for a reason. But, they're greedy and they want to run as lean as possible to ensure the people at the top still get their 7 figure salaries.
It wouldn't shock me to find out that their business taxes weren't paid or the books were cooked.
@@marishiten5944 LTT has both HR and legal teams lmao. HR is and always has been a way for companies to save face and avoid lawsuits. their entire point is being on the companies side. same with legal. They're under their pay bro...
and no way they'd even wanna cook books because business taxes are low as fuck already. and how would smoke tests help anyone lmao
I feel so bad for billet labs. What they did was so unbelievably cruel.
Edit 1: Just got to the Madison thing. Dear lord.
Edit 2: imagine using your wife as a human shield in a response video about a ton of terrible allegations. This guy is insane.
Edit 3: the fucking gut to produce this ...thing as an "apology". Force people who (possibly) know nothing, have nothing to do with this situation, AND try to sell shit is un.fucking.real.
I mean... Yvonne is a willing participant and co-owner of the company, I wouldn't underestimate her culpability in being a bad human.
I have one question. Did the Linus Family I mean Earing Dude and his Wife ever shitpost something? No? then please don't be a judge. This all seems like media drama and sympathy is the big weapon.
Damn, that situation with a protective film on the mouse is just so bad.
Have they even tested a mouse before? I've made that exact mistake with new mice lol...
Not even an apology to the girl who was literally assaulted at work. That’s just messed up. That should of been the first apology. Was to the workers and to her specifically.
She lied no proof then and recently she got exposed believe all women bullshit is ridiculous
Oof that corporate apology video was rough... Thanks for covering this, I don't find myself on the tech side of UA-cam but it's interesting to hear what's going on.
A while back I was looking into getting a new PC and I watched several LTT videos. I quickly became frustrated with the channel because it seemed that whenever he built anything he A)never read any instructions and B) installed a random component wrong. He would then laugh it off. That's when I decided to not trust his opinion. I was not aware of the whole Madison situation, but I'm not really surprised.
I watched several of the pc building shows and I felt Linus was the least informed with the other guy attempting to guide Linus. Yep, some problem comes up and they end up with a Frankenstein monster they're surprised even works instead of ever going to plan because Linus is too much of a wildcard. I thought Linus let go of the business long time ago but totally cringe to see him have fun with his Trust Me Bro t-shirt
Having his wife say that she’s “putting her foot down” about their work life balance strikes me as misogynistic. Rather than accepting the criticism, it frames her as a nag. Linus seems like a massive asshole to say the least
"My brother calls me M-Dog", it sucked to hear her brother passed away and then have untra out-of-touch golden child Linus treat that like it was nothing. He will learn the suffering of losing loved ones one day, and when that happens, I hope he remembers to "Change his priorities" too.
Out of all of this, the treatment of Madison is the worst in my eyes. I hope she is doing better.
Dude tech bros make a company and then people realize said company is riddled with dude tech bro behaviour. While we would all like to think people would take a moment to when their business takes off to reflect and mature, and do important HR things... Yeah that doesn't often happen unfortunately. I feel so bad for Madison, it sounds like they played her from before she even signed the contract, and I hope she's able to recover from this and find future success. I've fortunately only watched LTT a few times, and I'm glad it was only a few because...just wow.
Because it doesn't affect them and they clearly didn't care. I've been at 2 startups that grew past the point where they should do something about it but didn't. It's way too common, but it's even worse when you realise they're aware and just don't care at all.
Madison seems to be a model professional. Genuinely any company would be lucky to have them fosho.
Who is this Madison?
@@pazsion Did you not watch the video? The Madison part starts at 55:05.
I'm so glad Jenny and Maxine got out when they did. Major props for giving Madison's voice the time and care she deserves. It is such an important indicator of work culture.
More women should have stayed… leaving without correcting the issues concentrate it on the remaining women.
They abandoned her and ran away. When it was one dude. Had she not been on her own she would not have been subjected to this bs at all.
Perhaps someone else who was more happy with the attention, contact, and promotional attributes. Without feeling abused falsely.
pazsion another grossly wrong statement of yours. No, it's not and never has been these Jenny's and Maxone's duty to stay and continue to take a portion of the abuse, so that it doesn't concentrate as much on Madison! That's just crazy!
