This is worse than the Gamer’s Nexus video. The biggest red flag initially wasn’t even the bad testing data, it was how overworked the staff were. Clearly employee wellness is not a priority.
The Gamer’s Nexus video was necessary for others to speak out. Steve was clear that speaking up was a move that could backfire due to the power imbalance involved. Had he not spoken up there would be no opportunity for Madison to weigh in her experiences without being attacked.
without being attacked.
Not that she hasn’t been attacked constantly before and after the GN video, mind.
Imagine just how much worse it would have been if she just came out randomly. The fact she made a glassdoor review long before and it wasn’t picked up says a lot about LMG’s audence.
LMG has a massive frat boy culture to it. It was never hidden, in fact it seemed like it was welcomed and encouraged.
Linus didn’t notice because that’s status quo in modern capitalism.
Still makes Linus a shithead for going right along with horrible practices, but it should go to explain how a lot of it is not conscious malicious intent. Employers exploit people all the time.
After I came forward about being assaulted, Someone accused Linus of inappropriate conduct on twitter.
He came over to my corner and started BERATING HER. Calling her insane, mentally ill, an attention seeker, and just digging into this poor woman who had felt wronged by him.
Linus sounds pretty consciously malicious to me…
That’s interpersonally malicious. A selfish kind of malicious. Yes, quite bad, but it’s not the scheming necessary of villain businessman.
It does go to show how all it takes is a person being given more power than they’re accepting of responsibility for. Like most bad small business leaders or “entrepreneurs” especially, Linus became a boss before he internalized and processed his struggles as a worker. He quite directly fails to understand the power dynamics.
Remember: I still think he’s unqualified. I’m merely pointing out the details of how Hanlon’s razor applies here. He’s a bit of a selfish, lazy nerd, unqualified to control the very business he built. Ahh capitalism. It truly rewards the most
qualifiedcallously shrewd.
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.”
—Lord Acton, Letter to Bishop Creighton (1887)
I wish wisdom were a requirement of leaders.
At least the bare minimum of aknowledging reality would be nice…
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Nah, it’s easy to spot people who don’t actually have skill.
People just LOVE to give others the benefit of the doubt. To the detriment of all.
But guys, Linus swears there’s no need for a union. He’ll just wield the power responsibly and with care, unlike all those other people.
This is not my thesis but someone else’s but as a counterpoint to this platitude, look at the difference between Lincoln versus Nixon. Both were leaders at pivotal times but they took very different ethical directions. Sometimes character and background DOES matter and we SHOULD expect more of our leaders. Just assuming they will all be corrupt makes up disengage from the process.
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Wha what video?
She picked the right moment to come out with this. I mean, keeping this in for 2 whole years while being under the impression that you’re under some NDA, you can only imagine how stressful she must’ve felt.
I feel really sorry for her and I wish her the best. She’s a really cool person.
None of this is surprising to me at all. I’ve been seeing hints of a toxic ‘hustle’ mindset in their videos for quite some time and have commented as much on the videos. I’ve worked in environments just like this and once you’ve lived it it’s easy af to spot.
Linus probably says ‘I don’t ask anything of anyone that I don’t expect of myself’ and then goes on to expect someone making 50k to put in as much time and effort as he did when first starting LTT/LMG.
That is seriously my biggest gripe about employers… They think our pittance motivates us as much as their fortune.
Yea, I’ll get it done by the end of the week! Let’s trade paychecks and I’ll f*cking get it done real fast…
My comment on the forums was very similar.
The key issue in all of this that they didn’t address is that they’re pushing too fast. There have been many red flags about Linus pushing people too hard to get stuff done too fast.
It doesn’t matter what kind of “new processes” you put in place if people just don’t have time. And you can’t expect every employee to work as though they have 20% equity in the company. If you put more than 30 hours of work per week onto a full time, salaried employee, you’re not going to get their best work, especially in creative or expertise-required jobs.
To do their best work, people need time to breathe. They need time to be able to talk to their coworkers about a problem without worry about pulling them away from their own work for 15 minutes. They need time to grab a drink or a sandwich while they step back from a problem and consider it from a distance. They need time to decide their previous work wasn’t good enough and to go back and redo it. They shouldn’t have to ask. Having to ask is a problem. Getting “no” back as an answer is an even bigger problem.
If you try to account for every 15 minutes, you’re going to get shit quality product pushed out the door.
Madison brought this up. Employees have brought this up in videos. And Linus has raised red flags more than once. The biggest was with his equating doing things right to hours worked and directly to cash. That speaks to exactly this. People don’t have time to do things right, and they don’t have time to fix things.
The only way to fix this is to either hire more people (which you clearly can’t afford), or allow your current people to put out less product.
