Rant time

[Networking Wolf]

15 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

I'd say normally that while the points are valid it takes a long time to run all benchmarks and such...if it wasn't for the fact that they have like 10 fucking people working over there. Seriously maybe hire less editors and hire another slick to help instead? Or 2 or 3 of them? 

problem is and I have thrown this out there before they cant "pay to hire more people" which to this I call bs. With all their sponsors they do get some kick back and on top of that look at this website http://socialblade.com/youtube/user/linustechtips (I understand this could be way wrong but I will be using these numbers and not trying to figure out how much they get through sponsors.) If they pay each of the employees $32,000 a year that comes to being $320,000 (32,000 * 10) that is not that much when you think about it in the ways of having to employee people. On top of this they have to pay for the cost of running the place. http://www.ontario-hydro.com/electricity-rates-by-province ( I am going at the average price for 2000 kwh which if it is that high tells me they are wasteful not judging) For electricity 218.8 for land cost my guess is they are  about at max maybe 10,000 (this is a blown out of the water cost because I cant find an exact number) on top of that I will also factor in another 50,000 for anything out there that I haven't mentioned. This brings it to 380,218.8 (give or take) If anyone wants to correct my numbers go for it\. With this all being set in mind that tells me that they could bring on one or two more people and produce two videos a day.

[Misanthrope]

Youtube's social blade is far from accurate: it can be a lot less than that (but in fairness to your point, a lot more also). However your point still stands given just how many employees they currently have. Obviously there's cash and I'm sure there's important business reasons for the new hires and such but there's something to be said about letting the quality of one of your main products go down because of all of this other management needs, which should be always secondary to production which in their case is making content.

[Networking Wolf]

2 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Youtube's social blade is far from accurate: it can be a lot less than that (but in fairness to your point, a lot more also). However your point still stands given just how many employees they currently have. Obviously there's cash and I'm sure there's important business reasons for the new hires and such but there's something to be said about letting the quality of one of your main products go down because of all of this other management needs, which should be always secondary to production which in their case is making content.

And I can understand not wanting to have the quality of a product go down as mass production becomes the business but everyone defending them for not having enough money to bring on more staff to help out around the office is flat. They need to bring either A) another person to help with benchmarks or B) another person to be a main face in front of the camera. They have content which is coming out that I have found it at other locations in YouTube. Also they were able to afford to send everyone to Mexico so  yea just throwing that out ther

[Misanthrope]

I suspected it woudn't be easy to hire people true, yet "benchmarks" in and of themselves are not incredibly complicated: yes you do need knowledge of hardware and such but you still got Linus and Luke around, doubt they need to waste their efforts in running the same tech demo or game run 300 times and record the results vs seeing "Ok this result is way too different and doesn't makes sense, help please".

 

However as for your other points about your workstyle and the type of self motivated, independent employee you want I can see that and I can see why finding someone has been tough. Going totally against your employee model is not advisable but maybe a happy medium could be found: the most useful intern in all of Canada that still doesn't expects quite as big of a paycheck as someone who's a pro.

 

Happy hunting.

[Networking Wolf]

14 minutes ago, nicklmg said:

Socialblade's earning stats are totally ridiculous. When your range for annual earnings is "$89.1K - $1.4M," you're working with garbage statistics. Their subcount and viewcount trackers are great (I use them on a daily basis), but in my opinion Socialblade should remove their earnings calculator as it's entirely misleading.

 

1. I don't know when we've ever said that we "can't pay to hire more people." We've continued to grow our team massively over the last 2 years, going from 6 people when I joined the company full-time in May 2014 to 15 at this moment. The main issue is that the hiring pool is extremely limited.

 

2. If you expect to pay skilled people $15 (pre-tax) an hour in the Lower Mainland (a place with an extremely high cost of living) then best of luck to you... The average pre-tax salary in Canada is $49,000 per year. You have to remember that salary is far from the only cost of an employee - there's Canada Pension Plan fees, Employment Insurance fees, medical benefits that are expected by most skilled workers, and a multitude of other costs.

