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She picked the right moment to come out with this. I mean, keeping this in for 2 whole years while being under the impression that you're under some NDA, you can only imagine how stressful she must've felt.
I feel really sorry for her and I wish her the best. She's a really cool person.
That's usually how these things work. People see others speaking out against someone, and that gives them the courage that they'll be heard.
It also helps that the current news only does to back up her claims and increase the perceived validity.
This is worse than the Gamer's Nexus video. The biggest red flag initially wasn't even the bad testing data, it was how overworked the staff were. Clearly employee wellness is not a priority.
The Gamer’s Nexus video was necessary for others to speak out. Steve was clear that speaking up was a move that could backfire due to the power imbalance involved. Had he not spoken up there would be no opportunity for Madison to weigh in her experiences without being attacked.
None of this is surprising to me at all. I’ve been seeing hints of a toxic ‘hustle’ mindset in their videos for quite some time and have commented as much on the videos. I’ve worked in environments just like this and once you’ve lived it it’s easy af to spot.
Linus probably says ‘I don’t ask anything of anyone that I don’t expect of myself’ and then goes on to expect someone making 50k to put in as much time and effort as he did when first starting LTT/LMG.
That is seriously my biggest gripe about employers... They think our pittance motivates us as much as their fortune.
Yea, I'll get it done by the end of the week! Let's trade paychecks and I'll f*cking get it done real fast...
My comment on the forums was very similar.
The key issue in all of this that they didn't address is that they're pushing too fast. There have been many red flags about Linus pushing people too hard to get stuff done too fast.
It doesn't matter what kind of "new processes" you put in place if people just don't have time. And you can't expect every employee to work as though they have 20% equity in the company. If you put more than 30 hours of work per week onto a full time, salaried employee, you're not going to get their best work, especially in creative or expertise-required jobs.
To do their best work, people need time to breathe. They need time to be able to talk to their coworkers about a problem without worry about pulling them away from their own work for 15 minutes. They need time to grab a drink or a sandwich while they step back from a problem and consider it from a distance. They need time to decide their previous work wasn't good enough and to go back and redo it. They shouldn't have to ask. Having to ask is a problem. Getting "no" back as an answer is an even bigger problem.
If you try to account for every 15 minutes, you're going to get shit quality product pushed out the door.
Madison brought this up. Employees have brought this up in videos. And Linus has raised red flags more than once. The biggest was with his equating doing things right to hours worked and directly to cash. That speaks to exactly this. People don't have time to do things right, and they don't have time to fix things.
The only way to fix this is to either hire more people (which you clearly can't afford), or allow your current people to put out less product.
She has also confirmed that this Glassdoor review was written by her, with continuing updates on her twitter
Quote from the twitter thread:
I was asked about my sexual history, my boyfriends sexual history, "how I liked to fuck".
I was told that certain issues were "sexual tension" and I should just "take the co-worker out on a coffee date to ease it out"
I was asked to twerk for a co-worker at one point.
I was told I was chunky, fat, ugly, stupid. I was called "retarded" I was called a "faggot"
Holy cow I thought the screenshots currently on this post were the whole thing and I was horrified??
No, the screenshots are like, half?? THE TAME HALF????
Holy shit wtf
I figured it was stressful there, and I always kind of dismissed the dickheads in the community as “the internet being the internet” but it seems it’s WAY worse.
Okay.
This is not your conventional toxic workplace. This is ADVANCED toxicity. She resorted to self harm for a day off. That's a type of struggle that can make a company go terminal if the rank and file band together.
This needs to be spread.
This supports the notion that the issues with quality are due to overextended teams. It sounds like yet another workplace where upstairs decisions are made without consulting the people who will actually do the work, and so the rank and file have to constantly scramble to make up for that. I feel like LTT leadership decided a velocity of content to support certain goals rather than what their resources can actually do.
... And it also seems like they have not outgrown the "early joiners can do whatever they want to whomever they want" problem that plagues companies like this.
I mean we already knew their staff was overextended, and that upper management has been pushing for velocity at the expense of quality. This has been self evident by the myriad of issues pointed out in Steve's video.
What wasn't already apparent was how horrendously abusive of a workplace LMG appears to actually be. This is quite literally shocking and I honestly think most of the commenters are underreacting, lol.
This poor girl was sexually assaulted by coworkers/management on multiple occasions. Verbally abused regularly. And she had to self harm to a degree that she needed to go to the ER just to TAKE A DAY OFF FROM WORK.
I used to work in tech myself, and I've heard some horror stories, especially from women in tech. But this is among the worst. If all this is true, LMG is a horrific, toxic, abusive organization and I hope they get sued into the ground.
If the allegations about the sexual topics are true (like managing the OnlyFans account and having to see other people's junk, being told to twerk for a coworker and getting asked about "how she liked to fuck") LTT is in some serious trouble.
