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- technology@lemmy.world
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remember when linus spoke out against unionizing :)
That and the “We don’t discuss wages.” remark. Screw that mentality. And from what Madison wrote, If promissory estoppel is a thing in Canada, then it sounds like she had a strong case. Especially if there was any paperwork.
There’s tons of shit they could get LMG for. But it seems that they intentionally hired people that don’t know any better, and it’s no real fault of their own since they just are appearing to use predatory hiring processes. It’s ridiculous to think everyone young should know employment law.
promissory estoppel
Surely verbal contracts are still enforceable in Canada like they are in the US, assuming Madison can prove they happened.
Linus “spoke out” against unionizing by saying that he couldn’t legally do anything to stand in the way of his employees unionizing and wouldn’t want to stand in their way if they ever decided to. But he wants to make a workplace where people don’t feel the need to and if they did then he would see it as a personal failure.
There’s plenty to criticize Linus for right now, but I don’t think that his “anti-union” stance is one of them
Edit: in the context of these allegations, then yes, his employees certainly should unionize if the actual criminal crimes in this thread are even partially true. And if that happens then I will be singing Solidarity Forever for the LMG employees, but until that happens and we see how Linus responds to that this is just not a good read on Linus’ stance towards unions.
Edit2: it feels weird to have posted what could be seen as a defense of Linus under this particular post. I’m not a Linus Stan, Just a union advocate that wants criticism to be levied where it’s actually called for and this doesn’t seem like it is
I’m not saying he meant anti-union by that line, but that’s classic anti-union line saying my employees don’t need unions.
Very much in line of “unions means less money for you” statement.
Yeah the whole “I love unions, but we at this company are a family so we don’t need that”, is peak anti-union talk. Throughout history it’s been used by people who are horrible to their employees.
Exactly. If I was really concerned about my employees etc. I would want them to have a union with power that could match mine to argue their needs and concerns. If he had a union a lot of these problems and mistakes that he’s having likely wouldn’t have occurred.
True. If he said that line in response to a statement about wages. I can’t say that I exactly remember the context in which he made that statement, but I believe that it (ironically, given this post) had more to do with workplace culture than wages.
It’s not unusual for several people to have the same rational thought process. That’s why it’s “classic”.
An genuine employer who isn’t against unions and has their employees wellbeing as a top priority should encourage the employees to unionize.
Fair point, well made. I would love to live in a world like this one day
If I ever start a corporation and if for some reason it isn’t a workers co-op, I will make the employees unionize. I see little reason other than absolute profit maximization to not treat your employees as a great asset, assuming they’re doing reasonably well. But I’m a dirty socialist so…
Dirty? Nah, you’re fresh as hell, comrade. Workers co-ops are great
I guess I have my own special version of pessimism where if I see an employer not actively hiring Pinkertons I think if it add a little w for workers these days
I’m not convinced.
I have two uncles who worked for the same company, in different departments but in similar roles. Both were engineers, one was a CAE, and the other an ME. The CAE was not part of a union, and the ME was. They had a comparable lifestyle, so I assume they made a comparable salary (they live about a mile from each other, in a similarly sized house, drive similar cars, take similar amounts of vacations, etc).
Here’s the work history of my unionized uncle:
- multiple unpaid strikes, where the main output was a marginal benefit to employees (from tertiary sources, it wasn’t worth the strike)
- layoff (maybe 2? I don’t recall), and later rehire in a separate department (was laid off for months); this resulted in complications with the company pension (I think the pension got rolled into the 401k because the new group hadn’t negotiated a pension)
- consistent work location - always worked at the same plant, except for a handful of visits to others
And here’s the work history of my non-unionized uncle:
- no layoffs, and optional participation in strikes
- inconsistent work location, but had some WFH flexibility in the last 15-ish years of employment (i.e. could work 9/80s, WFH one day/week, etc)
- maintained control over retirement benefits, so retired with a pension and a 401k
This is obviously a very small sample, so it’s hardly enough evidence to say whether unions are a net positive or net negative. So whether a union is better for you depends on a lot of factors, such as:
- role - white collar jobs benefit less from unions vs blue collar jobs
- unions can suck, and non-unionized employers can rock; the latter can change overnight, whereas the former likely won’t
- your best tool is your own personal skillset; regardless of whether you’re in a union, ensure your skills are up-to-date so you have a good chance of getting a new job should you lose yours
But one thing that should be universally true is that openly anti-union employers should be avoided.
That wasn’t quite the point. What would be a good reason for a well meaning, rocking employer to not encourage unionization?
Lots of reasons:
- union dues
- bureaucracy - need to go through the union
- unwanted strikes - if your union goes on strike, you are not allowed to work
- special treatment - unions try to equalize, so higher performers may not be fairly compensated
An awesome employer shouldn’t discourage unionization, and ideally they’d encourage attempts to unionize, but they wouldn’t recommend unionization, assuming the employer intended to maintain control and monitor managers throughout the chain. If the employer can provide all of the benefits employees would get through unionization, unionizing merely adds extra BS that employees and employers need to deal with.
Alright, so let’s take a look.
