Blademaster91

Yet we don't know what the cost of employment really is either, given that Linus refuses to let his employees form a union but wants his staff to rush out a video every day regardless of errors in the videos.

I really hate how people are attacking others for simply having less posts or joined to give feedback, that elitist nonsense definitely reminds me of reddit.

I dont think firing himself is nessessary. The real problem is linus has been going at full speed for far too long, and desperately needs a break. In prior wan shows, linus has talked about how Yvonne has asked him to slow down company wise and spend more time with family, and frankly she is right 100%. Linus is far to wrapped up in LMG, both physically and emotionally, and needs to understand this isnt the small team it used to be. Every single time controversey arrises, he takes it personally first and foremost.
 
Linus needs a break, weather it be a few weeks to a few months, and let the team handle and fix this. They are talented and bright people.

The issue is Linus overly was calling out GN for not contacting him to get the facts.  The fact is Linus acted like some of the stuff he did after the video was somehow done prior to the video.  That makes it a major lie, not just unprofessional but one where he's spin doctoring the narrative to try making himself look in the right.

It was essentially a press prototype.  So one that you send around to the press so that they can assess it.  It's not that they can't rebuild it...it's about the fact that they now HAVE to rebuild it.  It breaks up essentially their marketing potential for the product (and to properly assess people's feeling on the product)

Can anyone except Linus fire Linus? He isn't the CEO but he's still on the board and seems to want to be in charge of everything else, it feels to me like he stepped away from being the CEO so he can make hot takes like this without having to actually take responsibility for the consequences.
Indeed that is the worst part about the whole thing, LMG tried to ignore Billet on compensation, then went into panic mode when GN went public to call them out, It makes even more sense why GN didn't contact LMG first because of that.  Its sad that LMG and Linus thought they could bash on a company then just sell off their valuable prototype and not want to talk to them or even apologize for selling it.

I really hate how people are attacking others for simply having less posts or joined to give feedback, that elitist nonsense definitely reminds me of reddit.

I really hate how people are attacking others for simply having less posts or joined to give feedback, that elitist nonsense definitely reminds me of reddit.

Just watching the new HW news... wow.
They didn't even offer compensation for Billet until AFTER Steve had to publically call LMG out?
What a sham this company has become. Disgusting behavior that would leave a startup with no compensation even after selling their one of a kind prototype, and then only reach out once you get called out publicly.

Shame on Linus and LMG in general.

I really hate how people are attacking others for simply having less posts or joined to give feedback, that elitist nonsense definitely reminds me of reddit.

I really hate how people are attacking others for simply having less posts or joined to give feedback, that elitist nonsense definitely reminds me of reddit.

This reply comes off as being so disingenuous.

Frankly, any time you are met with true criticism you have two default responses:
Make a flippant comment then follow it up with "it doesn't matter" Or you go on to say "that wasn't our intention" and show no empathy for anyone outside of you/LMG  
You ask people to remember that "you're just a person" without showing any sort of empathy for others involved and/or without taking a step back to analyze how others involved could feel about the situation, how it could effect them,  or whether any sort of actions or communications on their end were warranted.  You get really upset when folks say that you are out of touch but these two reasons are why so many folks can't take you seriously when you respond to criticism. Yeah, you and Steve have a personal relationship but for him to reach out to discuss repeated shortcomings of your data without discussing it with the community is the opposite transparent journalism.  Add to the fact that he was responding to both Tim's  comments and HU's take on the whole deal him reaching out to you first before responding just doesn't make any sense. At all. 

It's obvious that you feel like folks were quick to grab pitch forks and yeah, you can't make everyone happy.  However, after some discussion with some peers we all had pretty much the same thought:  Continuously not being able to relate to others during criticism paired with comments that often play down whether or not issues at hand tend to be "worth" anything outside of what you say it is heavily perpetuate the feeling that you are either out of touch with users as a whole or just don't give a damn unless it effects you personally or LMGs bottom line. 
 
