There were kinda three separate things that rolled together, mind you, I’m not especially in the know about any of them, so hopefully others can expand
the auctioned something that was supposed to be a small company’s prototype water block or something, it wasn’t theirs to sell
they started making too many errors in their rush to do large scale testing and when people make decisions based on the incorrect info you’re putting out thats not great
there was an employee who used to work at LTT after being a fan who they built a PC for (maddison, I think?). When the other two items above were brought up by gamer’s nexus and it turned into a whole situation where people were being critical of LTT, she shared that she had an absolutely horrible experience working there, crazy crunch time, I think there was sexual harassment or something, I don’t recall all the details. She explained she didn’t share it sooner because she expected people would just turn on her for criticizing LTT and it makes sense she would feel more able to share if people seem like they might be more receptive to criticism of a huge channel like that
The first two that were brought up in an bombshell gamer’s nexus video were, imo, handled very poorly (EDIT: I should clarify, I meant the initial first reseponse), though again, I don’t remember details (about the very first response I think I remember not being great, or otherwise 😅)
The last item I’m honestly not sure how it panned out but my impression is that nothing really happened with it. LTT was gonna transfer CEO to being a new guy with Linus being more of a face and direction guy, and the new CEO guy I think was the one who had an outside investigation of some kind conducted. I don’t think there was ever an update about that investigation? I dunno. I didn’t watch much before the whole situation and just kinda stopped watching when the initial criticism from gamer’s nexus was poorly handled
IIRC for the third item, the ex-employee who threw those accusations around turned out to be exaggerating things - but there was a whole ass investigation and Linus did step down as CEO, handing the reins over to a new guy who was literally brought in to fix these things (although to be fair I had the feeling that Linus has been wanting to step back for a while and this gave him an out).
Mind you I’m not saying that there weren’t problems (any company that scales as much as LMG did in the past few years will have issues), but that the issues presented to the public by the disgruntled employee were heavily exaggerated.
I think maybe we should stop short of saying we know for a fact what did or didn’t happen with her. An outside investigation does absolutely help, and hopefully if anything was wrong it has now been rectified.
But there are lots of ways that companies can clear their names, and bringing in a company to do an investigation could either be done in good faith, or be a very effective way of cleaning up an enormous PR mess.
I think we should be warry of making snap calls about who was factually in the right in these kinds of situations unless there’s hard evidence available to us. Often these situations are about our gut feeling of what happened, and our gut feeling isn’t objective. And getting it wrong in either direction has the potential to be enormously damaging (though in this case I believe there was no specific alleged perpetrator for the allegations like sexual harassment)
I feel this is one of those situations where nuance and being okay with not knowing exactly what happened is important. Though perhaps you know more facts about the situation than I do, and have more concrete reason to believe it was highly exaggerated
This is true, but the CEO change had nothing to do with it. It was already happening before any of the drama, due to Linus wanting to have more time for making videos instead of having to manage the company.
They did acknowledge #1 and #2 as mistakes, miscommunication and growing pains and vowed to do better. I think it was a bit overblown and handled in bad faith by GN‘s reporting. Not that that’s an excuse but imo they did their best to rectify that situation. The reporting has been more accurate and bo other scandal of this type has happened, so far.
The investigation about the working conditions and sexual harassment concluded those allegations were „unfounded and unfair“, to use LMG’s words. They did not get into details and it is a he-said/she-said situation. It’s anyone’s guess what/whom to believe.
I think, all in all, Linus stepping back from the CEO position (which, to be clear, he did a little while before those problems came to light) improved upon most, if not all of the problems, as far as I can tell. I do still watch LTT on occasion but less so. Primarily though, because both, my interests changed as did their content.
Thats very fair, I vaguely recalled there was some initial handling of the issue that wasn’t great or something, and that was what I was talking about. I’m glad to hear the longer term response has been a lot better! (Assuming I’m even remembering correctly that the initial handling was crummy)
He treated his “investigation” as if he was going after a big hardware company instead of a direct competitor in his space. It left a very bad taste in my mouth. Not to mention when LTT did implement changes and begin improving did he acknowledge after his insane takedown?