If you put more than 30 hours of work per week onto a full time, salaried employee, you’re not going to get their best work, especially in creative or expertise-required jobs.
Facts. If you claim you can work more than ~30 maybe 40 hours (that’s really pushing it) a week in this type of work without output/quality falling off a cliff, you have lots of room for process automation from my experience. I don’t think I do more than ~15-20 hours of actual active programming per week. If I have hard deadlines, pushing that out to 60-80 hours does increase output but nowhere close to linear output.
And as other people said, she was expected to output that much social media posts, but now they post the bare minimum. Maybe she was being asked too much after all.
Yeah I wish I could say I’m surprised, but I’m not. This kind of mindset is all too common in tech. I hate it.
I think one of her friends leaked the sexual harassment allegations a while back cause I distinctly remember hearing about it. I think it got quickly swept under the rug win some talk of an NDA. regardless I’m glad it’s in the light now.
It’s absolutely bonkers how basically every scandal in the tech industry has at least an element of sexual harassment. Really feels like a lot of guys in the industry have problematic feelings towards women (probably because of their experience as nerdy teens), and unleash those when they have power and when they don’t think there’ll be any consequences.
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You don’t hire your partner as the head of HR unless you want to hide a bad work enviroment.
Right? How do you go to HR if he harasses you? Yeah so I know y’all live together but like it’s really bad?
Oh I thought she was head of accounting. I didn’t realize HR. Conflict of interest much?
You’re right actually. Point still stands somewhat, the whole thing is fucked
Didn’t Coulton mention HR was his purview?
U do that when u think its a stupit position that doesnt really mather when u got a company of 10 to 20 people. When u hire lets say 90 poeple it starts to breakdown.
HR has always been to protect the company, not employees.
Stopped watching years ago because something about the videos were starting to put me off. Now I know.
Okay.
This is not your conventional toxic workplace. This is ADVANCED toxicity. She resorted to self harm for a day off. That’s a type of struggle that can make a company go terminal if the rank and file band together.
This needs to be spread.
She has also confirmed that this Glassdoor review was written by her, with continuing updates on her twitter
Quote from the twitter thread:
I was asked about my sexual history, my boyfriends sexual history, “how I liked to fuck”.
I was told that certain issues were “sexual tension” and I should just “take the co-worker out on a coffee date to ease it out”
I was asked to twerk for a co-worker at one point.
I was told I was chunky, fat, ugly, stupid. I was called “retarded” I was called a “faggot”
If the allegations about the sexual topics are true (like managing the OnlyFans account and having to see other people’s junk, being told to twerk for a coworker and getting asked about “how she liked to fuck”) LTT is in some serious trouble.
No sponsor in their right mind wants to be associated with a bunch of grown men sexually assaulting their female coworkers. If this isn’t cleared up totally and publically, LTT will lose a lot of sponsors and this can seriously hurt them.
When the employee handbook leaked a few months ago and this was mostly ignored by Linus except him making a rant about the company not needing unions because they’re so great, that was already very suspicious to me. It seemed like just another hustle culture company trying to sweep things under the rug. Well, looks like it was not just a feeling…
This is, quite frankly, atrocious.
Alright, time to unsubscribe from their channels. Already started to dislike Linus when he went all Anti-Union and stuff, but this is truly disgusting.
Woah what? I haven’t heard about that
He claims “if my staff have to unionize, I’ve already failed as a boss”
That stuff is so wild to me. Here in Germany you don’t just have the unions that represent you as a worker in a general gield of work, but there are also “Betriebsräte” (worker councils) in most large companies that are made up of employees representing the employee’s interests in front of the company leadership. They are not HR, because they are not totally aligned with the leadership’s interests. They are not unions, because they are more specialized.
From personal experience, working conditions in a company with worker councils or many unionized workers are IMMENSELY better than in companies without such institutions.
Worker’s councils are even somewhat in the interest of a company owner, as happy employees and a good working environment are drivers of productivity and are otherwise hard to implement.
Which is a totally acceptable point of view. He’s even said he won’t make any moves to stop them from unionizing.
Now, whether you believe him or not is up to you, but I don’t think anything he’s said on the topic is ethically wrong.
I’m a union organizer in an adjacent industry (video games). This is a very common anti-union talking point amongst bosses and managers that want to look progressive. The underlying message is “I’m ok with unions, but not here”.
NIMBY doesnt ever end.
With respect, I would disagree. Taking it personally is a problem. Expecting everyone else to ‘just trust me bro’ is a problem. Look at it another way- ‘if my staff unionize and anything needs to change then I’ve already failed as a boss’
This seems like a weird interpretation, at least based on the paraphrasing above. There’s no implicit anti union sentiment, it’s just acknowledging he has an obligation to be a good steward for his employees?