Hindsight comes standard with rose tinted lenses and if your aim of chief vision officer is to make sure that LMG fosters positive relationships with folks outside of big vendors in the space then you may need to consider taking some steps to being able to empathize with others regardless of how it effects you or LMG.   Whether that's by taking some time to analyze your team's workflow, looking at how you and LMG as a company address issues of conflict, or seeking a professional to consult with you a different pair of glasses to view conflict with it's clear that many folks think that you got this wrong and will continue to get it wrong until you can come to a point where instead of just saying sorry you can genuinely see where others are coming from without needing to preface it in defense.

I really hate how people are attacking others for simply having less posts or joined to give feedback, that elitist nonsense definitely reminds me of reddit.

Billet Labs response. Posting this in case anyone missed it.
 
 
And a little meme to make things even worse. UwU

 

ah yes, 'who the the fuck do you think you are'
 
I hate how this forum (or thread at least) is slowly turning into reddit 

I really hate how people are attacking others for simply having less posts or joined to give feedback, that elitist nonsense definitely reminds me of reddit.

Just adding my voice here:
This is a PR catastrophe unlike any other in recent history.
I'm a long-time and loyal viewer, and this is the first time that I've thought that Linus/LMG is completely in the wrong.
Linus has to realize that this is not the same audience of haters that usually piles on to the drama, but rather his longtime and harder-core fans.

How does it make sense to not test the cooler on a GPU it was made for? Linus was complaining about the price, yet has no issues making stupidly expensive builds, or a game controller made of gold. It seems like he didn't care at all because there wasn't enough money from the company that sent it. And it makes no sense for Linus to be bashing on the company without giving the block any fair testing.
The for entertainment purposes is a weird thing to be claiming for on a water block, I think more knowledgeable people are going to be watching videos on water cooling than the people that just want entertainment of Linus playing with expensive things.
 
As for auctioning off the prototype that was a dumb mistake, sure mistakes can happen, although it shouldn't have happened if Billet said they wanted it back and there should have been a note to return it if the block was correctly put into their inventory.
Although the worst thing is how LMG handled selling it off, they totally acted non-nonchalantly over a one off prototype and probably hurt Billet as a company since that was their best prototype, thats completely unacceptable IMO and Billet deserves a public apology.

Yeah this is a good point, Luke does seem introverted, he's also more calm and thinks before he speaks, on the other hand Linus says things regardless if people disagree with him or not.
Sometimes letting things go is the better approach that is true, its a matter of agree to disagree.
Exactly, and i'm sure a lot of the long time fans like Luke, even if he disagrees he's still there to back up Linus on the show. They might be friends off camera and can brush aside the business disagreements. Also, Luke manages Floatplane, not sure if he does other work at LMG, if not then LUke might not have known about it before.
And for GN asking for input first, given the reaction from Linus on this topic, I can see why GN went ahead and made the video without any contacting LMG, as Linus would've denied doing anything wrong and would've doubled down on their decisions.

How does it make sense to not test the cooler on a GPU it was made for? Linus was complaining about the price, yet has no issues making stupidly expensive builds, or a game controller made of gold. It seems like he didn't care at all because there wasn't enough money from the company that sent it. And it makes no sense for Linus to be bashing on the company without giving the block any fair testing.
The for entertainment purposes is a weird thing to be claiming for on a water block, I think more knowledgeable people are going to be watching videos on water cooling than the people that just want entertainment of Linus playing with expensive things.
 
As for auctioning off the prototype that was a dumb mistake, sure mistakes can happen, although it shouldn't have happened if Billet said they wanted it back and there should have been a note to return it if the block was correctly put into their inventory.
Although the worst thing is how LMG handled selling it off, they totally acted non-nonchalantly over a one off prototype and probably hurt Billet as a company since that was their best prototype, thats completely unacceptable IMO and Billet deserves a public apology.

The hurt/sad/discouraged language is a deflect from the fact that Linus is not actually acknowledging the criticism of GN beyond a token statement and is portraying himself as the victim. 

