Here's the plan.

[Rolling2405]

59 minutes ago, Tanaz said:

I'm also confident that they'll do justice to Madison and remove the culprits responsible for the toxic workplace environment.

I'm not confident yet that they will handle the Madison situation correctly and I'm still waiting to see what happens. I really Madison gets justice for the horrible things that happened to her.

[FreshPrincex21]

Happy that you guys dropped this video, and said what you said. I hope you guys stick to the plan! I look forward to future videos!

[moatmote]

Just copying some of my thoughts on this from a different thread to here.

 

Regarding the "ECC Squad":

1 hour ago, moatmote said:

The "ECC Squad" is so out of touch with what is actually needed here. Like I said before:

3 hours ago, moatmote said:

Reports should be publicly visible and it should be clear whether or not a report has been appropriately addressed, either via staff response justifying why it isn't an error, or by taking the proper steps to address the error.

Otherwise we have no way to measure how much action is actually being taken vs how much actionable feedback is being submitted.

 

1 hour ago, moatmote said:

As I've said, there must be transparency in error reports such that

• what has been reported
• which of those reports have been addressed
• which of those reports have been disputed by staff
• and which of those have yet to be addressed

is clearly visible to the public.

 

1 hour ago, moatmote said:

Hell, open a github. An issue tracker is exactly what's needed here. 

 

Regarding corrections:

3 hours ago, moatmote said:

 

8 hours ago, LinusTech said:

Reactive (after the video is posted)

• Video Replace: replacing the video with a new version without re-uploading

  • This relies on YouTube and takes some time. There are fairly strict guidelines around the use of this tool and strong justification must be provided for all changes. This is preferred to a re-upload, but there is likely a soft-limit on how often we can use this resource.

• Re-upload the video: Set the original, erroneous video to Private and upload a new version. This will have algorithmic effects, but must be done if replacement is not an option

• Pinned comment: add a comment describing the correction. 

  • This will not be received by viewers who do not check the comments (common, especially for those watching on a Smart TV) and should only be used for low-severity errors.

Expand  

This isn't enough. 

You should publish a regular corrections video (every week/2 weeks/month) that quickly summarizes all the mistakes you caught and corrected since the previous corrections video. The biggest issue with how you've been addressing the few errors that do get addressed is that it's hardly ever done in a way that anyone researching the original topic would ever find it. Having a regularly

uploaded corrections video means people who follow you will at least know to check it for corrections to recent content.

 

To elaborate on that, the way LTT has operated thus far is something like this:

• Most issues: never get addressed
• Most "addressed" issues: casually mentioning in the middle of some other video (like some 3 hour build live stream or some other completely unrelated thing) "oh btw in a previous video we said X does A and B but actually it does C and D" that no one researching the original topic will ever see
• Remaining addressed issues: a pinned comment no one who already made purchasing decisions based on the original video will ever see

A regularly published dedicated corrections video ensures that viewers know where to look to potentially learn about any mistakes in recent videos, and being it's own (not-3-hour-long) video ensures that even people who aren't looking for it will view it because hey, it's another LTT video.

 

Another factor that needs to be seriously considered is when new research/information comes to light in the future, either making something that was correct in an older video now incorrect, or giving a definitive answer to something that was questioned in an older video. It may not make sense to completely replace videos that are now simply dated, but issues like this could be reported and addressed in a corrections video as mentioned above.

 

One last note:

1 hour ago, moatmote said:

I'm also pretty disappointed that the entire video focused so hard on errors with Labs data, which seemed to me like they were intentionally excluding errors in other content they produce. 

[Pepik]

12 minutes ago, Rolling2405 said:

I'm not confident yet that they will handle the Madison situation correctly and I'm still waiting to see what happens. I really Madison gets justice for the horrible things that happened to her.

Why do you think that they will ever publish reasons why individual people were laid off?

 

I have overall positive impression from the new video.

[Aasimar]

I.....actually kind of agree, I wanted to disagree, but something i've noticed out of all of this... is they're required to have 10x the precision everyone else does, you won't see anyone go after Steve(either one) or Jay, or Kyle or Paul, infact it would just be the exact opposite.  No one went after Jay for a lack of ethics when he had branded products from EK Waterblocks, a product category that most people go to him for, as the "watercoooling guy".

I do think linus is prostrating himself too much, but where ultimately he's responsible for the financial wellbeing of his company so I kinda get it, he's doing whatever he can to get the attacks to stop. Most of us watching or have been watching have noticed small inaccuracies but things like this community centered reporting system was a discussion topic 2 or 3 weeks ago.