Most of those are 2 to 3 years ago now though. A lot of that was during and immediately post covid. I’m not up on anything major in the last year. Though they did just recently have a bunch of their regulars break away. It seems amicable however. And a result of the new CEO and CEO decisions rubbing against the grain of the previous very bro centered culture of the crew. Not as professional as they could have been etc.
Heck all that happened before even Emily left. And she put out that video explaining her departure in January.
There were kinda three separate things that rolled together, mind you, I’m not especially in the know about any of them, so hopefully others can expand
The first two that were brought up in an bombshell gamer’s nexus video were, imo, handled very poorly (EDIT: I should clarify, I meant the initial first reseponse), though again, I don’t remember details (about the very first response I think I remember not being great, or otherwise 😅)
The last item I’m honestly not sure how it panned out but my impression is that nothing really happened with it. LTT was gonna transfer CEO to being a new guy with Linus being more of a face and direction guy, and the new CEO guy I think was the one who had an outside investigation of some kind conducted. I don’t think there was ever an update about that investigation? I dunno. I didn’t watch much before the whole situation and just kinda stopped watching when the initial criticism from gamer’s nexus was poorly handled
IIRC for the third item, the ex-employee who threw those accusations around turned out to be exaggerating things - but there was a whole ass investigation and Linus did step down as CEO, handing the reins over to a new guy who was literally brought in to fix these things (although to be fair I had the feeling that Linus has been wanting to step back for a while and this gave him an out).
Mind you I’m not saying that there weren’t problems (any company that scales as much as LMG did in the past few years will have issues), but that the issues presented to the public by the disgruntled employee were heavily exaggerated.
I think maybe we should stop short of saying we know for a fact what did or didn’t happen with her. An outside investigation does absolutely help, and hopefully if anything was wrong it has now been rectified.
But there are lots of ways that companies can clear their names, and bringing in a company to do an investigation could either be done in good faith, or be a very effective way of cleaning up an enormous PR mess.
I think we should be warry of making snap calls about who was factually in the right in these kinds of situations unless there’s hard evidence available to us. Often these situations are about our gut feeling of what happened, and our gut feeling isn’t objective. And getting it wrong in either direction has the potential to be enormously damaging (though in this case I believe there was no specific alleged perpetrator for the allegations like sexual harassment)
I feel this is one of those situations where nuance and being okay with not knowing exactly what happened is important. Though perhaps you know more facts about the situation than I do, and have more concrete reason to believe it was highly exaggerated
This is true, but the CEO change had nothing to do with it. It was already happening before any of the drama, due to Linus wanting to have more time for making videos instead of having to manage the company.
They did acknowledge #1 and #2 as mistakes, miscommunication and growing pains and vowed to do better. I think it was a bit overblown and handled in bad faith by GN‘s reporting. Not that that’s an excuse but imo they did their best to rectify that situation. The reporting has been more accurate and bo other scandal of this type has happened, so far. The investigation about the working conditions and sexual harassment concluded those allegations were „unfounded and unfair“, to use LMG’s words. They did not get into details and it is a he-said/she-said situation. It’s anyone’s guess what/whom to believe.
I think, all in all, Linus stepping back from the CEO position (which, to be clear, he did a little while before those problems came to light) improved upon most, if not all of the problems, as far as I can tell. I do still watch LTT on occasion but less so. Primarily though, because both, my interests changed as did their content.
Thats very fair, I vaguely recalled there was some initial handling of the issue that wasn’t great or something, and that was what I was talking about. I’m glad to hear the longer term response has been a lot better! (Assuming I’m even remembering correctly that the initial handling was crummy)
Thank you for adding more info and context!
I stopped watching Tech Jesus videos because of their handling of the LTT drama
He treated his “investigation” as if he was going after a big hardware company instead of a direct competitor in his space. It left a very bad taste in my mouth. Not to mention when LTT did implement changes and begin improving did he acknowledge after his insane takedown?
Most of those are 2 to 3 years ago now though. A lot of that was during and immediately post covid. I’m not up on anything major in the last year. Though they did just recently have a bunch of their regulars break away. It seems amicable however. And a result of the new CEO and CEO decisions rubbing against the grain of the previous very bro centered culture of the crew. Not as professional as they could have been etc.
Heck all that happened before even Emily left. And she put out that video explaining her departure in January.