Let me bullet point Linus' statement, my summarization:
I'm not going to publicly talk about this on the WAN show or anything. I've commented properly. Steve should have given me the right to reply in his original video (despite Linus' reply being awful and evidence on how said reply wouldn't have changed anything). (Hurt = taking it personally) We have some growing pains (acknowledging errors occur, blame on growth, no specific acknowledgement of specific issues or manner to improve).  We know not perfect, hearts on our sleeve, "sad and unfortunate when this transparency gets warped into a bad thing" (we're being transparent, people are bad for pointing out errors and omissions in our content, we are the victim). Also dismisses spec sheet errors as irrelevant and ignores inaccurate test issues raised by GN. We disagree with the Billet labs thing... not only did we not test it badly (it was on a GPU the monoblock was never designed to fit properly), it's actually IMPOSSIBLE to perfectly test it.... okay, perfection is unknowable, but he could have tested it on the proper GPU. Even if it did perform well when tested properly, it "still wouldn't make sense to buy" (objectively testing properly is pointless, accept garbage testing procedures, just trust me bro). Halfhearted apology comparing this to a supercar so accuracy is irrelevant (if accuracy is irrelevant, why review the product at all? Hiding behind "it's just entertainment bro" is not an excuse). "Our intention wasn't to hurt anyone" (we're the victim, we're being painted in a bad light) "It saddens me how quickly the pitchforks were raised over this" (we're the victims) "Will the "it was a mistake (a bad one, but a mistake) and they're taking care of it" reality manage to have the same reach" it's been disheartening seeing how many people are willing to jump on us here"  
Linus effectively ignored most of the criticism, mentioned repeatedly how he was disappointed/sad/hurt, acknowledged he has no plans to talk about it beyond this forum post/thread, gave excuse after excuse about how they trashed Billet's product with an inaccurate test and refused to re-test it when this was pointed out, ignored all of the points on how there's "growing pains" while not acknowledging specific criticisms beyond Billet or any plans to improve...

The reply is Linus' ego. He feels aggreived here. There's some token apologies to the community, none of which feel genuine. 

How does it make sense to not test the cooler on a GPU it was made for? Linus was complaining about the price, yet has no issues making stupidly expensive builds, or a game controller made of gold. It seems like he didn't care at all because there wasn't enough money from the company that sent it. And it makes no sense for Linus to be bashing on the company without giving the block any fair testing.
The for entertainment purposes is a weird thing to be claiming for on a water block, I think more knowledgeable people are going to be watching videos on water cooling than the people that just want entertainment of Linus playing with expensive things.
 
As for auctioning off the prototype that was a dumb mistake, sure mistakes can happen, although it shouldn't have happened if Billet said they wanted it back and there should have been a note to return it if the block was correctly put into their inventory.
Although the worst thing is how LMG handled selling it off, they totally acted non-nonchalantly over a one off prototype and probably hurt Billet as a company since that was their best prototype, thats completely unacceptable IMO and Billet deserves a public apology.

How does it make sense to not test the cooler on a GPU it was made for? Linus was complaining about the price, yet has no issues making stupidly expensive builds, or a game controller made of gold. It seems like he didn't care at all because there wasn't enough money from the company that sent it. And it makes no sense for Linus to be bashing on the company without giving the block any fair testing.
The for entertainment purposes is a weird thing to be claiming for on a water block, I think more knowledgeable people are going to be watching videos on water cooling than the people that just want entertainment of Linus playing with expensive things.
 
As for auctioning off the prototype that was a dumb mistake, sure mistakes can happen, although it shouldn't have happened if Billet said they wanted it back and there should have been a note to return it if the block was correctly put into their inventory.
Although the worst thing is how LMG handled selling it off, they totally acted non-nonchalantly over a one off prototype and probably hurt Billet as a company since that was their best prototype, thats completely unacceptable IMO and Billet deserves a public apology.

Honestly it was only 4 days before Steve jumped on it and forced LMG's hand. It's a completely unacceptable response time, but that doesn't mean they weren't already discussing internally what to do about it and having poor company communications.

Overall though whether they would have or wouldn't have is irrelevant. 4 days to respond is entirely too long. This should have been resolved same day.

I think it was a tongue in cheek jab at Linus, because that is exactly what he said about the 700$ gpu waterblock, about how that was a stupid product that noone in their right mind should buy, meanwhile he sells the same kind of luxury items and has built PC-s before with same kind of luxury cases, waterblocks etc, drives a luxury car etc.