Madison reveals experiences working at LMG

[saintlouisbagels]

I wonder if HR was proper enough to give Madison an exit interview when she quit. That would seem like the easiest paper trail evidence for the external investigation.

But that would be too easy - it probably doesn't exist.

[hmfaysal]

10 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Not just social but legal.  This whole matter is one of civil torts.  

Legally speaking here is what could happen. 

Madison retains counsel who sues for sexual harassment, and petitions a court for what is called discovery.  This would compel LMG to hand over to her lawyers every document that could be related to the matter. 

 

LMG does their own investigation and could theoretically try to counter sue for defamation.   Defamation is really hard to prove against a public entity.  Even outside the USA, in most common law jurisdictions a public entity is expected to just accept a bit of dirt on their name from time to time. 

 

Anyway when it comes to BC where this all went down, where LMG is located, and the law that would apply. 

 

MULTIPLE of the things on that sheet happened to her. 

In fact if LMG winds up not having to make Madison RICH after this it'll be on the technicality that she well.  I hate to say it... She did need to put on her big girl pants.  She needed to put them on,  retain counsel, find out what her rights are, and sue them as soon as things happened.   She may have waited to long because she was thinking about this in an immature way.  She was afraid of what other immature people would think of her and say about her.  She needed to be enough of an iron lady to take charge that way.  

It's not her fault.  NOne of this makes anything right.  Six months is barely time for someone young to really process and recover from something that could be a trauma let alone... put on their big girl pants. 

The great state of Illinois in the USA will give someone 300 days

The Republic of Texas in the USA 300 days. 

California  THREE YEARS 

Madisons only mistake in all of this, IMHO being the person with less power, was thinking that the laws and protections that would exist in Canada would be anythging like those that exist in the USA. 

 

We haven't annexed them yet. 

 

Someday we will, or fall in the attempt.  Until then Canada is this strange monarchy next door with a doofy looking king that cheated on his beautiful wife.    Looking at it that way is any of this really a surprise? 

No no, there were no mistakes on her part. She and some of her colleagues did try to record illegit behavior at office. The only problem is, there isn't a shred of evidence. Office full of cameras, hidden cameras, employees recording each other without consent, still nothing close to anything has been recorded. No email threads, no teams messages, nothing. All she has going for her is Steve's expose, and another ex Colin. 

Good stuff, as I have said, she should get some money out of this fiasco, she deserves it. Money or something or anything. Maybe Billet labs should sponsor her, or Maybe Steve should hire her at whatever pay she asks for, thats only fair. 

[NubCak]

1 hour ago, kn1ghtnsh1narmr said:

Does it depend?

 

What if she said the harassment was looking at her across the room.

 

Can we all agree that saying go get coffee together outside of work is an incompetent answer that shows a lack of judgment?

That's not harassment.

Telling your employees to go deal with their own bullshit is a fine way if you ask me. 

If it starts to affect your production at work, then i'd take issue. 

You don't need to be friends or friendly with everyone at work.

[RasmusDC]

2 hours ago, Mutex01 said:

No kidding.   I also find it amazing that the official HR policy Linux presented immediately after Madison left the company was something like:

 

If you receive feedback about someone at this company, your first response is "Have you spoken with this person?" followed immediately by "You need to speak with this person.".    The next option was Linux/Yvonne, then finally an external HR company.  

 

It is things like this that remind me that Linus has basically zero experience outside his own company.  

i really don´t get that premise. So you are confronted by a collogue that has been in a situation that is NOT great, maybe office bullying, harassment, whatever. 

 

The process Linus is presenting here, is a Garnished standard HR process. YOU GO to your manager, because you need to get this in control, in control is not to HIDE it, it is to STOP it, NOW... before a investigation happens, and to get the investigation going, so you can LOCATE what has actually happened, it is to protect BOTH parties of at this point the "allegedged" crime.

 

what he also is stating is that, IF your management in direct, FAILS you, you go to HIM, which means you escalate.

 

i don´t see ANYTHING wrong with this process.

 

however it can be abused, it can also be the tool for a lot of people, to ACTUALLY try to "hide" the facts, we agree on that. but with an HR organization that is the same, they are HIRED by management, i have NEVER to see an HR organisation, where an escalation in problems with ethics & other elements, are not feed directly from HR back into management. that is just the facts of life.

