“After this brutal belittling, gaslighting, and sexual harassment, you’re gonna have a lot of baggage. And the nest way to carry it? The LTT backpack!”
Omg this is spot on
Comes with trust me bro warranty (aka no warranty)
And a trust me bro guarantee that no employees were harassed in the designing or making of this product
We have a great warranty posted in our website, but the warranty you get in the package is nothing like it.
From what Madison said it sounds like it goes far too deep for this to change much. I hope things get better (since it’s unlikely LTT just up and disappears immediately), but from what we’ve seen this culture of dismissal goes right to the top.
I honestly believe that Linus is a well intentioned dumbass. He likes his people and believes that everyone can just get along and that nobody would harass another employee seriously. He knows that the mistakes are just honest mistakes which is why he gets so defensive, take the whole “trust me bro” thing… I think it never occurred to him to fuck his customers over which is why he didnt handle it well.
He doesnt believe his employees need a union because I dont know about you but if I owned a company Id hope that my people felt looked after well enough that they didnt feel like they needed one either.
But that kind of attitude just doesnt work with so damn many people, he should have hired a full time HR manager YEARS ago, as well as the company lawyer on staff. He SHOULD NOT be doing the WAN show, or if he does it should be on a 5 minute tape delay with someone from legal and hr present.
The reason why so much bullshit corporate structure exists is to largely protect the company from itself.
He doesnt believe his employees need a union because I dont know about you but if I owned a company Id hope that my people felt looked after well enough that they didnt feel like they needed one either.
I’m not gonna blame them for wanting to be protected. Even if I treat them right, will my eventual successor treat them right? History says no. Best to be prepared.
Source: trust me bro?
The whole “Trust me bro” thing comes from when they released their backpacks. They had issues with some of the zippers and people wanted to know what the warranty was. Linus said they didnt explicitly have one but that he would look after anyone with issues. When people got a bit rightly pissed about this, he got a bit defensive. “Trust me bro” sprung up as a meme out of that whole saga.
So… No source then? You just kinda think Linus is nice from watching videos?
What source are you looking for, exactly? You asked about a specific incident and got a fine summary. If you want more context, it’s very easy to find.
If you are looking for a “source” for a subjective opinion of someone’s personality… I don’t even know what that would accomplish or what form you think that would take.
If you’ve seen enough wan show you can get a pretty good idea of his personality. He spouts so many controversial takes without thinking through the consequences, so he’s doing a terrible job if he’s actually an evil mastermind. Most people are well intentioned and Linus is no different.
He’s also naïve, arrogant, and defensive, as we’ve seen lately.
Sounds like they need to totally overhaul HR and give them real power to action to whatever complaints are coming in. A lot of management will have to go in order to change the culture. Unfortunately culture starts at the top and I’m not sure Linus himself can lead that change.
If I’m not mistaken, the allegation was on events from two years ago? It’s possible HR has already been overhauled and such.
He stepped down as CEO six weeks ago. Hopefully the new one can bring some process maturity to LTT.
He and his wife are still the majority (perhaps only?) owners, so Linus is still in charge even if he is pretending to delegate some duties.
I think the fact he appeared in the latest video and was still so defensive is enough evidence to prove that point.
Linus is the founder, his name is on the buildings, he was CEO at the time of all this shit, he is the cheif on camera personality and he is the majority shareholder. Of course he would be in the video.
Hiring Terren was the smartest thing he could have done, he probably should have gotten someone who understands this shit onboard a long time ago. Even if they were subordinate to him.
Sadly HR exists to protect the company from the employees, not the other way around. This is always the case in the USA. Not sure about other places.
A good HR department protects the company by protecting the employees though. Not good business to get your business involved in expensive lawsuits because your HR department took the path of least resistance.
It is good they are taking public steps to change their corporate culture, but it is clear they had a top down culture of not taking harassment seriously. Hate to share a reddit link, but this video: https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/15t1mzn/mandatory_meeting_the_after_madisons_departure/ purports to be from when Madison left. The language here is not the language of a corporate culture that takes harassment seriously. Especially since James didn’t get immediately corrected.
If they want to win back the viewers (and likely sponsors) they are losing or have lost because of all of this toxicity, they are going to have to continue to publicly show they are committed to improving not only their culture to move away from a harassment friendly, grindset focused content farm, to one worth our time (and sponsor dollars).
I guess I’m kinda naive. “You gonna dance on that table, or just stand on it?” doesn’t sound like a sex joke to me, but that’s what people are calling it.