- union dues
No escaping this one.
- bureaucracy - need to go through the union
What does the employer have to go through the union for?
- unwanted strikes - if your union goes on strike, you are not allowed to work
If the employer is rocking, why would union members vote to strike?
- special treatment - unions try to equalize, so higher performers may not be fairly compensated
This doesn’t feel right but I can’t quite put my finger on why so I’ll reserve judgement for now. 😄
I can see the extra layer of overhead in the case when everything is perfect, but given the incentives in traditional for-profit corporations I can’t see that case ever being realistic. In addition, even if a company is perfect today, the way corporations are structured makes it incredibly easy for that to change especially if there’s no worker-controlled counterbalance to such change. So just on the basis of that, if I’m an awesome, perfect employer, and I presumably want this to go on, because that really is part of being awesome, I should want to create this counterbalance against change for the worse. Assuming a for-profit, not-a-co-op corporation that is. It looks to me like this overhead is the price of preserving this perfect environment over the long term. Doesn’t that make sense?
What does the employer have to go through the union for?
Benefits, and depending on the union’s rules, salary adjustments. Some unions also require informing them of schedule changes.
The reverse is also true, employees may need to go through the union depending on the union’s rules.
If the employer is rocking, why would union members vote to strike?
Idk, perhaps communication issues w/ management? Over-zealous union leadership?
The point is, the employee isn’t empowered here, they’re subject to whatever the union agrees to do.
My uncle went through multiple strikes, few (if any) he actually agreed with, but had to deal with being out of work. He wished he wasn’t union so he could just continue working.
the way corporations are structured makes it incredibly easy for that to change
Sure, which is why it absolutely depends on the type of organization. Something owner-operated has a much lower risk of unexpected awful changes than something publicly traded.
A lot of owner-operated businesses don’t intend to sell to someone else, the owner will just shut it down when they’re done operating it. So “long term” in this sense is until the owner retires. And if they do intend to sell, they could at that point encourage the employees to make any employment adjustments needed.
Lol, sounds like what someone with a reputation to uphold would say if he hated the idea of his workers unionizing.
It’s manipulative doublespeak meant to discourage unionization.
The employer is by nature profit-seeking and all communication must be viewed through this lens.
Wow, that would be the last straw. You have a link to his comments?
It was a wan show a while back if I remember right (not op), but basically trashed unions and said businesses should do better and vaguely acted like all the employees of the world could just quit and find something better on a whim if things were actually bad where they worked.
Which is all fine. His position was literally “I can’t and won’t do anything to stop it except for treating everyone to enough money that they won’t bother to do it”
That’s about as inoffensive as you can get. You’re twisting it into being some anti union thing.
Unions are not just for getting higher wages. They’re not even just for when conditions start to get worse. Unions should be there for the best as well as the worst working conditions. Unions serve to maintain good and improve bad conditions, it’s not about going against the “boss”, it’s about actively or passively defending the workers’ conditions.
Would you trust your boss’ lawyer saying “the trial will be fair, you won’t need a lawyer”?
And none of what Linus said goes against that. The employees are fine to form a union if they ever feel the need.
They always say that.
And some of them mean it. It’s just incredibly hard to tell one from the other, so always protect yourself first.
And here I thought they were just sometimes a little inaccurate on the information they presented. Holy shit it’s so much worse.
“Honestly, my stance on this isn’t gonna change. If people felt like we weren’t taking care of them, yeah, I would feel like we failed. If you wanna interpret that as a bad thing, you can, but you’re reaching pretty hard.”
Yeah, I’d say it’s about time for LTT staff to unionise.
I think that “taking care of people” smacks of the same rhetoric as “we’re like a family” and “I like to think that all staff are considered equals here” and just about any other lie I’ve heard from exploitative upper management types.
Pepperige farm remembers.
I always figured LTT was a boy’s club, considering how few female employees they have, but I had no idea the environment was that bad. Rather naive of me, tbh.
Ugh, I don’t think I can continue watching anything from LTT anymore. 😭 I hope Madison is doing better these days.
Edit: I’ve zero issues blocking bad actors. =)
It’s a lot of techies and IT guys. Sadly it’s basically expected that there will be a toxic environment for women. It’s HR’s job to put a stop to that shit so the company does not get sued. However, when the boss’ wife is the head of HR and the boss is the one allowing the toxic environment, it gets swept under the rug until it becomes a huge issue.
She isn’t the head of HR.
Downvote if you want, but it is true.
She isn’t anymore. She was previously.
Yeah, I believe when the company was a lot smaller.
As a cis het male, I feel offended by this “boy’s club” toxic generalisation. When you represent the queer community, you should carefully choose your words instead of labelling half the earthlings with a culture that is far, far smaller in both demographic and influence. What may be true in Western society is not true for the much larger rest of the world.
LMG’s main audience is in US/Canada, and not as much in rest of the world, where many of us live. A lot of us use Lemmy because we find Reddit’s western culture incredibly toxic and abrasive towards Asians (me), Africans, Global South and rest of the world.