No sponsor in their right mind wants to be associated with a bunch of grown men sexually assaulting their female coworkers. If this isn't cleared up totally and publically, LTT will lose a lot of sponsors and this can seriously hurt them.
When the employee handbook leaked a few months ago and this was mostly ignored by Linus except him making a rant about the company not needing unions because they're so great, that was already very suspicious to me. It seemed like just another hustle culture company trying to sweep things under the rug. Well, looks like it was not just a feeling...
Definitely unsubscribing from all their channels. All of that shit is absolutely disgusting.
I had wondered what happened to her and why she seemed to rarely be in any content despite having a good camera presence. It sucks that she had to put up with all that. Linus should have put in his big boy pants and fired the shit heads that helped create such a toxic work environment. He clearly does not know how to manage a company.
Reading the full thread was stressful enough, I don't even want to image what it was like to live it.
Now I understand why the company is so against unionizing, all this stuff would pretty quickly explode in their face. It's straight up abuse that should be met by the full force of the legal system.
What the fuck is wrong with people that makes them think that if you have the smallest modicum of power over someone else it's your god given right to be an asshole, a sexual predator or just generally toxic.
I don't get it.
Holy shit.
So much of what she says is not just horrifying (seriously, feeling the need to hospitalize yourself for a day off), but also straight up illegal.
Retribution, hostile work environment, straight up harassment, not to mention evidence of "constructive dismissal". (I'm using US terms but I know these have equivalent laws in Canada)
I've had some pretty bad jobs that have destroyed my mental health, but none of them come close to what Madison is describing here and I am so happy that this is coming out. This is the sort of thing people need to know about LTT and LMG.
Alright, time to unsubscribe from their channels. Already started to dislike Linus when he went all Anti-Union and stuff, but this is truly disgusting.
I feel so much better now, using uBlock and SponsorBlock watching their videos. I knew something was off when Linus started with the Anti-Union talks. Fuck this little bastard.
She was sexually assaulted in the workplace? So LTT is just running an old boys club tech business? No wonder getting women in tech is such a problem. This is absolutely vile and vomit inducing.
I wish I could say I'm surprised, but given my interactions with these kinds of people in the tech industry, sadly I'm not surprised. Reading the twitter thread, I had that sinking feeling and knew that it was going to appear.
Honestly, that's a much larger issue to me than the beef with GN. Forcing the image of a super cool liberal easy company while being as shitty as every other bigger greedy firm. So sad.
Everyone saying this isn't malice, it fucking is. All of this is done out of malice. He is angry his employees don't treat this like their day 1 dream and give their entire 45k/yr soul to the brand. He is upset that people would even dare question their products. He is furious that employees would have the gall to expect time off.
It is malice, it always has been. Capitalist hold everyone in contempt, especially employees. It is the easiest thing in the fucken world to take a little less profit from your pocket and add it to the people who actually make your company run. None of these fucks do it because they hate their own employees. They don't want humans working for them, they want cheap drones that follow their every ~~word~~ intention. The people at the top of any company fucking hate they have to pay you at all. Accept that. That is reality.
I'll start with: I believe Madison.
I honestly did not even know that she had left, so all of this is news to me. I assumed that she went into a role that suited what she wanted to do (like production or editing or something with no significant on camera time), and was still there. I usually avoid following anything so closely that I'm aware of whatever drama they get into. Which isn't to imply that Madison's experience is mere drama, because it's not. This is an egregious HR violation on all fronts, and bluntly, if Madison still has any evidence of any of this, a lawyer would do well to pick up her case at no cost to Madison; as far as I'm concerned, with any level of evidence, especially right now with the PR nightmare they're currently weathering, they'll want to settle quickly (if they have any sense left in their heads whatsoever).... And Madison can walk away with a very reasonable pay off for all this mental anguish.
Of course, money doesn't un-do the fact that it happened.
On the surface, to me, this looks like LMG hired Madison to appease the masses, partly evidenced by the fact that he announced that he had done so before she was even made aware that they were interested in bringing her on board, which seems to be a trend with Linus now - saying things have happened when he simply rubber stamps the approval to go ahead and start the process.... Then "allowed" her to appear on camera enough to show that yes, she does work here... Then as the hype from fans died down and stopped being a benefit to the company, slowly berated her into leaving quietly so schmucks like me (anyone that's not so dedicated that they read the LTT forums daily), are unaware, and they don't lose viewers.