It’s wrong in the sense that he apparently believes that he is able to provide everything that a union does, which is hilarious.
A union has hundreds or thousands of specialist employees working full time for the members, and this guy is like: “yeah I can do that while also managing my company”.
At best he is saying “I’m willing to pay people to shut the fuck up.”
In reality he probably doesn’t even have a clue about what a union is about.
TBH, that’s a fair assessment… In an ideal world they shouldn’t be needed. We don’t live in one.
The problem comes in where bosses either from the start or over time lose touch and stop listening to their workers. Her posts clearly show why they are needed.
That’s not a fair assessment at all. Not at face value, and especially not with deeper scrutiny.
It’s not about him. It’s about the employees. If the employees have reasonable and actionable grievances and demands, Linus does not get to preempt any of it by making it about his personal failings.
It’s also a negative public statement made by the owner of the company. No matter how cautiously worded or carefully framed, he’s still ultimately putting out there that there is consequence to his employees unionizing. Even if it’s nothing more than hurting his feelings, that’s still manipulative.
Really should be the opposite. “If I start a company and it’s so successful that the employees believe in the company enough to want to engage further in how labor is managed and compensated, so that they are able to lead better lives, I have succeeded as a boss.”*
I would make for a shitty executive.
*Predicated upon the idea that the boss is attempting to lead benevolently.
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I’m really glad I didn’t purchase that stupid screwdriver now.
Definitely unsubscribing from all their channels. All of that shit is absolutely disgusting.
I had wondered what happened to her and why she seemed to rarely be in any content despite having a good camera presence. It sucks that she had to put up with all that. Linus should have put in his big boy pants and fired the shit heads that helped create such a toxic work environment. He clearly does not know how to manage a company.
From the thread, Linus is part of the problem.
Linus is the problem. It’s a top down problem, and he’s the one at the top. Everything stems from time and lack of it to resolve issues correctly. When you don’t have time to deal with things and more things get requested of you, it’s human nature to try to downplay or discredit their importance.
You cannot excuse this with time. Taking this to a marginal extreme to demonstrate the point - you don’t dismiss a report that one of your employees shot another because you don’t have the time for it.
You’re right, I meant more that over worked people don’t clearly think things through like they should, but this really is of that level where it’s a bad excuse regardless.
He should fire himself too, from the sound of it.
I feel so much better now, using uBlock and SponsorBlock watching their videos. I knew something was off when Linus started with the Anti-Union talks. Fuck this little bastard.
Honestly, that’s a much larger issue to me than the beef with GN. Forcing the image of a super cool liberal easy company while being as shitty as every other bigger greedy firm. So sad.
Everyone saying this isn’t malice, it fucking is. All of this is done out of malice. He is angry his employees don’t treat this like their day 1 dream and give their entire 45k/yr soul to the brand. He is upset that people would even dare question their products. He is furious that employees would have the gall to expect time off.
It is malice, it always has been. Capitalist hold everyone in contempt, especially employees. It is the easiest thing in the fucken world to take a little less profit from your pocket and add it to the people who actually make your company run. None of these fucks do it because they hate their own employees. They don’t want humans working for them, they want cheap drones that follow their every
wordintention. The people at the top of any company fucking hate they have to pay you at all. Accept that. That is reality.I’ll start with: I believe Madison.
I honestly did not even know that she had left, so all of this is news to me. I assumed that she went into a role that suited what she wanted to do (like production or editing or something with no significant on camera time), and was still there. I usually avoid following anything so closely that I’m aware of whatever drama they get into. Which isn’t to imply that Madison’s experience is mere drama, because it’s not. This is an egregious HR violation on all fronts, and bluntly, if Madison still has any evidence of any of this, a lawyer would do well to pick up her case at no cost to Madison; as far as I’m concerned, with any level of evidence, especially right now with the PR nightmare they’re currently weathering, they’ll want to settle quickly (if they have any sense left in their heads whatsoever)… And Madison can walk away with a very reasonable pay off for all this mental anguish.
Of course, money doesn’t un-do the fact that it happened.
On the surface, to me, this looks like LMG hired Madison to appease the masses, partly evidenced by the fact that he announced that he had done so before she was even made aware that they were interested in bringing her on board, which seems to be a trend with Linus now - saying things have happened when he simply rubber stamps the approval to go ahead and start the process… Then “allowed” her to appear on camera enough to show that yes, she does work here… Then as the hype from fans died down and stopped being a benefit to the company, slowly berated her into leaving quietly so schmucks like me (anyone that’s not so dedicated that they read the LTT forums daily), are unaware, and they don’t lose viewers.