Madison, and anyone, deserves a lot better, and I just got myself up to speed with the whole situation, which while it blows my mind, also makes me feel a lot of workplaces throughout the world have this corporate dehumanising mindset towards employees.
I only watched LMG’s content here and there in the past year, but I can probably discard them for how bad people they are.
Calling something a boys club in no way generalizes guys.
It does. Boy is a cis het male human who is growing up to be a man. We as men are generalised by queer and feminist people as one giant toxic entity, and I am not part of that. I feel offended by this. The feelings of men are just as important as that of women and trans people, and we all are supposed to be equal beings worthy of respect.
There exist fanatical groups like Proud Boys, but in no way is “boy’s club” the same as that connotation presented above.
It’s a boys club because its a club that only accepts boys. Its genuinly that simple. A girls club would be one that only accepts girls. There is no generalization happening. This is some real incel shit you’re on, and thats a pipeline you should get off.
I am not sure if there is any “incel” vibe to pointing out these labels that are very much part of patriarchy. Selective patriarchy cannot be utilised, if the goal is to dismantle it.
“Boy’s club” is a notion that affirms all cis het males are bigots, and is a word born out of binary gender patriarchy. This is the primary reason why this label is used. Using it in itself is a form of bigotry, no matter if you like it or not, since linguistics and contextual grammar works in only one way, and that way is same for all of us.
Its definitely a commonly used name for the mindset they are describing. There’s nothing to try to defend. As another cis het male, “the boy’s club” is nothing to aspire to, unless of course, the goal is to belittle and victimize women.
“Boy’s club” is just as bad as “girl’s club”, since those are both mindsets and spaces born out of binary gender system values. Neither is to be aspired for, but one of them gets more flak for arbitrary reasons. These labels need to stop being used in order to condemn and purge the binary gender values and in order to make society more inclusive. Anyone using these labels bolsters patriarchal values.
You’re misconstruing the meaning and intent of the phrase to support your argument. It in no way implies or affirms that all cis het males are bigots, only the males it is directly being used against. Similarly, calling a man a misogynist does not mean that all men are misogynists.
Boy is a cis het male human who is growing up to be a man.
No? I don’t see why a boy couldn’t be gay, for example.
<1% of global population statistics where people identify as nonbinary says otherwise. Most cis males end up growing as cis het males, and not mtf non-binary. A boy could be gay, but less than 1 out of 100 are.
What? Roughly 7% of men in Western culture are not heterosexual. Across the rest of the world, 3-20% of men (depending on region) have had sex with men.
Recent figures for young adults (i.e., 18-29) identifying as trans / non-binary in the US are in the ~5% area, which suggests that figures historically would have been higher had there been more cultural awareness and acceptance. Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/06/07/about-5-of-young-adults-in-the-u-s-say-their-gender-is-different-from-their-sex-assigned-at-birth/
Source for the sexuality claim (quote below): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orientation
“Surveys in Western cultures find, on average, that about 93% of men and 87% of women identify as completely heterosexual, 4% of men and 10% of women as mostly heterosexual, 0.5% of men and 1% of women as evenly bisexual, 0.5% of men and 0.5% of women as mostly homosexual, and 2% of men and 0.5% of women as completely homosexual.[1] An analysis of 67 studies found that the lifetime prevalence of sex between men (regardless of orientation) was 3–5% for East Asia, 6–12% for South and South East Asia, 6–15% for Eastern Europe, and 6–20% for Latin America.[4] The International HIV/AIDS Alliance estimates a worldwide prevalence of men who have sex with men between 3 and 16 percent.[5]”
Oh no a cis white male feels offended.
Anyways.
I am from India, and I think that equality exists for all genders, and emotions have the same weightage for all of us non-bigots. The only question is, who truly wants to not be a bigot?
Buahahaha
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So you’re actually going forward to “cancel” a company
… Did you really just insinuate that unsubbing from a channel is the same as “canceling” them? LOL
Begone, foul troll!
When LMG releases a video supposedly addressing everything… doesn’t address it… then actively removed any mention of it in the comments of the video (I’ve had 2 comments removed myself). It’s safe to assume that LMG doesn’t have anything they want to add to the topic. I’ll just presume that I’ve heard all sides of the story.
The other side has spoken, and Linus is attempting to plaster over things instead of addressing them head on.
They have spoken. Both sides had their say. This is the reaction to that.
Yeah they just want to change their wOrKfLoW…or something like that. To be honest, this is something that needs to be run through the justice system. If there was sexual harassment, then some people need to be tried for those crimes. This is a culture that cannot be changed along the lines that Linus Sebastian suggested. Justice needs to be served, however, I don’t think she really wants to relive this. My mother was sexually harassed by her boss (an optometrist)…it was pretty hard on her.
As someone who has self immolated in order to bring sexual assault to light… I see all the signs of darvo in the responses from LMG and Linus, and it turns my stomache.
It’s not just the one employee though. Gamer Nexus has been calling out LTT for inaccuracies too. The ethics of LMG seem dubious at best and the are lots of other options so why keep watching LTT?
Cry me a river you fucking homonculus people have the right to decide they don’t want to watch the boys club anymore
Maybe let both sides talk before picking a side? Or I guess you can just unsubscribe like a child.