 

So if you want a different process, then you have to have a goverment agency with full power, so you can whistleblow to that, and get an investigation started, but to be honest, that is "brutal" to a company, and even though we should trust every "feedback" from staff.. some is blown out of proportion, some is simply misunderstanding, others are FACT and needs to be handled.

 

But it is an Impossible solution, an in my 45 years as a human being and my many years as an adult in a lot of different levels of an organization, i have still to see a good process for this..

 

It unfortunatly is dependent on people, it always is, and the fun part of this is the COMPANY owner, the company values, can be the best in the world, all these good intentions are often "washed away" down through all levels of management, the more you have of these, the LESS you are actually in control, you can make all the rules you would like, the instance shit like this happens, reactions becomes reflexes, and sometimes self protection.... 

 

that is just in my experience. but in my many years i think i have seen a factor of 100 more abuse of staff, than sexual harrasment, i have seen so many leaders, not be capable of their positions, and so many employees fight an unfair fight, against people that are just not the right profile, or for that sake just decent human beings. 

 

But there are also EXCELLENT leaders, people that care, inspire trust.

[Reclus]

1 hour ago, digitalscream said:

#1 - If they investigated, and the result was Linus holding that meeting, and it would've been his wife running the investigation (since she was HR at the time) then why was Madison's Twitter thread a complete shock and unrecognisable to him? Either you're right and he's lying in the response to The Verge, or you're completely inventing this investigation.

 

#2 - There are no other stakeholders or investors in LMG. It's 100% owned by Linus and Yvonne, so they have nobody to prove anything to.

1. Or you are either unknowingly or deliberately misconstruing what  constitutes an investigation in a work place. I won't sentence after sentence transcribe what was told on that meeting and why. You have your conclusion from what you heard, I have mine. The reason this makes sense to me because I had to do hundreds of briefs and investigations like this. This is how a corporate environment reacts to issues at a workplace.

2. They have sponsor deals, loans, mortgages etc...

I don't want to belittle you  but it seems to me you have very little experience working or dealing with a corporate entity. 

[hmfaysal]

Well Madison should atleast have gotten the help of a PR firm. Thats what I think. Her twitter thread had a shock effect, which isn't long lasting though. It sounded like she wasn't qualified for the job, in her own words. The mental breakdown and physical harm part may have the shock value now, couple days, but isn't helping her cause of getting some money out of this. A PR firm would have done a much better job at presenting her issues and securing her a paycheck or something . 

[digitalscream]

14 minutes ago, Reclus said:

1. Or you are either unknowingly or deliberately misconstruing what  constitutes an investigation in a work place. I won't sentence after sentence transcribe what was told on that meeting and why. You have your conclusion from what you heard, I have mine. The reason this makes sense to me because I had to do hundreds of briefs and investigations like this. This is how a corporate environment reacts to issues at a workplace.

2. They have sponsor deals, loans, mortgages etc...

I don't want to belittle you  but it seems to me you have very little experience working or dealing with a corporate entity. 

LOL, I've got 30 years of working in corporate environments.

 

1 - Explain to me, then, how both things can be true - that an investigation was conducted and resulted in Linus holding that meeting, but Linus was telling the truth when he said that Madison's allegations are a complete surprise. I mean sure, it's possible that Yvonne ran the investigation (she was head of HR at the time), then told Linus to run the meeting but refused to tell him why it was necessary (and still hasn't to this day), but given what we know of their relationship I think that's highly unlikely. Ergo, those things are mutually exclusive - you can't have it both ways.

 

2 - "This is money that you might loose due to investors literally asking why haven't you sued this person if you are innocent" - sponsors and creditors are not investors. Pretty bloody obvious, that. And it's been made clear that LMG has no investors, never has and never will.

[RasmusDC]

2 minutes ago, hmfaysal said:

Well Madison should atleast have gotten the help of a PR firm. Thats what I think. Her twitter thread had a shock effect, which isn't long lasting though. It sounded like she wasn't qualified for the job, in her own words. The mental breakdown and physical harm part may have the shock value now, couple days, but isn't helping her cause of getting some money out of this. A PR firm would have done a much better job at presenting her issues and securing her a paycheck or something . 