Try: "more men (ik, not a single one actually did) should have stepped up and tried to stop the abusers", how bout that?
It's not women's responsibility to stay in an abusive situation in order to protect one another from more abuse. That just leads to more women being abused!
It's the men's responsibility to not abuse their female co-workers and to not tolerate other men doing it!
This isn't on the female employees who left LTT before Madison, this on the managers who abused Madison and on anyone in a position of power at LTT who knew about this but did nothing!
Honestly, your reply to OP is sickening. In the first two comments I read by you, I did my hardest to give you the benefit of the doubt. But after reading this, I can't believe your being naive anymore. I hate to say this, but it sounds like you kind of *condone* the reported behavior of LTT staff against women.
@@LRM12o8 Wow now we are at ABUSE
@@pazsionmake sure you keep that same energy for yourself. when you're in an abusive situation, make sure YOU stay as long as possible and fail to change anything and lose your mental health and feel worthless. Make sure YOU stay.
@@janmaker227it is abuse. if you're afraid of that word in what is clearly abuse and deplorable behaviour, you may also be part of the problem. if you can't see that, you either are a victime, or the perpetrator (or even both but that's not an excuse, just a sad reality).
Truly the new quintessential video on this topic. The only other thing you could have gotten into is Linus's history of acting sketchy, defensive, and making comments that were blatantly anti workers rights, and he dismissed protections that could have prevented situations like this.
By protections, I'll assume you mean allowing the staff to unionise. In which case... _would_ it have definitely prevented the current situations?
The Madison issue, perhaps, as a union-rep could represent her in meetings. But for the other stuff, like the BL cooler auction, or data-inaccuracies in videos, or stuff like not offering a warranty on their backpacks from about a year ago -- is any of that the remit of a union? 🤔
@dftfire he was asked about employee protections generally which I would assume includes a safe working environment. He said something along the lines of "if there is an issue so pressing you can take it up with me, and if it's an issue with me you can go to Yvonne." This is obviously absurd, and things like this are what make issues like abuse so rampant and easy to take place under their watch.
"My employees don't need unions and worker's protection because I'm a good boss. So I won't let them get those!"
Linus' mindset 😪
32:00 -> That is exacly the misconception about LTT: They are not build on the back of testing and reviewing. They are coming from tech tips, meming, janky builds and mods, they are just in the process of becoming a source of seriuos testing and reviewing. Linus and parts of LTT are very focused on where they want to be in that serious space, and sometimes neglect to tell the viewers, that they are not there yet.
Yes they always seemed "cool" tech and jokey shit with some tech stuff built in.
I never thought Linus actually nerded out on the tech stuff, just cool gadgets or components.
Best break-down of the LTT situation i've seen. I personally never got Linus' appeal- i always found him annoying and phony. I hope that he and his company get what they deserve.
I find him tolerable in short-doses, such as quick 10-15 minute reviews or comedy segments.
But I have-felt in recent months on the WAN Show, he just seems overly-tired and irritable. By the time they get to the main "Merch Messages" hours in, he's usually so tired he misreads or misunderstands the viewer's questions, then gets snappy, calling it "a dumb question" or "that's just stupid". Remember... these are people who HAVE PAID to ask that question!
And if it's not that, it's usually him going on about his wealth (talking about his pool, home-renovations or latest car), or that ever-funny 🙄 anecdote about how his phone doesn't understand his "call Yvonne home" request. Can't wait for when that comes up... yet another 10 minutes we'll spend on that!
I stopped listening to LTT in early Covid. It was just hard to get through Linus's smarmy behaviors, and I kept thinking how he must be all sweaty and smelly under that stocking cap. I'm glad he no longer wears that thing.
I could never stand Linus, since ever. He's lucky that he surrounded himself with people that are competent because he's literally isn't
From the very beginning LTT has been a comedy/entertainment platform first, and an actual source of tech information a distant second, if at all.
Taking LTT seriously on tech is a *very* good filter for weeding out people who don't actually have a clue about tech. I've never met an LTT fan who I'd trust far enough to replace a stick of RAM.
