Games

Yeah enough of their company culture had leaked into their videos and through some of the things Linus had said that I wasn't really that surprised to see that thread. The power imbalance was thrown around for jokes and Linus comes off as a stingy bastard who will spend a ton of money in some places and then complain about a relatively trivial expense elsewhere. And the way he talks about it implies that he thinks everyone sees it that way.

GN sticks to tech news, and I respect that that Steve sticks to his area of expertise when it comes to reporting on issues in the tech field. LTT has repeatedly shown glaring errors in their testing, and that’s what was reported on by GN.

The staff and professional issues the company faces are for an entirely different style of journalism, and I do hope someone picks up that story.

Linus has always struck me as someone who would be kinda cool to be friends with, but the worst person to be your boss. He can be arrogant, dismissive of employee ideas, and penny pinching. I’ve seen it time and time again in videos where he participates, and it’s always rubbed me the wrong way. I only hope the people who faced discrimination and burnout at LTT are in better places now and have found ways to let their obvious expertise shine.

I also hope one of these employees can summon the strength to report LMG to the relevant Canadian authorities for their blatant abuse of their employees. No matter the “opportunities” and employer offers, or the “contracts” they make employees sign, workers have rights, and their should be a reckoning when those rights are violated.

You can read the whole thread here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1691693740254228741

He calls the shots and ultimately the buck stops with him.

I wish actually large corporations still worked like this. I never buy these "Oh but that happened below me"-excuses from CEOs. Yeah, you didn't personally order anybody to do this. But you hired the people who did. Or you created the business atmosphere in which your managers instructed their HR people to hire the people who did. Ultimately, you're the CEO, you should own the mistakes.

Because on the level of LTT, yeah, we're all intuitively aware of this. He's Linus, he is ultimately responsible no matter whether he did it personally or not.

Imo, any large company, even if started hardcore by linus and luke (and co), will always in the end be mostly created by all the employees.

The ownership of any large company should imo always be gradually moved over to the people who work there.

Worker coops are not a silver bullet and will always be corruptible in any way any other democracy can, but at least it has the possibility to be proper, in contrast to strict founder / investor ownership where you are at their mercy.

I fully agree. But that's the thing, if you don't consider LTT as a tech channel anymore, like GN or whatever, it's fine. I now consider LTT as pure entertainment, I will never go to them to actually buy a PC or a tech product. For that I go to forums, I watch multiple reviews, etc. And if the production value is all they have, I'll just watch it like a show with actors that are - well - acting.

I'm not trying to defend LTT, what they did was shite and I feel that they should be held accountable. But let's compare apples with apples, LTT isn't a tech channel anymore.

A PR stunt until they feel things have blown over and they’ll ramp right back up.

It's less of a stunt and more of human nature. They messed up, they realize it, they put controls in place to prevent similar errors, they get into a groove, they loosen the rules to streamline the process, they mess up, they realize it, ....

This is how every single entity in every single production industry works. Financial markets? Obviously. Food Safety? Of course. Buildings and bridges? Uh, yeah. Security? In the news all the time. Submersible adventures to the Titanic? LOL. It is an exceptionally rare condition where an error and a reaction leads to a permanent chance in procedure (though they do exist).

I started boycotting LTT when he had his shit take about blocking ads being essentially stealing.

Well I sure don't steal Linus anymore that's for sure.

And I would be stealing Linus for sure considering the absolutely crazy amount of ads there is on this channel.

Ever watched a WAN Show without any AdBlock or sponsor block ? That's like 40% of the duration of the video if I include the LTT shop.

It's by far the channel on YT that I watched that pushes the most ads/sponsors. And I'm not even accounting for the YT ads themselves.

Fuck LTT seriously, he can push as much ads as possible AND on top of that you have to watch all of them religiously.

If that's the price for his content, not worth it for me.

I'm just a passive observer who's watched maybe a few dozen LTT videos ever, but this here was also my take away and always has been with this organization. I don't know how big this company is but they're clearly at a level where they, as a company, are mostly in it for the money. For me as an outsider, LTT is becoming more well known for the problems it has more so than the service it provides.

This blatant plug to ask people for money in what should be a somber apology video is arrogant and obscene. They're acting as if they're all-powerful and infallible in a video explaining their failures.

It strikes me that they're putting themselves in a position to rectify foundational disorganization because they're more concerned about revenue than they are fulfilling their promise to to their audience - robust testing and reviews / critique that can consumers can trust without hesitance.

Asking people to buy things should not at all cross your mind in the production of this video.

With that said, if they are the mega-org that I presume they are, it's their prerogative to be concerned about revenue more than anything else. As a consumer, I don't find revenue-centric organizations among the top of entities I would deem trust-worthy.

I don't see anything wrong with that, and chances are they all are. It takes a good speaker to do it without making it feel artificial, but if you're a big enough company you have marketing, legal and corporate vet all external announcements first, even for videos such as this. That's just an entirely normal part of the process.