Madison was great on screen, she seemed to have a fun back and forward with linus. maybe, the search for a place for her in the company, ALSO because of the PUSH from the community, lead to a job that was not for her.

 

I still think with the few times she got on camera as a LTT staffer, she did great. the Mediapart... to be honest, this SoMe work is complex, and also high risk. 

 

But that also falls as a responsibility of a company, however, it must also admit that there was a BIG community push for this to happen, so some of the blame also falls a bit back on that part of the story.

[Reclus]

1 hour ago, Mutex01 said:

Where did you find that the HR meeting was the result of an investigation?   This is the first time I have heard that claimed.

 

The original reddit user who posted the HR meeting (6 months ago) had this to say about it:

 

Again a case of people reading and coming to different conclusions.

I look at this and see that management has noticed  or was notified of a problem, identified the cause, worked on a solution and implemented it. To do so they clearly investigated it since the points are addressing the issue and not some random stuff. How good the investigation was or the depth of it is a different matter that should be handled by the law if done poorly.

More over I simply can't take OP seriously when he dismisses all solutions presented on the meeting and also expects that managers will be called out in front of staff for supposed behaviour only to come to conclusions that the meeting did it's job by raising awareness on a possible issue at work.

I am not defending LMG. But I can clearly see an angry mob unwilling to be reasonable when it comes to serious issues.

 

[Reclus]

4 minutes ago, digitalscream said:

LOL, I've got 30 years of working in corporate environments.

 

1 - Explain to me, then, how both things can be true - that an investigation was conducted and resulted in Linus holding that meeting, but Linus was telling the truth when he said that Madison's allegations are a complete surprise. I mean sure, it's possible that Yvonne ran the investigation (she was head of HR at the time), then told Linus to run the meeting but refused to tell him why it was necessary (and still hasn't to this day), but given what we know of their relationship I think that's highly unlikely. Ergo, those things are mutually exclusive - you can't have it both ways.

 

2 - "This is money that you might loose due to investors literally asking why haven't you sued this person if you are innocent" - sponsors and creditors are not investors. Pretty bloody obvious, that. And it's been made clear that LMG has no investors, and never has.

I gave you my explanation. You either understand it and have counter arguments or you just scream louder. You are playing semantics, not the point of the argument. I won't argue with an angry mob.

Enjoy your riot.

 

[RasmusDC]

10 minutes ago, digitalscream said:

LOL, I've got 30 years of working in corporate environments.

 

1 - Explain to me, then, how both things can be true - that an investigation was conducted and resulted in Linus holding that meeting, but Linus was telling the truth when he said that Madison's allegations are a complete surprise. I mean sure, it's possible that Yvonne ran the investigation (she was head of HR at the time), then told Linus to run the meeting but refused to tell him why it was necessary (and still hasn't to this day), but given what we know of their relationship I think that's highly unlikely. Ergo, those things are mutually exclusive - you can't have it both ways.

 

2 - "This is money that you might loose due to investors literally asking why haven't you sued this person if you are innocent" - sponsors and creditors are not investors. Pretty bloody obvious, that. And it's been made clear that LMG has no investors, and never has.

Also depends, to be honest, in some companies the process is to decouple management until a conclusion is made, also what he states is that the allegations surprised him, there has been words, that i am sure of, but has this story grown, are there more in the bucket now, has the party involved, dug more up from her memory.. that was shared with management.

 

and again how much was actually escalated. for us as a community the story has grown a LOT with the LAST tweet blast from the involved (X blast, what ever). so is that also the case for the company..

 

i think this needs time to be examined, and handled, if any REAL criminal activity was done, then it of course should be investigated by the police, not by internal investigations, or like the new CEO stated an external investigator.. to be honest, if i was the head of, and handled the business, i would still not share the conclusion, WHY not.. because it is not for the community to PICK apart, it is to fix something that got broken, somewhere in this whole mess, the partners involved, the LTT employees, Linus and Madison, if we get this solved with these parties being happy. then the fix is DONE... then nothing is owed to the community..

 

Fair enough to fight on review quality, and other stuff, but these people cases. these needs to be protected, not just for the company but also for the people. 