The workload described, at first didn't sound too bad, busy, sure, but not bad. Some Twitter posts, FB posts, a few tiktoks daily... Yeah ok. That's a fairly reasonable bar to set, a little high IMO, but ok.... Then she went on. And on.... And on.... What the fuck? I get the idea that it's "only social media" so some think it's "not really like working" (which I don't agree with, I just understand why people think that), since managing your own social media is fairly trivial, but when managing it for someone else, you have to constantly check yourself and consider "is this me saying it? Or is this the right tone and perspective for what the company would say?" Because if you say the wrong thing, you're reprimanded, or fired. That kind of mental gymnastics is rough; and having to do that for a dozen posts a day is a lot of work to accomplish alone, and you're probably going to make some mistakes unless you can bounce the posts off of someone like a long term employee or manager to make sure that the message isn't straying from the brand you represent.
I've personally been in plenty of scenarios where I've been over worked. It happens. When being overworked is basically your job duties, that's unreasonable in every way.
On top of that the dismissive and demeaning treatment isn't going to help. I'm not surprised that Madison noped the fuck out, and it's sad that happened, and more sad that she felt that she shouldn't even say anything. It's unsurprising that she left and that she had such a major impact to her mental health by being there... Honestly, it's almost surprising that she stayed as long as she did.... And this isn't even addressing the sexual misconduct. I know for me, when I think "sexual assault" I'm thinking the worst case scenario, and bluntly, some of the comments that she relays (like "you've never gotten drunk with us") makes me think that could have happened... But it's not exclusive to that. This is sexual assault. She was sexually harassed and sexually assaulted by staff and bluntly, I hope she names and shames those who were involved. This is unacceptable in any and every way in the workplace and everywhere else. Madison's gender, sexual orientation, preferences, history, everything, is entirely personal, and discussions of such things in a workplace is completely unacceptable. If she wanted to offer up such information of her own volition, sure, but berating her about it, and harassing or demeaning her about it is completely unwelcome both socially, and legally.
IMO, Madison has a legal case if she ever chooses to pursue it.... I think she should but I understand why she hasn't, and isn't.
As for LTT and LMG, I'm extremely disappointed that Madison was set up to fail like this. I get that it's a bit of a boys locker room, where most of the staff are "one of the guys" regardless of who they are or what gender they are, and ribbing is part of that. Clearly this was above and beyond it and from what people said to Madison after she left, her treatment was worse than most.... Well beyond a good ribbing, and others could tell. Anyone who participates in ribbing among friends can recognise when they've gone too far. IMO, it was clear that they had, and they just kept doing it. No part of that is ok. The staff then took it further and further into sexual harassment and assault, and the management team was complacent. This is wholly unacceptable on LMG's side. Their behaviour is reprehensible.
I hope Madison is doing better. I'll probably track down her twitch and throw her a sub, because she deserves it, and never deserved to be treated the way she was. I don't know what she's doing now, but I wish her all the success in the world.
I had heard Linus' anti-union remarks on WAN Show and was slightly weirded out, because I don't believe for a second that a company owner AND manager of a company much smaller than theirs has enough time and resources to really be in touch with what their workers need, even if they have the best intentions.
There once was a WAN Show segment about quiet quitting and his fear that people might do that and it came across as if he was more scared that his employees might do it and thereby "hurt the company" than him being interested in why people feel compelled to only work the minimum amount required. As if he was expecting people to always give him 110%.
Even 90% is enough, that's just reality. If you have people working for you full time, you can't just pay them for their most productive and focused time. There's also socializing with coworkers, taking short breaks and being creative without direct output. It's all part of being a team. A good and healthy team that feels appreciated can take up extra work and make short extra bursts as they become necessary, but that can never be the expected normal.
There was also some WAN Show segment about compensation, free time and the likes that was weird. Maybe it was part of one of the upper two, I don't quite remember. It's a bit fuzzy but I remember that I was a little surprised that they operated on the same scheme of low amount of days off + limited sick days system that many US/North-American companies seem to run on. I get that it's normal in that part of the world, but I still had this idea in my head that they were somehow different. It all felt so quirky, close-knit and best-buddy-like in the videos. That made me think that they were somehow more progressive and worker focused than it turns out after all.
Hearing these allegations is like finding that missing puzzle piece and suddenly it fits into a much bigger picture. I had a lot of respect for Linus and his company and really believed that they were "better". I really like their content, it is super entertaining and of very consistent quality. They are experts at making things accessible and interesting for a broader audience. But they are also running in a giant hamster wheel that is the youtube algorithm and several daily uploads.
Very sad to see how all this could happen. Even worse is how all of this is being handled. They need a proper restructuring because these problems seem to be structural and deep-rooted. I wish Madison all the best!
Edit: Typos
Jesus fucking Christ. Messing up a review, selling a prototype then repaying the company is just unprofessional, this is a whole other fucking level ! It's going to be hard to keep watching their videos after that, especially considering the two of them building a PC was my favourite one.
All the previous proof put a dent in their brand but these allegations are actually brand destroying. Linus is evidently an asshole to his workers in his videos so I don't have a hard time believing her allegations. What a fucking dumpster fire.