Years ago I watched him as someone unfamiliar with the things he covers, and I don't recall having any issues with him. He came off as personable and intelligent. Very inoffensive. But I fell out of interest with those topics and unsubscribed. Pretty wild I keep hearing about him now only because of controversies...
the Billet Labs situation is INSANE, how could LMG just recklessly sell a prototype owned by a small company without permission??? AND it staled the company's progress?? LMG didn't even bother to test the prototype correctly and just proclaimed it was not worth buying, that kind of comment coming a from a really big youtuber could kill that company in a heartbeat
The BL situation is... a mixed-picture.
The two facts overall are: LMG used the wrong GPU in their "video" (some claim it was never supposed to be a review, so let's be neutral), and that when BL asked for it to be returned, they agreed, but later auctioned it off.
The grey-areas though are: when BL sent the cooler to begin with, was it on the basis of a proper review, or was that not agreed? And if not-having their proto was such a massive issue for them, why did the initially say that LMG could keep it for use in future-videos?
It’s like austin is the left side of the brain and nick is the right side, together they make intelligent and creative content that informs as much as it entertains. Love this era of UA-cam tea!
Austin does sometimes make mistakes, (pocket station predating the VMU(via US launch date)for example, but at least he makes things fun with Ken and the others.
Linus' staff seem tense most of the time
Doubling down on your incorrect position is the exact opposite of "wearing your imperfections on your sleeve"
He turned his exploitation into a meme. Hey im not exploiting you, its just a meme guys. Linus is a sociopath, he just hasn't firgured it out yet. Yes sociopaths can be relativly mundane compared to what most people think when they hear the word.
He's definitely a narcissist. I think he tries to not be one but has trouble controlling himself.
Linus is very much a narcissistic person, is highly competitive (🙄) and cannot see himself being wrong (and if he does, he blames someone else for his actions, or try to minimise his involvement into situations)
It’s seems like he’s being harassed
He normally would and has in prevpoints in time taken acccoutability and admitted wrongs. Even on live. Or pre recorded.
Why the hell is he so stressed out?
yes, a classic narcissist....
Basically a high-school mentality at 40 years old.
This whole situation is insane. I haven't watched LTT regularly in about a year and this is so crazy to see happen all at once. Very good video 👍
I'm not over how insanely misogynist the entire thing from his wife is. that's not his fucking mother, that's his WIFE. "its wrong and i told him that >:(" so now he can play it off as his bitchy naggy wife correcting him even though really HE didn't think he did anything wrong. the fact that ANYONE agreed to be in this video just speaks to the company culture as a whole. this is almost worse than the fucking ukulele - imagine if colleen hired ed sheeran to sing the first verse
I hate to break it to you. Often being the wife is being the husbands mother somedays, just as the husband often has to be more like the father. You pick eachother up when you are down.
@@HontasFarmer80 i totally get that. IMO i just dont think picking the other up when they're down should mean having your partner go in front of millions of subscribers and scold you like a child...i still dont get his goal with it, its embarrassing
Funny thing was there was a smaller tech channel that actually called Linus out for their mistake with Billet Labs when the video first came out but Steve defended Linus on twitter and attacked that small channel.
You got a link or a name at least? Would love to see that tbh
@@SilharaTheChosen ua-cam.com/video/HoLdoYmlCPo/v-deo.html
I watched LTT a while ago because it was fun. It had the feeling of a bunch of guys who love tech having fun with it. I stopped watching after they lost that feeling by becoming too corporate feeling and when the clickbait titles got too annoying. Hearing all this is saddening and maddening. I hope the victims of this work environment get justice.
the madison stuff breaks my heart. she was my favourite onscreen talent at ltt. i liked her energy, personality, work, and general approach to the videos she was included in a lot. always wondered where she disappeared to. guess i know now. its even worse bc i remember her being a self described fan of Linus. probably rlly looked up to him.
Sounds like something I would enjoy… how did I never see her doing anything? How did you get to watch her?
Oh wow, if you injure yourself for no reason… that’s on you, that’s insane…
It doesn’t do any good for her story either.
It does come off as overly dramatic, but maybe she is a very emotional person.