Maybe it’s being in corporate america for a while, but holy shit that made my head literally swivel back to the video after kinda paying attention. That is definitely not something you say in corporate america, let alone literally listening to a speech about harassment.
You never even get close to anything sexual in corporate america. Just steer clear. I don’t care if it’s funny, or you think it’s funny, or if you think everyone else will think it’s funny, you don’t. You avoid the topic completely. Make the joke later at home or with your friends but not in the workplace.
Even if the joke is only partially offensive, it’s offensive. (If you aren’t sure if it is or not - you don’t make the joke. You’re instincts are trying to tell you it’s not the right place) You don’t do that in the office, and to do that seconds after the meeting it shows how fucking terrible it is there. I’ll be honest, I was taking Madison’s allegations with a grain of salt, but that just solidified to me what the culture is like. If they don’t have HR nipping that shit in the bud, what else are they letting fly
I agree. I was caught off guard because it didn’t show up on my radar at all. It’s not like I thought “eh, it’s only a little bit racy”. I just missed the sex implications completely.
for sure, and yeah you probably wouldn’t make that joke then, but the person who did clearly knew what they were saying and still decided to. Freaking read the room man. (them, not you)
I just can’t help but think that if I had made that sort of comment in that sort of meeting, every boss or office I’ve worked for would have immediately taken corrective action, either publicly calling me into a separate meeting or by advising how such comments aren’t acceptable and noting how it violates policy.
The fact that it was just ignored is so much more indicative of the culture than I think just about anything else in the video.
Exactly, he should have called it out, right there. Yeah embarrassing for the person, but they should be embarrassed.
That, right there actually is what we’re stopping. That sort of joke was okay in the past, even up to this meeting, but no longer going forward. That’s the last one, and this is this entire group’s one and only warning
Yeah, I think the connection between being on a raised platform and dancing is stripping. Making this a horribly tone deaf, if not intentionally undermining, joke.
… I took a second to consult ChatGPT…
Other connections seem to be all related to a performance of some type. I very much doubt this joke was not about stripping.
That’s actually kind of fucking disgusting behavior. Like I’ve said elsewhere, they make stupid throwaway sexual jokes in so many videos, it’s easy to imagine it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
I think its more the implication that Linus looked like stripper on the table. But I appreciate that could be a stretch. I’m more concerned by a) instructing people to go directly to the person harassing them with no managerial oversight first, b) implying harassment complaints are drama, c) suggesting that its not their job to resolve harassment complaints by down playing them as “interpersonal problems” and d) intentionally or unintentionally suggesting that if you have a problem you are going against the fun environment, which instantly puts a harassment victim in an us vs them environment.
I’m coming at this from a lawyer perspective, as I am a lawyer (albeit not an employment or harassment lawyer) and I’ve witnessed first hand how harassment and discriminated employees are not respected by management. I’ve seen how that impacts people’s mental health and how, especially for younger women, it creates a toxic cycle where it can be extremely difficult to leave because you’ve internalized the harassing and discriminatory experience to the point of thinking “well, who else will hire me? I can’t just get another job.”
I realize if you have not experienced that or witnessed that, its hard to understand how a toxic environment can lead to that mindset. So hearing someone joking around in an emergency all company meeting may not immediately seem problematic. But when the subject of the meeting is harassment, and a high ranking manager just jokes around like its not a big deal, and that joke is tacitly approved of by the executive level (where there isn’t immediate correction), it all strikes me as a corporate culture that doesn’t respect the seriousness of harassment.
I’m also biased as my office literally just had our annual harassment training yesterday.
Right?! Have you talked to them first? “Hey, harasser, you know you keep grabbing my ass and I don’t like that, could you not?” Literally every harasser will laugh in your face and say something like “You love it” to trivialize it. Any HR person knows that that’s now how that works.
Did you catch “Our 3rd party HR provider”? So they outsourced HR. How am I not even a tiny bit surprised?
They did say, if you aren’t comfortable talking to the person then go to management or fill in the anonymous form. Seems fine. Most inteepersonal stuff can be resolved by people just talking to each other, but if it is known the other party is an ass, just go to management. And HR is often outsourced at smaller corps, sames as payroll or IT can be.