The workload described, at first didn’t sound too bad, busy, sure, but not bad. Some Twitter posts, FB posts, a few tiktoks daily… Yeah ok. That’s a fairly reasonable bar to set, a little high IMO, but ok… Then she went on. And on… And on… What the fuck? I get the idea that it’s “only social media” so some think it’s “not really like working” (which I don’t agree with, I just understand why people think that), since managing your own social media is fairly trivial, but when managing it for someone else, you have to constantly check yourself and consider “is this me saying it? Or is this the right tone and perspective for what the company would say?” Because if you say the wrong thing, you’re reprimanded, or fired. That kind of mental gymnastics is rough; and having to do that for a dozen posts a day is a lot of work to accomplish alone, and you’re probably going to make some mistakes unless you can bounce the posts off of someone like a long term employee or manager to make sure that the message isn’t straying from the brand you represent.
I’ve personally been in plenty of scenarios where I’ve been over worked. It happens. When being overworked is basically your job duties, that’s unreasonable in every way.
On top of that the dismissive and demeaning treatment isn’t going to help. I’m not surprised that Madison noped the fuck out, and it’s sad that happened, and more sad that she felt that she shouldn’t even say anything. It’s unsurprising that she left and that she had such a major impact to her mental health by being there… Honestly, it’s almost surprising that she stayed as long as she did… And this isn’t even addressing the sexual misconduct. I know for me, when I think “sexual assault” I’m thinking the worst case scenario, and bluntly, some of the comments that she relays (like “you’ve never gotten drunk with us”) makes me think that could have happened… But it’s not exclusive to that. This is sexual assault. She was sexually harassed and sexually assaulted by staff and bluntly, I hope she names and shames those who were involved. This is unacceptable in any and every way in the workplace and everywhere else. Madison’s gender, sexual orientation, preferences, history, everything, is entirely personal, and discussions of such things in a workplace is completely unacceptable. If she wanted to offer up such information of her own volition, sure, but berating her about it, and harassing or demeaning her about it is completely unwelcome both socially, and legally.
IMO, Madison has a legal case if she ever chooses to pursue it… I think she should but I understand why she hasn’t, and isn’t.
As for LTT and LMG, I’m extremely disappointed that Madison was set up to fail like this. I get that it’s a bit of a boys locker room, where most of the staff are “one of the guys” regardless of who they are or what gender they are, and ribbing is part of that. Clearly this was above and beyond it and from what people said to Madison after she left, her treatment was worse than most… Well beyond a good ribbing, and others could tell. Anyone who participates in ribbing among friends can recognise when they’ve gone too far. IMO, it was clear that they had, and they just kept doing it. No part of that is ok. The staff then took it further and further into sexual harassment and assault, and the management team was complacent. This is wholly unacceptable on LMG’s side. Their behaviour is reprehensible.
I hope Madison is doing better. I’ll probably track down her twitch and throw her a sub, because she deserves it, and never deserved to be treated the way she was. I don’t know what she’s doing now, but I wish her all the success in the world.
I had heard Linus’ anti-union remarks on WAN Show and was slightly weirded out, because I don’t believe for a second that a company owner AND manager of a company much smaller than theirs has enough time and resources to really be in touch with what their workers need, even if they have the best intentions.
There once was a WAN Show segment about quiet quitting and his fear that people might do that and it came across as if he was more scared that his employees might do it and thereby “hurt the company” than him being interested in why people feel compelled to only work the minimum amount required. As if he was expecting people to always give him 110%.
Even 90% is enough, that’s just reality. If you have people working for you full time, you can’t just pay them for their most productive and focused time. There’s also socializing with coworkers, taking short breaks and being creative without direct output. It’s all part of being a team. A good and healthy team that feels appreciated can take up extra work and make short extra bursts as they become necessary, but that can never be the expected normal.
There was also some WAN Show segment about compensation, free time and the likes that was weird. Maybe it was part of one of the upper two, I don’t quite remember. It’s a bit fuzzy but I remember that I was a little surprised that they operated on the same scheme of low amount of days off + limited sick days system that many US/North-American companies seem to run on. I get that it’s normal in that part of the world, but I still had this idea in my head that they were somehow different. It all felt so quirky, close-knit and best-buddy-like in the videos. That made me think that they were somehow more progressive and worker focused than it turns out after all.
Hearing these allegations is like finding that missing puzzle piece and suddenly it fits into a much bigger picture. I had a lot of respect for Linus and his company and really believed that they were “better”. I really like their content, it is super entertaining and of very consistent quality. They are experts at making things accessible and interesting for a broader audience. But they are also running in a giant hamster wheel that is the youtube algorithm and several daily uploads.
Very sad to see how all this could happen. Even worse is how all of this is being handled. They need a proper restructuring because these problems seem to be structural and deep-rooted. I wish Madison all the best!
Edit: Typos