Oof. I wasn’t too bothered about tech bros shanking each other in name of ethics in tech YouTubing. But this is absolutely unacceptable. I believe Madison. If there is no confirmation from Linus that whoever sexually assaulted and otherwise degraded her has been fired so fast their fucking eyes are spinning then I’m unsubscribing. I will not be watching videos every week where I’m trying to figure out who the creep is.
I was asked about my sexual history, my boyfriends sexual history, "how I liked to fuck".
I was told certain issues were "sexual tension" and I should just "take the co-worker out on a coffee date to ease it out"
I was asked to twerk for a co-worker at one point
who is this maniac that asked this question and made these requests
this person should be fired asap otherwise others may leave as well
I'm happy Madison took her mental health and self-respect above the job
Holy shit. I stopped watching about when she quit (not for a reason, the content was just stale) but between this and the recent issues raised by GN o don't think watching LTT is relevant nor even ethical at this point.
Well, this is pretty fucking horrific if true.
Setting aside the factual accuracy of LTT content (which is a separate discussion entirely), the main thing that they did well and that I generally enjoyed was their brand of jank content - like building impractical virtualized gaming setups, stupid water cooling projects, stuff like that.
If even a handful of these accusations hold water then I would no longer be able to enjoy that content knowing what took place behind the scenes in the process of creating it.
If all of them turn out to be true...I am neither Canadian nor a lawyer but it sounds like charges could be brought. In that case I don't see any way that trust in LTT/LMG could be rebuilt outside of some major team members stepping down.
TBH, I'm not surprised. Linus stance on unions is really weird... My interest in LTTs videos has anyway declined in the last time, maybe I'll take a break and hope they really change some things.
Props to Madison for speaking out about this!
This is pretty distressing to read. I am wondering if the upper management referred to is Linus, or someone else. Doesn't really matter much, the buck ultimately stops with him.
It doesn't sound like the kind of culture that Luke would tolerate, and I can't imagine Luke standing by Linus for that either.
It is worth pointing out that there is nothing Linus can do to respond either, if he was responsible he is hardly gonna own it, and if it was another upper management then he probably can't publically name them either. And there is no way any of us can know what is really happening. Madison is basically the only one who can pass judgement. I am very curious as to how Emily has been treated, especially after coming out, but she has a right to privacy and doesn't have to answer to any of us.
I guess the only real answer is for Tarren CEO to rapidly implement a proper HR department and provide a proper recourse. And if Linus is the direct cause of these issues, then really there is nothing that can be done.
If she name drops, shit is really going to fly. But she should only do that if she has proof of who said it. I hope she does. Because if all that's true (and lets be honest, Linus has regularly been fine with showing how toxic of a boss he is on camera, so it's very likely all true) LMG should burn to the ground.
Wow. What a motherfucking piece of shit company. And Linus is also personally a piece of shit too (see screenshots below). Hope this means the end for LTT on YouTube. Note that the full thread is on Twitter here where she has responded to a few tweets that add further details.
Here’s a link to the thread: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1691693740254228741.html
Really damning stuff.
I must say i wass always appalled how he snapped at employees in the "haha I'm kidding" tone. It always felt off to me.
Wow, that’s incredibly terrible, much worse than I could have imagined. I feel so bad for her, and so mad at the working environment at LTT. I started getting red flags when Linus kept bringing up his classic line “I feel like if my company unionized then I’ve failed” every other week on the WAN show. Unsubbed then because I thought he was being myopic in his little capitalist startup bubble, but no, turns out he’s just completely insufferable, and a union would have eventually led to a complete overhaul at LTT, if not lawsuits, something he would rather give up the CEO role to avoid.
This is an awful treatment of an employee and I don't know how many more cases like this are still existing at this moment. Fuck LTT, best I can do is step away from them and their content but if there is anything else I can do to get back at them let me know.
Yeah that doesn't sound great at all. Must've been hard not to post all of this before, especially with people constantly asking. It seems like suddenly all kinds of issues at LTT boil over at once. They're going to need a change of direction and some well worded apologies in order to win back trust.
Personally I've started favouring boring big companies over cool flashy small companies to work for as well because of this kinda stuff. Having a very informal atmosphere definitely has it's plus sides when all goes well, but when you're in a (relatively) small company there's sometimes also a lack of professionalism all the way to the top. When you start running into problems you might very well run into the situation where nobody really takes your issues seriously, and because the company is small and everyone knows eachother well there's really noone to turn to. At least in big boring companies there seem to be protocols and a bit more distance between HR and the management.
Sounds to me like LMG should unionize or something but I'm no expert.
I just saw this morning that LTT on YouTube are doing a live stream to "address the situation". They have their upper management trying to clean up the mess as best they can. It stinks of soulless corporate BS.