But already you see no matter what Linus does, there are still 1600 people (so far from when i checked) that this still isn't "enough"

 

[QBerto]

1 hour ago, Fogux said:

Its too late I'm tired, going to sleep given that you are not releasing this. Good luck with your floatplane exclusive channel saying exclusive things to an exclusive set people, I don't even need to watch it I understand. Have fun, you can't learn a thing I waited 9 days for nothing, you lost a subscriber.

Good, a jerk less

The best part of all this is actually toxic ppl just will walk away 

[AHPanda]

I find it highly amusing that all Linus does is go "see how happy my employees are", providing some numbers all the while forgetting that the whole reason people are angry is because people don't trust their numbers.

 

And them showing how many people leave the company... I don't know, I had a dead-end job once I couldn't leave because I had no better alternatives. So I spend 3 years doing a job I didn't like. Where I'm going is that bosses thinking their employees must enjoy their workspace because they don't leave is presumptious at best.

 

As to their HR remarks... My dead-end job also had an external HR company, but that does not equal better transparancy or protection. Like in my case when my external HR company had an active policy of "you complain? You must be named" and if your complaints were hitting too close to comfort, you were sanctioned or even fired like when someone exposed the huge wage gap between starters.

 

Not saying this happens at LMG, but the way they formulate their video going "look how good things are at LMG" and making their initial kneejerk reaction last week makes my sceptical brain work overtime.

 

That said, it's time to move on. No point beating a dead horse. I hope they fulfill their promises or risk facing another round of social media drama.

[Kronoton]

33 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Why would she make up all that?

 Plenty of "reasons" to make s##t up, but I doubt that the case here.

 

Perception is often key in such cases and will lead to parties telling wildly different truths.

 

She did tell us about cutting her leg to get a day off, was that really the case or did she just not make it clear enough to the right superior that she needed that day off?

Was what she felt as sexual harassment really sexual harassment or just some awkward geek being awkward when she already was on the edge?

 

I don't know, neither do you and proving it one way or the other is almost impossible unless other employees report similar incidents (which is what the investigation has to look for).

[surfingmb12]

17 minutes ago, Aasimar said:

I.....actually kind of agree, I wanted to disagree, but something i've noticed out of all of this... is they're required to have 10x the precision everyone else does, you won't see anyone go after Steve(either one) or Jay, or Kyle or Paul, infact it would just be the exact opposite.  No one went after Jay for a lack of ethics when he had branded products from EK Waterblocks, a product category that most people go to him for, as the "watercoooling guy".

I do think linus is prostrating himself too much, but where ultimately he's responsible for the financial wellbeing of his company so I kinda get it, he's doing whatever he can to get the attacks to stop. Most of us watching or have been watching have noticed small inaccuracies but things like this community centered reporting system was a discussion topic 2 or 3 weeks ago.

But already you see no matter what Linus does, there are still 1600 people (so far from when i checked) that this still isn't "enough"

 

Thanks for your response. Linus' take-it-on-the-cheek response may not be enough for all, but it is enough for the base. Honestly, it may be too much. The company is larger than him, so the fault necessarily lies beyond him. But he need not fall on the sword entirely. The community would benefit most, IMO, if he took on a role to at least watch every video and suggest on-screen edits. We do not demand perfection, just that he strive every day to be the best version of himself.

 

Compare not to your compatriot, but to whom you once were.

[Deivid]

Well, good luck, keep making those awesome videos!

 

Sad to see people harassing workers about harassment while not knowing what actually happened.

[cmndr]

Internet mobs are lame. 

 

Also, as an FYI, it's possible for a company to have pockets of awesome and pockets of not awesome. 

 

It's also possible that different people find different pockets to be great or bad from someone else. 

 

It's also the case that some combinations of employee and company don't work out or even employee+org within a company. Paraphrasing Jim Keller - he saw people get managed out for low performance end up at a different company later on and do awesome. 

 

 

----

 

My imperfect knowledge take on things is that there's issues with both complainants here, even if they do have some valid points. It's also the case that LMG has room for improvement. 

[Gokul_P]

This is a really solid video and Hoping to see a solid comeback aswell.

[Taf the Ghost]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

While I hope so, it wasn't directly addressed. Turnover rate doesn't necessarily tell much. What Madison addressed was mostly sexist crap and seeing how male to female ratio is 10:1 at LMG (doesn't mean discrimination by itself, it's still a tech field that's not top interest for most women), it may not be directly apparent. Sometimes people just keep their head down and keep on working because they need the money because lets be honest, shit has been expensive in general recently. Or you need a decent reference of working somewhere before you can move forward in the field. It's hard to get a job elsewhere with no experience.