[digitalscream]

3 minutes ago, Reclus said:

I look at this and see that management has noticed  or was notified of a problem, identified the cause, worked on a solution and implemented it. To do so they clearly investigated it since the points are addressing the issue and not some random stuff.

Hypothetically:

 

"Some people are saying that Madison had tried to make complaints before she left, did you hear anything about this?"
"No, what's that about? Never had any HR complaints."
"Hmmm, OK, perhaps we ought to make the HR report process clearer to everyone to make sure there aren't any banana skins in future."

"Sure, should probably be a company-wide presentation to make sure nobody misses it."

"Good idea!"
-> Meeting

 

No investigation required, and entirely consistent with everything Linus has said about how HR is managed at LMG.

[digitalscream]

1 minute ago, Reclus said:

I gave you my explanation. You either understand it and have counter arguments or you just scream louder. You are playing semantics, not the point of the argument. I won't argue with an angry mob.

Enjoy your riot.

 

No, you haven't once said how that contradiction can be resolved. An attempted dodge with added condescension isn't an answer.

[Reclus]

1 minute ago, digitalscream said:

Hypothetically:

 

"Some people are saying that Madison had tried to make complaints before she left, did you hear anything about this?"
"No, what's that about? Never had any HR complaints."
"Hmmm, OK, perhaps we ought to make the HR report process clearer to everyone to make sure there aren't any banana skins in future."

"Sure, should probably be a company-wide presentation to make sure nobody misses it."

"Good idea!"
-> Meeting

 

No investigation required, and entirely consistent with everything Linus has said about how HR is managed at LMG.

Correct 100%. Since this is your scenario it clearly says HR is unaware of the problem since nothing has been brought to their attention.

[dragonuck76]

Why are you all jumping on this;  it is an old stoy, only made more public by who ever brought it to social media attacking LMG again and specifically Linus.

As someone who has been treated in a poor way by someone, I first advised my supervisor, and we agreed as I was new, to speak with them, advising that I had spoken with my supervisor and that they are aware of the situation.  It is normal, civil way.  Its to work out differences you may have or miss-communication in feelings.  I mean the person might be speaking to you in a way you feel offensive, but in practice in the environment it has been ok, but not for you, so you speak with them.  IF that doesnt work, in time, For me it worked, and I got to understand the guy, but in time he left for personel reasons.   But what I have read, and what I heard on LTT audio, are 2 different things.  THere is no context to accuse anyone.  Could LMG done better, maybe, we dont know, we only know what Madision tells us.  Does that make it fully true, no not at all, it is just one side of a story.  Also is this of our concer, no it hell is not.  If it is, then you have a problem.  A major problem that makes you enjoy the attacks on people, and un-warranted attacks.  Just like you all did with the GN story with out reflecting and looking at it and thinking well thats your story what does LMG have to say and giving them time to respond.  As it turns out a lot from GN was not as it seemed.   I mean is this how you would like to be treated with the personal attacks - someone posts on social about you as Madison has, and you are being hated on their, yet you have not been allowed your say.  But hey just a minute why is something that does not relate to the general social media have to do with them of your personal business with your employer, becuase of unfounded speculation on their part towards you, with out you being allowed a say yet, but in the real terms of things it has nothing to do with the general publick or social media. It is personal between you the accuser and the employer.  SO yes this needs to fully stop.  The only reason there are posters on here against LMG is because you enjoy it and dont care; those who know better will read this and think wow; post there say and that is it.   Thats it, my piece, and I know I will get called out - and I will respond.  I just hope some willl understand that this is none of our business

[Reclus]

2 minutes ago, digitalscream said:

No, you haven't once said how that contradiction can be resolved. An attempted dodge with added condescension isn't an answer.

Treat it as you will.

I don't owe you any further explanations. The burden of proof is on you to prove the wrong doing not on me to prove the innocence. If you don't see that I am on the side of an unbiased approach to have a truthful outcome to this there really is no point to you asking me anything.

[digitalscream]

3 minutes ago, Reclus said:

Correct 100%. Since this is your scenario it clearly says HR is unaware of the problem since nothing has been brought to their attention.

Which has been my entire point from your first reply to me!