@pazsion damn, you're naive! 🤢
It's quite common for famous public figures to abuse fans who work for them, both because fans can be annoying, but also because they know they can get away with it, because fans tolerate much more abuse from their idols than they would from anyone else.
Getting to work for a public figure you're a big fan of, only for their company and that very public figure themselves to harass and mistreat you and shit all over your work can seriously f@ck a sane person up to the point of self-harm and even worse. Using the fact she committed self-harm as ammunition to discredit her testimony is very misguided and suggests a worrying lack of empathy.
@@pazsionhumans are all very emotional people.
@@pazsionI don't know her nor do you and it sounds disingenuous to dismiss a cry for help. If she had a history of crying wolf or being emotional then it's on you to prove it. A better response would hope to have her seek help. It's less possible to show grace when that person is directly abusive or distructive to you personally. Idk, Not invested in this really but try not to be dismissive when possible. Its a wonderful thing to be heard.
Probably the most complete and comprehensive take on the issues plaguing LTT. Well done!
He has a multi million dollar company.
I’m sure he would be extremely upset if project farms did not review his screwdriver fairly
Also that trust me bro, shenanigans and then trying to profit off It, that was absolutely disgusting shows how much he truly cares about his community; shows his true colours.
LTT/LMG has zombie fans that will buy anything from the get go if he says so
He even jokes about it saying “if I tell people to buy more screw drivers they do.”
Because his company is valued so much it would be expected to have warranty from the get go. He said don’t trust manufacturers or companies they are not your friend.
I’m saying that I’m not going to just “trust you bro”
Yeah, about a year ago on "warranty-gate" he said the backpacks wouldn't have one as if he were to die, that would mean his family would then have to burden any return, repair or refund requests, and that he doesn't feel company warranties are usually worth the paper they're printed on, anyway.
Yet despite that, he has criticised companies himself in the past for... not offering warranties! 🙃
The thing that angered me the most was the accusation of journalistic malpractice against Steve Burke. In matters of fact, you do not need to reach out to the other side. You do so when you do not have objective facts and there is room for interpretation. And even if so, a wrong fact does not automatically make a whole piece wrong. Like you not getting the roles within LMG right. Head of HR/CFO was Linus Sebastian's wife Yvonne. The insider jokes in the apology video were misplaced because the audience for that was bound to be different. And the introduction of their CEO could have been done differently. The only way to handle this would have been the resignation of Linus Sebastian and that being announced in that video. All of this was so so bad.
Thanks for the thorough video. I appreciate it all laid out.
I will say it rubbed me the wrong way that you criticized the guy whose supposed to be behind the scenes and not be on camera being frog marched to be in the hostage video about how nothing he's responsible for is f'd up.
It was cruel to put him there, and a bit cruel to expect him to have camera ready delivery.
„You don‘t get to commit the sin and then ask all of us to feel sorry for you, when there are consequences.“
- Oppenheimer
Posted one minute ago?? Heck yeah, can’t wait to watch
Listen. I'm sorry, but the billet labs cooler thingy not being good is the most idiotic point Linus could have ever made. It's a PROTOTYPE. It is not the final product. Not by a mile.
I blocked Linus Tech Tips from being suggested to me 10 YEARS AGO at least! Why? Because I found Linus to be arrogant even back then, always boasting how he gets products for free! I also found that he lied about some things (don't ask me what, it was too long ago for me to remember now) and caught him making mistakes with reviews. And I did not even watch his videos a lot back then, maybe saw about 5-10 before I blocked UA-cam from showing me his content. I used to be a tech professional myself, both as a programmer and as a systems builder (building PCs to match customers needs, not gaming though, business) so I had some insight as to what he was doing. Seeing some of the clips today on this video just confirms my gut instinct about him back then.
Honestly best breakdown I've seen of the situation. It was two hours long but I was genuinely interested and captivated the entire time, good clip selection, long enough you got the pint but not overloading with the amount of info.
Nice Summary.
But please stop calling that PR (disaster) video an apology video.
They barely apologize to Billet Labs and take no responsibility to thier wrong except pay to cover it.
How is BL supposed to bill them? They've lost time, product, engineering, prototypes, and emotional suffering (not to mention contacts and potential employee's in the industry). How do you even put a price tag on something like that? It'd be several million dollars at the least. I highly doubt LTT is willing to cover those costs.