 

Linus addressed workers being harassed by COMMUNITY, he did not address workers harassing workers and how they'll deal with that. One could assume with same dedication, but who knows.

Taking Madison's Twitter Thread at completely face value and assuming the context in her favor, most likely abusive other employee(s) were female.  The vagueness of the accusations of malfeasance made it hard to sort, but it was far more "mean girls" than "toxic men".  That's why the lack of actual context matters. (Or the lack of simply naming names.)

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

Why would she make up all that? For attention? She's a streamer with pretty decent following. She doesn't need drama of this sort, especially since drama isn't her shtick from what I can see.

There's a couple of views on this. The kind of obvious one is she didn't "make anything up", so much as the declining mental health meant she remembers everything wrong. The environment didn't work for her and her mind simply mixed information, things she'd seen or heard at other places. This happens all the time to everyone, it's just a question of degree of information mixing.  If she was to the point of stabbing herself to convince her mind to do something proper, it's entirely possible she imagined some part of the accusations in her dreams and her head simply has mixed them. (When the twitter thread first dropped, I specifically mentioned the mental health for this reason. It's not pleasant, but the reality is that someone in that bad of a mental state isn't a "reliable narrator" to their own experiences. It doesn't mean it's malicious, but it's a harsh reality.)

 

Another view is that she had an actual axe to grind because she failed. She said herself it was her dream job; she got removed from camera and had to go take another job. While the circumstances around that (and the leg stabbing) are ugly, the reality is that it is a failure for her.  She also clearly feels it hurt her streaming career from a lack of support that she thought she was going to get. See what she said about the contracts.  And, because she's a streamer, she gets asked pretty regularly about it and why she left, which she's only vaguely talked about (apparently) until this point.  Thus, her time at LMG is a constant source of irritation and this was a great opportunity to unload her complaints.  However, absent the malfeasance complaints, it's a job she wasn't ready for, shouldn't have taken and was, clearly, not in the capacity to handle at the time. If she came to axe grind without the accusations, she'd have gotten roasted for it. So, it's very easy to view her has having a reason to invent accusations. 

 

What's the reality? Unsure. She vague posted so hard on the accusations that any or all of them could actually fly back in her face depending on context. There definitely was a clear problem that no one noticed how bad her mental health was getting, though this was during that weird COVID period. So maybe the problems were also enhanced a lot by mask usage, from the inability to read faces. (She doesn't seem like she's BPD, but one of the notable symptoms there is the complete inability to read faces, which leads to taking every statement in either the most positive or negative way possible. If she was in a bad mental place, it's entirely possible, when talking to other in masks, she was completely misjudging statements.) The one that stood out was being asked to twerk, because we've all but seen James completely naked on screen.  So, if they were throwing out ideas for background shots for that type of scene, it's entirely possible it came up in a purely professional manner.  The no context for accusations but specific details for what are fairly petty things strikes me as either pulling back because of fears of actually naming names or putting far more complex situations into the most favorable light for sympathy. Or both. Or more. Madison is a professional Social Media person, and it was a well constructed thread.

 

For Madison's sake, I hope she's in a better place. But a Twitter Thread was absolutely not the place to have dealt with the grievances. 

[DaseinBot]

you took a week off and made everyone miss you so much, whatever you would've came back with we would be happy 

[Lordmage]

Overall acceptable response just some feedback on the HR process if one employee has a problem with another employee depending on the severity of the problem they should never be told that one of the official steps is to talk to the person. I would also make sure that you have any kind of whistleblower protections in place with your HR policies that protect both the victim and potential witnesses overall as I said and acceptable response

[joshfrog]

did people feel like this video and the comments from WAN show covers most of there concerns?

[GameRetro]

The plan is solid, but forgive me if I give it a few years of “wait and see” how well they keep their word and more importantly handle work place allegations and changes before I re-subscribe to the channel. Still a good plan and I hope it’s a sincere one.

[Lordmage]

4 minutes ago, GameRetro said:

The plan is solid, but forgive me if I give it a few years of “wait and see” how well they keep their word and more importantly handle work place allegations and changes before I re-subscribe to the channel. Still a good plan and I hope it’s a sincere one.

I suspect future issues will be internally handled and unless it is a huge issue and the victim comes forward we will never know unless they choose to make those things public which I doubt since it is not standard practice of any employer to. 