Lol this fanboy
Fanboy because I’m not reacting like a child before I hear both sides?
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Look up super mega.
Matt came with receipts that showed everything he was accused of was a lie.
Great. So the other 5M times women come forward like this can be ignored because one time it was proven otherwise.
1 time? You’re ignorant.
No, because you’ve posted SEVENTEEN TIMES today simping for Linus. You keep repeating “wait for both sides” even though Linus already responded directly to the GN piece and his response was GARBAGE, which is the main reason a lot of people are unsubscribing. Madison’s problem isn’t the only issue, it’s just another thing we’re throwing onto the pile.
If this was a male employee you wouldn’t be arguing this hard with the accusations.
If this was a male employee you wouldn’t be arguing this hard with the accusations.
lmao. You seem to be projecting.
What a stupid thing to say. Unsubbing is a mature response.
Waiting for both sides to tell their story is the mature response.
It’s a sub. Why are you acting like unsubbing is such a terrible, immature response?
Exactly. OP can easily resub once each side has said their piece and OP feels comfortable that any issues were resolved.
It’s also not like YouTube won’t recommend you channels that you unsub from. I had to into a 3rd party channel blocker because it kept recommending me AvE even though I very much don’t want to see that channel anymore.
Sure, but I can also ignore most of that by just going to my subscriptions page. I don’t mind seeing irrelevant videos, I’m just not going to click on them.
We already have their response though? They continue deleting comments that even bring it up. That alone should tell you everything.
Stop licking their boots; there are better tech channels.
Yup. Some favorites:
- Gamer’s Nexus - recently called out LTT for consistent technical mistakes in reviews; very high quality testing on PC hardware
- Optimum Tech - focuses largely on SFFPCs and gaming peripherals like mice and keyboards (GN has almost no coverage on any of them)
- The Phawx - lately lots of handhelds like AYANEO and Steam Deck, but also does lots of game performance testing and some hardware testing
- Louis Rossmann - Right to Repair fanatic, and discussion about some tech news, usually pointing out repair-related issues
- SomeOrdinaryGamers - a weird hodge-podge of software config (e.g. went through installing Arch, setting up PCIe passthrough for Windows gaming VMs, emulation), tech news, old school mods, and lately aliens (from a skeptic perspective)
I’ve also liked Hardware Canucks, Hardware Unboxed, and JayzTwoCents (dropped this hard since it became ridiculous imo), but I haven’t watched anything from them in a couple years so I can’t really recommend them.
I watch LTT a handful of times per year, and usually it’s not really my thing (more hype than content imo).
Optimum Tech
Thanks for this recommendation! I love SFF pcs.
His production value is fantastic as well. I hope you enjoy. :)
Can confirm that Gamer’s Nexus and Optimum Tech are absolutely superb. You can tell those guys are doing it for the love of the game. LTT is vacuous in comparison.
Another I didn’t mention is Level1Techs, though they tend to focus more on server hardware and less on weird gaming tech (though they do gaming reviews as well).
But we wont hear llts response to this… lol
If she had several tweets of bullshit about the company, it might not have been like this 100%… but ill bet that this is just one out of several people who felt screwed working there
Linus?
Both sides HAVE spoken. The fire was stoked by the shitty LMG response.
I’m confused about your comment. Why assume it’s childish to act in a way that distances you of any drama?
Why that us vs. them attitude of name calling someone as childish? How is that any different of the childish behaviour that is being hoisted upon in the first place?
Perhaps that’s an indication that a side is already being chosen?
Anyway, don’t take my comment in a wrong way. I really have no dog in this fight. I barely know who this Linus guy is. I just dislike seeing people being rude to each other, unneedingly escalating discussions by being unkind.
Exactly. I stopped watching LTT when I felt they produced childish content a few years ago (first it was the clickbait titles, then stupid thumbnails, then annoying ads). So I unsubbed for much less than a sexual harassment case.
Watch other channels, there’s plenty of good content out there depending on what you’re interested in. I mostly watch Gamer’s Nexus and Optimum Tech these days for tech stuff, but there are a few others I watch with some regularity.
And this is why Lienus hates unions so much, cause it would have held him and his company accountable for the nasty, abusive shit they do behind the scenes.
Am I missing something? When had he expressed his hatred for unions? As a union man, if he had said something like that it would’ve pricked my ears. As far as I know, he’s said that he doesn’t want his employees to feel like they need a union, but wouldn’t stand in their way if they wanted one, which is about as good as it gets for a North American business owner.
If this stuff is true then they should unionize immediately. Solidarity Forever
Edit: I’m not going to double down. This was a blind spot for me, maybe because my union is already established and fairly strong, but I’ll hold this L and learn from it
in one of the WAN shows he went on a big handwringing tirade about how “unions means I’m a failure as an employer” with undertones of “You wouldnt want to make me a failure by unionizing, right?”
Okay. So I’m not missing something. I guess I heard him say that it “would be a personal failure for him as an employer” as him taking personal responsibility for his employees’ treatment. A charitable interpretation, but just a difference of opinion.