 

"The entire HR meeting was a result of the investigation made by HR  after her departure."

 

You treated your own assumption that there must have been an investigation as fact, which is patently not the case; as I illustrated, it's entirely possible for HR to have been vaguely aware that there was a problem, but no employees wanted to give them details, so they run a generic meeting explaining what should happen.

 

1 minute ago, Reclus said:

Treat it as you will.

I don't owe you any further explanations. The burden of proof is on you to prove the wrong doing not on me to prove the innocence. If you don't see that I am on the side of an unbiased approach to have a truthful outcome to this there really is no point to you asking me anything.

True, but if you're as experienced and knowledgeable as you make out, it should be trivial for you to actually back up your statement that there must've been an investigation (which you appear to have backtracked on with your last post). That's the only point that we disagree on, near as I can tell, but you're defending it like your life depends on it with obfuscation and condescension (misplaced, I might add), and I can't quite figure out why.

[Sho2048]

There is no workplace in the world where an employee being called a f____t and other slurs is normal and someone bigger and older than you with more power can call you a bitch. That is just not normal. It isn’t a “sensible gen Z” kind of issue, but a “no one told you you’re hot garbage human being” kind of issue, which would result in firing at any company, be it higher ups or management.

 

Unfortunately, if anyone comes forward, there’s plenty of people ready to silence them. 

[hmfaysal]

4 minutes ago, Sho2048 said:

There is no workplace in the world where an employee being called a f____t and other slurs is normal and someone bigger and older than you with more power can call you a bitch. That is just not normal. It isn’t a “sensible gen Z” kind of issue, but a “no one told you you’re hot garbage human being” kind of issue, which would result in firing at any company, be it higher ups or management.

 

Unfortunately, if anyone comes forward, there’s plenty of people ready to silence them. 

Who fires the higher ups? Lower downs?

[Reclus]

6 minutes ago, digitalscream said:

Which has been my entire point from your first reply to me!

 

"The entire HR meeting was a result of the investigation made by HR  after her departure."

 

You treated your own assumption that there must have been an investigation as fact, which is patently not the case; as I illustrated, it's entirely possible for HR to have been vaguely aware that there was a problem, but no employees wanted to give them details, so they run a generic meeting explaining what should happen.

 

True, but if you're as experienced and knowledgeable as you make out, it should be trivial for you to actually back up your statement that there must've been an investigation (which you appear to have backtracked on with your last post). That's the only point that we disagree on, near as I can tell, but you're defending it like your life depends on it with obfuscation and condescension (misplaced, I might add), and I can't quite figure out why.

. Thank you for being civil. Kind of rare here now with all the tension. If I was being condescending that was not my point and I retract that.

 

HR does not have (thank god for that) the ability or right to work on rumours or gossip. If HR has a reported issue they have to investigate it. Not doing so is grounds for legal actions. That is why my point from like 100 pages of forum is: Maddison should go to the police, not Twitter if she reported the issue to HR and nothing was done with it.

 

If you want to take my experience into account then again - you make these kind of briefs after you have finished an investigation. That is always the corporate process.

Incident - investigation - conclusions - disciplinary actions or corrections to procedures depending on the investigation - team briefing to ensure awareness. 

[Sho2048]

16 minutes ago, hmfaysal said:

Who fires the higher ups? Lower downs?

The owners at small companies. Big companies, if there is no one above the asshole, you walk off, and then it’s the company’s loss, not yours. Sometimes it’s also worthy of police, or unionizing.

 

All I wanted to say is there is no justification for abuse of power anywhere. We don't know if problems were known, fixed, or how they dealt with them, or if they happened at all for sure, until an investigation. What I say, is that there's no reason to blame young people for not wanting to be insulted. The "dogshit" work is not nice but also not unheard of, insults like "stop being a bitch" are likely to result in a firing or suspension at any other company, and most people would at least have a right to complain. Unfortunately, it also ends up that women rarely can silence toxic people like that.

[rudimedia]

Statistical Analysis of Deleted Comments

Hi, having read a multitude of comments claiming that comments regarding Madison are being deleted, I've decided to archive comments from the video "What do we do now" in timed succession. This way I was able to compare which comments were previously present and have since been removed. This is a VERY unscientific way to test this. I have not had the possibility to crawl the comments in a short enough time period to be sure that I wasn't "losing" comments because they were being removed faster than I was collecting them.