[Radiolint]

I just watched the vid, and while I can appreciate the transparency in many places, there's quite a few big red flags I saw. The first was regarding the HR situation and how to deal with reporting HR or workplace issues, and them using some 3rd party consulting HR company.

 

If someone is being s*xually harrassed at work, go talk to them about it? And if its a manager that's doing the harassing, skip step 1 & 2, *then* go to you or Yvone - oh, ok. If it's a manager, they're probably on decent/good terms with you guys, so it'd be really uncomfortable & awkward to do that for the person, too. You also know there's that video out there of the meeting you held after a certain person left the company, which pretty much explained why the flow that you are explaining here is pretty bad without a dedicated in house HR dept, not some potential Simpsonsesque Dr. Nick Riviera level consulting firm from craigslist. So bring the complaint to some random company that know fck all about the internal workings of your company, and when they get a notice, they have to investigate it, which means they have to bring it up with you, which mean you'll know exactly who it was that brought it up and what it was about. Repercussions much? This whole "workflow" solution looks like it just screams, "I've never had to report a legitimate complaint to a boss at work before". This is a very important thing that was changed, and the isolation between the departments is something that should be taken very seriously. HR being "buddy-buddy" with mid or upper management is a disaster waiting to happen. I'd say bring it up with the union steward, but we all know how limus feels about unions.

 

The other thing that really made me cringe, is while I know they're in "business crisis mode" regarding the madi$on situation, which is basically "ignore ignore ignore until it goes away" so they won't even say that it exists let alone address it, but the little segment addressing where his staff is getting "hate" online and is offering medical for it is adorable - the company is accused of multiple accounts of s*xual harassment, toxic workplace conditions, employee misconduct, multiple times, from multiple people, over who knows how many days, much of which (while not 1st party directly confirmed, basically agreed that "yeah, that sounds about right". Sounds corroborated by an impartial, independent former employee to me. This, and he's trying to get all chest-puffy, "yer not part of our community, you meanie-weenies make me sick. harumph." Surprised you didn't send them damn job applications.

 

 

Last, from someone that has worked in high stress, high entertainment level jobs, when you try and show us that "oh look, people came to work at like 8 or 9am, and left at like 5 or 6! we all work normal hours, and **sooooometimes** we work overtime". No. I can say with whole hearted complete and utter confidence, that at *bare minimum* at least every member of your writing & editing team work overtime. Every single one. I would bet my house on it. Just because their car isn't at work, doesn't mean they're not working. I can't tell you how many videos and podcasts and countless other things had to be edited/mixed/fixed/redone/uploaded/blahblahblah from home, so who knows how much work they're actually doing that isn't even being compensated for. Not to mention the people that have to be on call basically 24/7 to fix issues for "emergency crisis management". It's entertainment, so you kinda know what you're getting yourself into, but to make a claim like "we barely even work any overtime, if any at all!" is such massive BS garbage it makes me mad that people will just blindly believe that. That's a straight up lie. Maybe your graphic designer for t-shirt merch maybe, sure. Jeez.

 

I appreciate some of the transparency here, it's more than most, but I gotta say I haven't really missed the lack of videos - it's been kinda nice. So no, don't have to "just deal with it", can just unsub and click off lol. Tit for tat. I know bossman won't read this, but it's for others who feel mildly similar. I appreciate the content, but I also appreciate the break. What I don't get is, if you're so hard-headed about having this lab & the tests & everything, why not just have all the specs on it's own channel, like "LTT Labs" or something? Then reference that data on the main channel when you need to for major releases of like CPUs & GPUs & whatever?

 

At this point, I don't think anyone will ever view LTT as a "legitimate source for technical data & information" when compared to the pedigree of your compatriots (and now competetion? lol), the brand has kind of diluted and eroded away a lot of confidence in it being anything other than a "bite size info-tainment goofy silly semi-serious channel for LTT", but if that's what your "vision" is, then so be it. It's your name on the building or nameplate or channel or whatever. Have fun.

Trying to grow out of my unironic toxic schadenfreude stage of life, so I'll just say - "best of luck, and...changes? I'll believe them when I see them. Talk is cheap, & your mouth moves way too much."

[GameRetro]

4 minutes ago, Lordmage said:

I suspect future issues will be internally handled and unless it is a huge issue and the victim comes forward we will never know unless they choose to make those things public which I doubt since it is not standard practice of any employer to. 

Very true and likely but I would be disappointed if the critical part of the community didn't keep an eye and if the media space too didn't become more vocal of new discrepencies.