“but the first question will be did you talk to them”. Definitely pushing that we’re going to encourage you to solve your own problems with your harasser
Sure, but often harassment starts out with a bully testing the waters and you can shut that down immediatly, and state your boundary. Then report if they break it. Not only is taking care of shit empowering, but if you have ever worked at a place with lots of catty people management can spend their whole day on petty bullshit instead of actual work. Also you can do both at once. I had that situation with this monster of a guy being verbal abusive to everyone. one day I lost it and told him ti eff right off and cut the stupid bullshit, then I walked right to my supervisor and said I just told the plant guy to eff off so you might get an earfull. He actually did come to talk to my boss, boss was like I think you heard him right. That guy was super amicable from that day on, he just needed to be put in his place.
I’m glad that worked for you, but that doesn’t mean it works for everyone, and it shouldn’t have to. Anyone should feel safe going and asking for help to stop someone they feel uncomfortable around.
If I Google “table dancing” (in a fresh new browser I just installed on incognito mode with a VPN and everything + I never watch porn or search this stuff or anything, so it’s not just customizing it to be sexual for me - I encourage you to try this yourself) the first result in the Wikipedia article about it, which reads:
A table dance, or bartop dance, is a dance performed at (or on) a table or bar, as opposed to on a stage. It may be an erotic dance performed by a sex worker or it may be done as a leisure activity.
As you keep scrolling down, the next thing it shows is images of erotic dancers table dancing, the next thing is a list of nearby strip clubs, the next result is the dictionary.com entry for table dancing which reads:
a form of entertainment in which naked or scantily dressed women dance erotically at the tables of individual members of the audience, who must remain seated
The next result is videos of erotic dancers table dancing. And so on, and so on.
So, yeah, there’s definitely, without a doubt, a strong sexual/erotic connotation/connection to the term and the joke they made.
Me too I guess. I can see it if I really try, but it seems a stretch.
Gonna take one fucking amazing d-brand wrap to make this shit look good.
D-brand could make a LTT screwdriver wrap so that people can cover the logo, instead of dremelling it off.
Oh look your pr and legal team wrote some words that no one gives a fuck about
That sanitized corpspeak just sticks out like a sore thumb, right? It takes deliberate, continuous effort not to start zoning out as soon as I hear it.
Corporate speak sucks, but it’s 100x better than Linus digging an ever deeper hole for himself at this time. Dude and his wife just need to take a backseat for a while and let pros fix their shit
I prefer the honesty that he’s NOT sorry. Tells me to continue to avoid their videos like the plague.
I disagree. Linus shooting from the hip and making himself look an even bigger ass is incredibly entertaining.
And it actually represents real attitudes in their company, obviously.
People have been saying constantly that they need to stop having linus respond and instead of proper PR sanitised responses.
Yeah simps would say that. People unconcerned with the real issues who just want the videos to keep coming
Of course? Did anyone expect something else? And frankly they would be extremely stupid if they did anything they didn’t check with their lawyer first.
On one hand the corpo speak annoys me bit on the other would we really want another Linus statment?
Corpo-speak doesn’t mean shit. Actions do.
At least it’s not a poop emoji this time.
You know, it’s wild that poorly reviewing a GPU cooler can lead to stuff like this coming out.
deleted by creator
LTT has shown their true colors before this statement came out. They can say whatever they like, i won’t believe them.
If they had made a statement like this proactively years ago, I maybe would believe it. But now after the years of rumored toxic workplace conditions this just seems like an attempt to calm their fans lol
Tbf the current CEO has been there less than two months not two years.
I hope they can begin some strong course corrections or else LMG will be the Laying-off Media Group. A lot of people say they want to see LMG burn and I don’t think they realize over 100 people work there. The organization should be offered a chance at redemption regardless of whether Linus should or shouldn’t.
Plot twist: the “quick, decisive action” will be to tell them to shut the fuck up or get fired.
Mfers talking like they were out in Europe totally unaware of what the US branch had been doing all this time, like what! Also what’s with the third person, who else is there with you calling the shots?
It was you. You were there and you knew from day one. Lots of allegations were directed at you, specifically. What is happening.
🤦♂️
People wanted PR responses, people get PR responses
And LMG would be stupid to say or release anything else on that topic! This is potential lawsuit country, they will walk very carefully and I would be surpised if they didn’t check every public communication with their lawyer first.
Any chance on some context on this for someone who doesn’t follow tech closely enough? I know who Linus is, and what LTT is, and I’ve seen a lot of stuff these past few days about the community being angry at them for all sorts of stuff, but who is Madison? And what did they allege?
Edit: Never mind, only had to scroll two posts in my feed to find the answer. For others out of the loop: ex LTT employee Madison Reeve alleges toxic work environment and sexual harassment.