@@lifequest7453 Linus looks like one of those television/film actors that look happy and a wonderful to be a round but when the cameras are off them they become the worlds biggest assholes.
I’m over an hour into this takedown of a massive channel I knew nothing about and good god, we cannot let insecure men have companies
Unfortunately I think insecure men have a much higher probability of starting a company haha
I've said before we have a manchild epidemic right now.
There are a lot. A LOT. Of manchildren. And they have no shame. They want wives who act like their mothers and lack the ability to do anything but line their shelves with Funko Pops and talk about how Starfield having a pronoun selector is an affront to their personhood and ruins their "escapism".
I think it's going to be difficult making a worse apology vid than this...I THINK. I don't know. UA-camrs keep topping it. I really don't think it's that hard to make a genuine apology, but youtubers act like it's rocket science.
We need to stop giving people obscene amounts of money for acting like asshats.
This really isn't a gendered issue.
So how's the situation now? I'm actively shocked about what is going on. After the apology video, in the first WAN show it's business as usual. I can imagine, that the comments are full of questions, and all I expected from them was, to at least dedicate the first WAN show after the incident, to a Q&A session dedicated only to answer the questions of their community. Because, you know, that's how every other creator does it to gain back trust, and how transparency actually works.
And I'm even more shocked, that the community actually doesn't care. I have heard nothing more about any of it, and it seems like it's never happened. Your hope about the CEO addressing all that, and that we will learn more about it, is bust. And it's actually even more shocking, that their views are still there, and their subscriptions are almost at the same number as before.
After hearing about what Madison wrote, I went on the channel tab from LTT, and unsubscribed from every channel. It's really hard to engage in any more content of them anymore. And I can't believe how everything we see here goes against "transparency" and "honest apology" "reformation", even the reactions ABOUT (releasing on floatplane first), IN and AFTER the apology video itself.
Now I'm just asking myself, at what point did Linus go evil? Was it always like that? Does he have some kind of very "distorted" world view about the whole topic, so that it somehow feels "right" for him? What's the matter? A deep trauma indeed, also for the community that has been following for a long time.
Somewhat unrelated, hopefully funny for you too: that mouse brand that got unfairly bonked in one of those crappy ltt videos should've revisioned their product to include an X-shaped protection sticker that also cover the sensors, so that the mouse wouldn't work at all until you investigated it and removed the sticker, then proceed to call that foolproof revision "LTT Proof" or something hilarious like that.
As for the community not caring, my man...
This is unfortunately the new normal, fleeting attention spans are getting worse every year and people just move on from branch to branch without a care in the world.
Linus' company seems to still be stuck in a teenager mindset from 2008. Whoever says, "Calm your tits," is already discrediting this company. Game over for Linus, period.
Coming from a corporate environment full of immature abusive management (including my direct manager threatening my job for contradicting him on work related technical details in front of other teammates and all of next level management brushing it off, and then ineffective HR essentially blaming me) the second half was hard to watch 😢
(i finally quit that employer)
I can't believe how many jokes and merch plugs were in what should have been a very serious and professional apology. It's extremely concerning that they are STILL making light of the situation.
i love long form videos so much, and this was such a TREAT! so well researched and made me care about a topic i had NO interest in prior. really happy you’re making content!!!
Is watching random, long-form videos just a thing I've missed or something?
I watch long-form videos for stuff I'm interested in... but I'd never watch a random video of this length on a topic I had no-interest in. And yet a lot of people commenting here had no-idea beforehand (1) who Linus was, (2) that there was any drama going on and (3) aren't interested in tech.
So... I'm just puzzled what's bring so-many people to this video? 🤷🏻♂
Ikr I normally don’t watch videos on shows I’m not interested in or channels idk but I clicked on it and haven’t considered clicking off and I’m halfway through
@dftfire a lot of people found Austin's channel through his brother Nick, who has a bigger channel/audience (not to say that Austin didn't earn his place as a content creator, I just think most people are watching this video without knowing about the drama as a way of supporting someone just starting out)
Either way the video is really well-made and comprehensive though