I can see how people can interpret what he says as soft anti-union, it’s just weird to see you and others say things like this as if he’s sober sort of Robber Baron.
Edit: I’m not going to double down. This was a blind spot for me, maybe because my union is already established and fairly strong, but I’ll hold this L and learn from it
Employers by nature seek profit above all.
Unions by nature seek improved wages and conditions for the employees above all.
Since the positions are diametrically opposed, we must evaluate all employer speech concerning unionization through this lens.
What I see is an employer trying to keep his reputation use deceptive doublespeak to discourage unionization among his employees.
Employers by nature seek profit above all.
That’s may be true for publicly traded companies, but for privately owned companies, that’s not necessarily true, especially owner-operated businesses like LMG (I know he hired a CEO, but Linus seems to be very involved still). Profit is certainly a concern, and it needs to be a concern for the long-term viability of the company, but employers can be driven by something else. For example:
- Gamer’s Nexus - seems largely motivated by integrity in tech journalism, and you can see it in how they spend their money (I doubt they turn a profit on the case reviews, they’re building a high quality anechoic chamber, etc)
- Valve - selling the Steam Deck at that price point was “painful,” and they still have a very open work environment from what I understand
- my previous employer - small business, made security hardware for businesses and military; my boss’ stated goal was to save lives, and I think he did a good job sticking to that, at least until he essentially sold his stake in the business (coincidentally when I left)
LMG could absolutely fit that mold. He seems to still have a passion for the tech first, though he has been shilling his merch a lot harder over the last couple years, so maybe his mindset is changing.
My point is that companies don’t necessarily seek profit above all else, but they do need to seek profit at some level to maintain the long-term viability of the company. That said, most companies do seek profit above all else, and you should absolutely have that be your default assumption, but leave room for owner-operated shops to actually care about their products and customers above profit.
Unions by nature seek improved wages and conditions for the employees above all.
Again, I disagree. Maybe unions start that way, but they operate like any other political entity where they largely want employees to keep paying the union dues, and the union management likely wants to increase their own salaries. So their focus is on doing something so they can convince members to increase their dues, and that something doesn’t necessarily have to be in the best interests of the members, it only needs to be convincing enough that people will agree to the dues increase.
That said, unions are probably more likely to seek improved conditions for their employees than an employer, just make sure your union leadership is good so you don’t get screwed over by nonsense. Some unions operate more like HOAs, where it’s more of a power trip than an actual mutually-beneficial relationship.
What I see is an employer trying to keep his reputation use deceptive doublespeak to discourage unionization among his employees.
I see the same, but that’s because when in doubt, I prefer to side with the weaker party. I still want to see more facts emerge before I start urging others to avoid LMG, I’m not going through that effort on a hunch.
You are a union man? Go speak with your fellow union people who work with negotiations and forming chapters and ask them what it means when a company says “we are pro unions but we feel it isn’t a good fit for us and we would have failed as a company if our employees would feel like they would need one”.
Hint: it’s something like “get the fuck out with the union shit, I’ll fire y’all”
Fair enough. I’m not going to double down. This was a blind spot for me, maybe because my union is already established and fairly strong, but I’ll hold this L and learn from it
I would just like to give props to you for owning up and listening to the information. I do not in any way think that you were wrong in your reasoning, just that there was more context that is likely relevant which you hadn’t been privy to, and once you were informed of it you reevaluated. Not everyone does that and I think a very valuable part of this community is when people do that (I know I’m not always particularly good at it myself).
Yeah, for me, a company having a union shouldn’t really have much of an effect if they are actually treating their employees well.
What wage discrepancies would there be to negotiate? Why would there be any arguing over allotted sick time? Why would an employee have a grievance against a company that they would need legal support for?
A company that truly wants to treat it’s employees well should already be on board with all of that stuff. In fact, I’d almost even argue that they should want a union.
Yeah, in the unlikely event I was ever in such a position, advocating my hypothetical employees to unionize for their own interests against mine (no matter how much I may try to cede or be considerate) seems like the bare minimum. Other options would maybe include making it a workers co-op or something.
Definitely charitable. My interpretation of his statement is that his idea of failure is unions because his idea of success is screwing over his employees.
Nah, don’t take an L. Some people who say that genuinely mean it, and I think an owner-operator business like LTT might fit the bill for someone who does actually mean it.
That said, it’s the same weasel-language that many corporations use that are actually anti-union and would be willing to squash a union if people started to unionize. I see some of that at my place of work (I’m not in a union, no talk of a union), but again, I know my immediate leadership to know that their heart is in the right place, but that they could be forced to do something they don’t like from higher-ups (e.g. we are going from 2-days in-office to 3-days in-office due to higher-ups, we’ll see if my boss actually campaigns for going back to 2-days in-office once the initial fervor dies down).
Yeah I remember listening to that WAN show, double speak for sure.
Yep, he got caught with his manipulative word play this time by GN, but it also gives context for everything he’s said in the past and puts new light on them, because this isnt something people just wake up and decide to do one day. Its something they do their entire life.