 

Forgive but not forget. I've already seen a fair few comments with valid criticism that LMG haven't yet publically appologized to GN and HU for the slander to their work quality in the labs video, as well as Linuses takes/replies/stances before on this whole matter.

 

Granted it's probably heavily strategized for PR at this moment and they might already have a plan on how to address all that in ways that both make amence as well as being good PR practice... but regardless I can aggree with those comments too that it's kinda becoming overdue.

 

TL;DR: They will be under more pressure and watch from the community surely and they have a lot more to do. If they continue not caring, slipping up or outright just lying that they'll do better and continue doing the same or worse - I am sure cracks will show.

[Neroon]

2 hours ago, surfingmb12 said:

Simultaneously, someone also came out with some unsavory remarks about company culture.

Yes, let's keep repeating loads of accusations without any context, proof or even someone that has seen anything remotely like it (remember the guy confirming what she said, only said he had heard HER saying that before, he never saw any of it), they have a super low turn over rate, but let's keep bringing this up as if it's already confirmed true.

 

Until they are confirmed true, or at least the accusations are done with context in place, then can we use the whole "innocent until proven guilty" concept.

[Lordmage]

20 minutes ago, GameRetro said:

Very true and likely but I would be disappointed if the critical part of the community didn't keep an eye and if the media space too didn't become more vocal of new discrepencies.

 

Forgive but not forget. I've already seen a fair few comments with valid criticism that LMG haven't yet publically appologized to GN and HU for the slander to their work quality in the labs video, as well as Linuses takes/replies/stances before on this whole matter.

 

Granted it's probably heavily strategized for PR at this moment and they might already have a plan on how to address all that in ways that both make amence as well as being good PR practice... but regardless I can aggree with those comments too that it's kinda becoming overdue.

 

TL;DR: They will be under more pressure and watch from the community surely and they have a lot more to do. If they continue not caring, slipping up or outright just lying that they'll do better and continue doing the same or worse - I am sure cracks will show.

True it may have even been a behind the scenes thing I know that during the wan before the break linis only said he wanted Steve to reach out and they did say that staffer did speak out of turn and they tried to course correct but id love a stand alone video but if I don't see it. so long has HU and Steve don't ask for one it is none of my concern considering they have a stage to call for one of they didn't privately get one already 

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

This video from Linus has been a flawless response, unlike the initial doubling down. I think featuring Yvonne and Terran as well would have been more confidence inspiring overall. This matter warranted another appearance of the CEO.

If LMG commits to the changes, which seems plausible to me, everyone will be much better off for it: LMG, employees, the viewers, the sponsors and the industry itself. I like to think this was the scenario GN was aiming for with their exposee. I would hope Steve from GN make a positive comment about the response in his short news recap of the week.

3 hours ago, Rolling2405 said:

I really Madison gets justice for the horrible things that happened to her.

If the allegations are factual hopefully the investigation will find out.  I like that the CEO is going to the correct step of investigating the facts, rather than firing someone that might later be discovered to have been innocent all along. Firing should happen once there is factual proof, innocent until proven guilty.

3 hours ago, AHPanda said:

I find it highly amusing that all Linus does is go "see how happy my employees are", providing some numbers all the while forgetting that the whole reason people are angry is because people don't trust their numbers.

Seeing how so many games are the result of untold crunch of employees, and go on to become smashing success, it's clear consumers don't care about the process as long as the output is good and cheap. The reality is that we cannot know if LMG is a great company, and outside outrage prime time, consumers don't care anyway.

Protecting employee (and employers) is the job of government and regulations. I won't even say unions, because sometimes that fails spectacularly too. I can't even bash Linus too hard for preventing employees from discussing wages. Not discussing wages will result in giving better contracts to employees that are better at negotiating, and maybe not better technically, but discussing wages open whole other cans of worms I have seen happening: "I work more, why they get the same?!?!"

[Shin-Gouki]

My father always said Trust but verify.

I will be watching and we will see what happens.

[RobGMun]

29 minutes ago, Neroon said:

Yes, let's keep repeating loads of accusations without any context, proof or even someone that has seen anything remotely like it (remember the guy confirming what she said, only said he had heard HER saying that before, he never saw any of it), they have a super low turn over rate, but let's keep bringing this up as if it's already confirmed true.

 

Until they are confirmed true, or at least the accusations are done with context in place, then can we use the whole "innocent until proven guilty" concept.

I guess #metoo and #believeallwomen is officially dead when it comes to your favourite YouTuber