 

The data used for the following graph is based on three crawls over the course of about a day. The total amount of comments that were deleted between DATA2/DATA1 and DATA3/DATA2 were 729. That's not a lot compared to the total amount of comments (~60k) and I'm sure to have missed many. 

 

How was the data categorized?

I have read every single of those 729 comments and labeled them by content. The labels are not overlapping each other. "Positive" & "Negative" are comments which are not explicitly focused on one topic but are rather defined through their positive / negative view on the situation. "SPAM" contains comments which are, actually, Spam as well as those which I could not for the love of god categorize (e.g. single emojis). "NoIdea" classifies comments which ask about what is going on.

 

The frequency is shown on the X-axis while the color of the bars indicates the average length of the comments made. 

 

Why this data is not complete

I am aware that this data is not very relevant without a comparison to the distribution of "labels" in the rest of the comments. I have trained a ML model from the 729 labeled comments, but it is not accurate enough to warrant using it on a dataset and reading real information from it. I do not have the time to label 60.000 comments manually so this is all I got.

 

If you would like me to analyze the data in some specific way, feel free to message me and I'll see what I can do.

[digitalscream]

1 minute ago, Reclus said:

. Thank you for being civil. Kind of rare here now with all the tension. If I was being condescending that was not my point and I retract that.

 

HR does not have (thank god for that) the ability or right to work on rumours or gossip. If HR has a reported issue they have to investigate it. Not doing so is grounds for legal actions. That is why my point from like 100 pages of forum is: Maddison should go to the police, not Twitter if she reported the issue to HR and nothing was done with it.

 

If you want to take my experience into account then again - you make these kind of briefs after you have finished an investigation. That is always the corporate process.

Incident - investigation - conclusions - disciplinary actions or corrections to procedures depending on the investigation - team briefing to ensure awareness. 

Hey, I run a forum myself. I don't like dealing with spats that get personal, so I try not to do it on other folks' forums. As I mentioned elsewhere on here, though, I do have ND issues with communication, so I do appreciate that I can sometimes come across stronger than I intend

 

Anyway....I see where the root of your logic comes from now. The bit in bold assumes a properly-organised, experienced and dedicated HR department, and you're be 100% correct about what would happen in such a company; at the time, however, HR was only Yvonne (with no experience in HR, and wearing many other hats). The result of that is always going to be dysfunctional - and that's no slight on Yvonne at all, it's simply the reality of not having a dedicated HR function in a company of that many people. I strongly suspect that's exactly why Madison's complaints were poorly handled in the first place - Yvonne delegating the complaint to middle managers who'd probably never even read the company's HR guidelines, resulting in "just go on a coffee date".

 

But...equally, if the hypothetical scenario I posted above is what happened (and I genuinely can see that being the case), as you said there would be nothing to investigate because rumours post-resignation aren't enough to go on. Therefore all that can have resulted is a reiteration of the HR reporting process (The Meeting).

 

Remember, we're talking about a company that has a well-documented history of poor management structure and communication spanning every function (which is what triggered the whole thing in the first place). 

 

I do maintain, though, that a case like Madison's wouldn't be treated as a priority by the police relative to all the crimes they deal with which do have physical evidence (and are thus more likely to result in a successful prosecution), so we're back to the "wait a couple of years for them to get around to it, or just take your opportunity to force LMG's hand when they're already in a PR crisis" choice. If nothing else, it's absolutely forced them to dedicate resources to investigating what happened.

[Vexenar]

1 hour ago, NubCak said:

Telling your employees to go deal with their own bullshit is a fine way if you ask me. 

If it starts to affect your production at work, then i'd take issue. 

You don't need to be friends or friendly with everyone at work.

That is a terrible way to manage your company, what are you going to do when conflicting parties can't come to agreement and it starts dividing your entire workforce? Step in after the fact and waste even more time and resources?

A healthy workforce means a healthy company, this is exactly why HR should be doing it's job rather than just covering the company's ass. 

[RoseLuck462]

With the size of the company at the time Madison was there, there’s just no way neither Linus nor Ivan didn’t know what was going on…