Why would “you wouldn’t want to make me a failure by unionizing” convince anyone not to unionize? You think poorly treated employees give a shit about their boss’ feelings? Put down the armchair psychology textbook and listen to the guy, he flat out says he supports unions and workers’ right to organize against antagonistic leadership.
he said he supported unions, but doesnt want a union at his business.
he said we should call out bad companies, until its his company thats being called out.
Says he cares about employees, but ignores sexual harassment, abuse, and overworks them beyond capacity.
He says a lot of shit, until hes on the receiving end of it.
Are you dense? He doesn’t want a union because in his mind, correctly, it would mean he’s a terrible person. Not every workplace needs a union.
He types all this out, but has the audacity to call me the dense one.
I swear to god, these linus fart huffers…
Based edit. Also, happy you’re in a union <3
which is about as good as it gets for a North American business owner.
Meanwhile, Dave Oshry being a fucking chad (yes I know he lives in NZ, but he’s from the US)
spoiler
Sorry to anyone for whom spoilers don’t work
My heart breaks for Madison because as a woman in tech myself, many of her experiences sound familiar. HR leaders, in many companies, exist primarily to serve the executive team and play PR for them. I’ve met very few who truly have employees backs and even they’re considered rebels. The best option most of the time is to leave the company because even if they call in a 3rd party, it’s lawsuit prevention and not an attempt to fix things. If anyone is in a situation where they’re the victim of inappropriate behavior and the company brings in their lawyer to talk to everyone, do not talk to them. They’re just gathering information so they can refute claims if litigation is presented. They work for the company, not you.
I never publicly made any statements regarding my time there because I feared even more backlash from a community that was already attacking, defaming, and sending me death threats.
Fuck man, pretty much nobody should have to deal with that.
I was actually called a tattle tale
Been there done that.
“snitches get stiches” is the phrase I’ve been told many times
I was told I was arguing, when I was trying to discuss my point of view.
This too
I remember getting told off for taking my sick days, as in the days you’re entitled to.
I am still, to this day, hesitant to take days off from this kind of shit
I was asked to twerk for a co-worker at one point.
I know some ladies who were asked by the CFO of a previous company to jump in place while to get a company t-shirt that other employees received.
I was told I was chunky, fat, ugly, stupid. I was called “removed” I was called a “removed”
I was called “stupid” to my face in an open office with fifty other staff in the room.
I was also the one tasked with managing the Only Fans account.
Something I said I didn’t want to do.
I had to read comments from people talking about how they wanted to fuck me and my co workers.
I saw peoples dicks, and vagina’s.
I said no, and was told only a little longer.
You should never be obligated to do things you don’t want to do. No job is worth it.
Please don’t attack individuals who don’t actually have power at this company, most of them are blameless or powerless to actually change anything.
This absolutely. For every one person who speaks up there are usually multiple tens who do not.
Also “why didn’t you take legal actions”
Many of them don’t know better. Many of them feel like they’re trapped: they require the paycheck and so they feel obligated to endure abuses.
… Or, at least, that’s been my experience with employers. To be clear: I do not, and have not, worked for LMG. I’m not trying to make it about me, just trying to relate. It’s unfortunate easy to relate.
She’s got some tough issues and I wish her to have better employment opportunities in the future.
These days I work for a company where “everything is awesome” and I get to work on really cool things every day without too much drama. I wish everyone could do that. I certainly couldn’t have without deciding to leave an abusive employer. I encourage everyone to seek better employment if you feel like you can relate to any of the issues she’s brought up.
So here’s some tips. There’s a lot to unpack though.
- keep a personal record. Keep it at home. If it’s on a computer or phone then keep it on a personal one so you still have it if you do quit or are fired. Write down the good times and the bad times.
- if you’re hourly, make sure to include your clock-in and clock-out times
- if you live in a single-party-recording-consent state, then record your conversations
- if anything comes up, your personal records can be admissible in court
- if nothing comes up then at least you can look back at your records and remember how often good things or bad things happen. it will help you to make decisions objectively and judge your emotions for them
Sending unsolicited sexually explicit messages (even just text) or images is a federal crime and can be included in sexual harassment claims. If your employer does not address the problem then your employer may be held accountable. It’s important that you keep records of your complaint to your employer and their inaction!
So, learn about harassment and discrimination laws. Everyone has a right to not be harassed (sexually or otherwise) or discriminated against. You can file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Office or your state’s equivalent (not all states have an equivalent).
This is an excellent and thoughtful response. Thank you for taking the time.
Agreed. Also thanks to you for noticing and hilighting the value of their response. An equally awesome move.
There is great content here on Lemmy. A welcome change from that other place if I might say. Cheers.
Thanks :)
I’m not party to the accusations. Things can be interpreted many ways. So I tried to keep an open mind and my response fairly applicable to anyone in general.
It’s clear that someone is being deceptive. I have no idea whether it’s some of the LMG team or Madison. I have to trust someone claiming to be a victim though.
These are serious, possibly criminal, accusations that Madison is making on a very public platform. Big accusations like this honestly belong to the courts and I hope that courts will figure out the truth – that’s what they’re there for. If it all just boils down to PR and settlements out of court then IMO that is a miscarriage of justice for every would-be third party victim of harassment.