With all of that said, money is far from the only factor in the grand scheme of hiring people. Team fit, skillset, knowledge base, etc... Couple that with the insane international hiring practices that the Canadian government has in place, and you've got yourself a real crappy situation lol.

We're working on hiring for both of those jobs. You seem to be COMPLETELY overlooking the fact that both are extremely niche jobs, and that a vast majority of the population would not be well-suited for either role. 

As I stated in that post " If anyone wants to correct my numbers go for it" I also understand social blade is very blown out of the water. here in the states $32,000 is what you average for entry level jobs or start up company (usually) as far as teaching people how to do benchmarking it is easy. You take them through a week crash course and then give them 2 weeks to see if they sink or swim. Failure to swim you fire them and bring someone else in. This is how many places are ran. Im just throwing this out there overall I think you guys make great videos except for baking a gpu... nuff said on that one. (you actually made me a lot of money on people being stupid enough to try it and frying their gpu so I do have to say thank you) I just wish you would throw out multiple videos in a day. I run my own small computer repair business and this is how I run things. I understand though each company is different

 

[Networking Wolf]

1 minute ago, nicklmg said:

Yep I can totally see where you're coming from with that, was just giving my 2c on the topic. Sorry if it came across as aggro or anything.

In terms of the 3-week trial thing, we've done that. It usually ends up with Luke and I working 20-hour days fixing whatever the trial person screwed up and them not lasting more than 2 weeks

Due to our experience we have pretty stringent hiring practices. Nothing is worse than wasting a whole lot of time on someone only to have them be a poor fit for the position - as someone with your own SMB I'm sure you can appreciate that! Haha

Well I'm glad it helped you out personally at least, haha. And hopefully the collab video with Louis Rossmann was a satisfactory recovery


In terms of multiple videos per day, it's doubtful we'll ever move toward that type of strategy outside of event coverage, simply due to the way YouTube's algorithm highly favors daily release channels over more and less frequent release strategies. Look at a channel like IGN's. Of course, one could argue that their reputation precludes most viewers from consuming much of their content, but I believe that at least some of the low viewcounts on their channel are due to the massive volume of content they produce. In written or self-hosted video content, more content is definitely better as you control how the content is served via your homepage. On YouTube, the more content you release every day, the less videos get served to your subscribers.

Overall, of course you may drive more views. But on a per-video interaction basis (which is what helps you really grow in shares due to the YouTube algorithm), you're in the dumpster.

Anyway, thanks for your feedback

Never thought about the interaction per video aspect. I have been working within computers since 2004 my father has taught me everything I know and now I was a Dell Field engineer and now I run my own small repair shop along with also being an L3 working for the US government

[Networking Wolf]

Just now, Jstone said:

Never thought about the interaction per video aspect. I have been working within computers since 2004 my father has taught me everything I know and now I was a Dell Field engineer and now I run my own small repair shop along with also being an L3 working for the US government

also sorry if I came off as being an ass hat

[Networking Wolf]

1 minute ago, nicklmg said:

That's awesome! Congrats on the success there  

No not at all. Like I said, we definitely appreciate the feedback. Hopefully my replies were able to give you a better idea of the inner workings and a better understanding of why we make the decisions we do.

they did right now im trying to figure out should I go back to the military for cyber security or keep going down my current route which is hard because im >30

[Networking Wolf]

1 minute ago, nicklmg said:

This is very general advice, but I'd say as long as you can continue to meet any commitments you've made (eg. supporting kids if any, family, mortgage) then follow whatever drives you and ignites your passion.
 

Good luck!

Thanks btw hows the weather by you guys?

[Misanthrope]

3 minutes ago, nicklmg said:

No not at all. Like I said, we definitely appreciate the feedback. Hopefully my replies were able to give you a better idea of the inner workings and a better understanding of why we make the decisions we do.

Hey on top of that you have to think about Berkel sneaking up on you with a bbq sauce baloon or some shit, not an easy gig.

[Yoinkerman]

I imaging it's hard finding knowledgeable tech staff as the people who have the necessary knowledge and drive already have better or similar day jobs as what LMG can offer.  No offense I'm sure working for LMG is pretty great, I'm just being realistic.