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Linus Tech Tips pauses production as controversy swirls | What started as criticism over errors in recent YouTube videos has escalated into allegations of sexual harassment, prompting the company t…::The YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips has halted production after controversies over ethics and accuracy in reporting, spurred further this morning by accusations of sexual harassment experienced at the company.
Other than “this should never have happened” I see this as the best possible outcome.
Now we wait and see I suppose.
Agreed. The upload schedule has been a holy grail within LTT for a long time, and I truly believe it’s the root of all of this, yes, even the sexual harassment. Or at least how that harassment was handled so poorly. When do you have time to make good HR policies? Pull people into HR for reprimanding? Have opportunities for others to second guess decisions? Do training? Or heck, even just have less tired and irritable people making in-the-moment stupid decisions?
This uncompromising maximum velocity hurts everyone, and I hope they keep never bring it back to this pace, even after the process improvements they have planned.
The company has far outgrown Linus’s ability to run it. Half the shit he says on the WAN show I cringe at as someone who’s done corporate management / systems consulting for the last decade+. I get the feeling he really is unable to separate his ego from his corporate responsibilities and this inability seeps through in all their content. Just take the Billet Labs fiasco as an example, he was so convinced he knew better that he felt insulted on the WAN show that his conclusion was brought into question when it was shown his methodology was abhorrently flawed; or look to his and the entire team’s proclivity to misappropriate inventory to their homes or the projects that personally benefit him and his family - I would hate to be his personal attorney as any litigation hitting LMG is sure to hit him personally as there is ample evidence of the corporate veil being pierced, and JFC why is the entire consumer tech market perpetually in the mindset of a horny 14 year old? Talk about a hostile work environment.
I found it hilarious when he was discussing Blizzard and their actions to be egregious when the vibe at LTT honestly doesn’t seem all that different - he seems to be barrelling toward following in their footsteps
This was my take as well. To add to it, on an individual level, the way to avoid biases is to step back and think critically for a second. In the interest of time, if you just blurt out every thought that comes to your head you’ll say insensitive stuff every now and then. Or you’ll unconsciously express favoritism out of convenience. The work culture there that tries to pass it off as “just the odd mean joke between friends” needs to change too, but having time to foster a positive environment involves taking away time from cranking out the next video.
Linus has got to look inside a little and find integrity again for his company, because that’s what they lost years ago in pursuit of a constant churn of content.
Very much so.
They’ve basically been operating in startup mode for years, and haven’t bothered to transition their management systems to “decade old company with lots of employees” mode.
You can’t burn on startup mode forever without things exploding at some point.
My take as well. I hope after their break, they cut things down to have fewer videos with higher quality. We know from what Linus has said openly that they’re set with money, so sacrificing some earnings to establish themselves as a channel that can truly be trusted seems like the obvious move.
You don’t see a lot of people come back from turmoil like this and stay as popular as they previously were. Will be interesting to see what changes they make.
They are popular because they really know how to leverage the Youtube algorithm and end up being suggested to a ton of people. Technically knowledgeable people might reject LTT even more due to this mess but there are still a ton of viewers following what Youtube suggests.
It’s not even that they know how to work the algorithm anymore. When you’re that high level, you have a partnership with YouTube and they’ll adjust the algorithm for you.
Fair. They could also just reincorporate a new company and do the same with different people featured and make money I suppose.
I think this mess is just a sign of a company experiencing growing pains. Seems like they are still figuring out what kind of processes the company needs to have and who is the right person for each task. When a company grows quickly you tend to bump into (or more like crash into) unexpected issues like this. In the case of LMG, it got particularly nasty, but I’m glad they are finally addressing the issues.
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The situation got really bad because the company didn’t have what it takes to notice and intervene in time. Once they have noticed the problem, they should work to prevent it from happening in the future. Perhaps they need to fire people who don’t have manners. All of this applies to lots of other issues too; not just sexual assault, harassment etc. That’s why I was mainly focussing on the big picture rather than a single category of problems.
Fortunately though, they have already built processes to prevent certain issues from arising in the future, but obviously there’s still a lot they need to do in this regard. The way I see it, that’s a clear sign of growing pains in general.