It’s true that just about any online platform has to deal with sexually explicit content. But OnlyFans has a particular reputation about it. So if LMG has an OnlyFans account and she was managing, producing for, or interacting with it then I most certainly believe she’d have been exposed to sexually explicit material. If I were to investigate, I’d start truth-finding from there: find out what management’s policies are/were with regards to dealing with that content and find out what actual actions were taken for that content. Subpoena OnlyFans to produce copies of the content and correlate their own reports of whatever action LMG claims to have taken. From there, the rest of the accusations will fall into place with weight.
Whether or not the accusations are true or not, you gave excellent life advice imho.
Onlyfans might indeed have something to say here. Let us hope they do.
Adding this link for Canadian workers: https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/programs/workplace-health-safety/harassment-violence-complaint.html
Sending unsolicited sexually explicit messages (even just text) or images is a federal crime and can be included in sexual harassment claims.
Are US and Canada law similar in that aspect?
I’m a citizen of the USA and have only worked for US businesses. I don’t know about Canadian law (nor am I a lawyer in the US) but I would be surprised and saddened if they don’t have a strong legal system to protect victims.
Thanks for this! I’m a male manager of a team of mostly men and one woman, and we have a handful of other women on our broader team.
Fortunately, our company has never done any of this nonsense, and I hope nobody in our department (or company for that matter) would ever think of it. Our head of HR is female, as is our department’s HR rep, and we did a big push for DEI training over the last couple of years (the best company meeting imo was a Q&A with a panel of women, immigrants, and racial minorities). That has mostly run its course, but we still have mandatory, short, digital trainings every year, and a longer in-person one for new hires that repeats every few years for existing hires.
I’m going to bring up some of these points with the women on my team and ask them politely to let me know if they have anything they’d like to mention. It’s hard enough to attract women in my field (software development), so I want to keep whatever women we can find. But if my company is not a healthy working environment for anyone on my team, I would prefer they leave than continue somewhere they don’t feel comfortable, but I’d like the opportunity to try to fix the problem first.
So thanks again! I hope you’re in a better work environment now.
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- keep a personal record. Keep it at home. If it’s on a computer or phone then keep it on a personal one so you still have it if you do quit or are fired. Write down the good times and the bad times.
What a shit place to work at. Linus sounds like a real “winner”.
The dude has always seemed so smarmy to me so hearing this really isn’t that surprising. I’m happy they’re getting their comeuppance but doubt it will be as much as they deserve.
A few years back I remarked that Linus always came off like a bit of a douchebag. I was at the time heavily downvoted, but holy fuck. This is worse than I expected.
I watched like five minutes of a video like 10+ years ago and found it obnoxious. Reddit has such a hard on for him. Maybe it’s because I’m old, but I cannot stand his style.
When you say you’re old, how old do you actually mean? I’m in my mid 30s and I feel exactly the same way.
…I’m in my mid-30s hahahaha
This is definitely stuff designed for kids.
I’m a similar age and have a similar experience w/ LTT. I’ll occasionally watch a video because an early-20s coworker really likes it (something to talk about I guess), but I’m not a fan in any way. I mostly look at it as “what the average person thinks” and I don’t expect any actual analysis.
He and his/team’s content always came off to me as basement dwelling PC gamers trying to be real IT professionals. Garbage content and apparently a garbage company.
I’m neither close to this (I’ve seen a few LTT vids here and there) nor that interested in dogpiling or anything … but this is exactly what LTT/LMG and Linus himself always felt like to me and it always kinda creeped me out. Like I’d watch something and get that feeling of, am I the only one seeing that or is it me?
No. I’m just a “level 1” tech that have been doing this for many years, and I’ve always seen him and most of his channels as unprofessional, with the exception of the person now named Emily.
Linus himself didn’t seem like a great tech to me, mostly because he seem to struggle with anything else than Windows. I don’t care that much about hardware because I have been gravitating around hosting, mainframes (IBM i) and corporate so his channels and benchmarks are not of great interest to me. But that experience helped me see in his other tech videos that he was not serious.
And the way he “used” his employees to do anything unrelated to their job definition was weird. Like, I’m a tech and can install cable, but there’s people that you should hire for that. It’s not my job to move desks around or paint the walls while also having to do my regular tasks. Should have been the same with his employees.
He gave the impression of being someone that will use the “we’re just one big family” excuse to get his employees to do anything, while talking superficially about Windows computers and pushing merch.
I ended up asking YouTube not to recommend any of his channels.
I don’t think it’s fair to criticize his usage of employees… He’s operating a media company and all of his upgrades are essentially glorified media operations. Everyone on camera is a media personality playing a role.
The point isn’t to get cable installed, it’s to have an engaging personality on camera doing something interesting. Getting cable installed is a happy coincidence.
Even then, he shouldn’t have asked his employees to work on his home renovation.
Wasn’t all the “work” explicitly recorded for use as content? (And they hired a painter anyway)
What the actual fuck
I mean, in hindsight, I don’t know why I assumed differently. If it looks like a bro club…
Makes you wonder about Maxine leaving now.
No it doesn’t. She moved far up North to be with her boyfriend. Can you stop trying to make shit up?
Wondering why previous employees left after the workplace is revealed to be a toxic, abusive shithole is not making things up.
But it is speculation.
Which, as you may note by your own word choice, isnt “making things up”
Its speculation based on new information.
Yes speculation. Reasoning based on inconclusive evidence; conjecture or supposition.
Thats the same reason I gave a really crappy company for leaving too. Not saying it’s the exact same situation, but just wanted to point out that people sometimes lie to protect their place in their profession.
Especially if you’re “enemy” has a fanatic fanbase. You come up with a reason that doesn’t set the fanboys on a rampage against you. I think this is a fair thing to wonder.
Exactly, especially in the SM space where you’d likely want to get LMG to help you get off the ground, or at least a channel friendly with LMG.
Get out of here if you’re just going to keep defending a $100 million corporation like it’s your job
Defending? She literally said that…
And as others have pointed out… what she said falls perfectly in line with what someone afraid of recriminations would say, when trying to quietly exit a toxic workplace.
Seriously… are you Linus? I am failing to see why you have so much skin in this.
I’d like to think that it’s generally safe to assume that a company doesn’t conduct itself in this manner, but employers will always be incentivized to exploit it’s workers so we must be ever vigilant.
Wow. I’m glad she spoke up and I hope she’s doing better now. I hope more people at LTT are empowered to speak out/leave by her courage.
Just imagine how bad it is, behind closed doors and with the Cameras off, considering what the employees said in that LTT employee opinion video on camera, that GN repeatedly referenced, that they were over worked and didnt have time to make anything right.
Reading that made me sick to my core
Our HR team will be conducting a more thorough assessment of the allegations,
Tip for LMG: don’t have the founder’s wife be head of HR.
She’s not - Yvonne is accounting and business, I’ve never heard of her as being remotely involved with the HR department.
I’ve heard similar before about her being HR in addition to CFO, but I went to confirm on their site and they don’t list anyone as HR staff that I could find.
I believe Linus said they have an external HR contract now. Yvonne was HR when they were much smaller.
That makes sense
HRs job is to protect the company… from employees. So they dont sue.
So they pressure the leadership: you cant do this, because then X will sue.
You cant do that coz then the government will give us a large fine etc etc
Thwy are not there to help the employees. At all. Ever. Lol.
This is the leat surprising information anyone could have told me about working for LTT/LMG. Time and time again, tech jobs and game dev jobs in workplaces run by “old internet edgelords” always (always) results in shit like this.
Jesus Christ on a motorbike. They have no idea what they had with her, does she still create content?
Jesus Christ on a motorbike.
Here you go!
I’m disappointed. Jesus of all people should know how dangerous it is to ride without proper gear. Where’s the helmet? Where’s the armor? And, Christ… are those Sandals?? ATGATT!
He’s fine. If he gets into an accident he’ll just get back up in a little bit.
A little bit? It’d probably take a few days.
At least 3 if I’m not mistaken.
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What is dead may never die.
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Good bot
Wonderful.
She is on twitch and youtube https://linktr.ee/suop
I believe her.
I have been in the tech industry for almost 30 years. These things she talks about are not new and will keep happening unless more people talk about them. I gave that Linus guy a listen once or twice, was never impressed. His fans are delusional, this thread contains a few of them!
Agreed. However, I still want to see facts, because it is possible that she’s exaggerating. Until I see facts, I’m going to believe Madison.
That said, I rarely watch LTT or any related channels. I find them to be shallow, often click-bait, and their merch advertising is incredibly annoying. I get my tech news and entertainment from other channels, such as Gamer’s Nexus, Level1Techs, Louis Rossmann, OptimumTech, Tech Ingredients, and SomeOrdinaryGamers.
I don’t understand the rabid following LMG has, but I do try to be objective in my criticism. I think GN’s coverage recently was pretty revealing (the one about testing quality), especially when paired with this article.
What is she exaggerating? It’s her perspective. The things she described are not exaggerating.
I don’t know, that’s why I want to see more facts about the situation.
So that’s why I’m defaulting to believing the victim until I have evidence to the contrary. She has provided her side, I’m waiting for LMG to provide theirs.
I’m going to copy and paste my comment from another post here:
If this is true this is bad. Like, really bad
I say “if” just because I don’t really know what the facts are, I just know what some people are claiming
To be clear, I’m not saying it didn’t happen, I’m just saying that, at the moment, it’s just Madison saying these things did happen and Linus essentially saying they didn’t
My question is if she had such a bad experience, why hasn’t anyone else said anything, or at least put an anonymous negative review on Glassdoor or something? Did she just have a awful experience that was unusual, or is everyone/a large number of people treated like this? I don’t think it’s the second or it would’ve come out already and from more than one source (and the turnover is pretty low for LMG if I’m not mistaken, so that also doesn’t make sense), but I don’t really know. That’s really the crux of the situation, is I just don’t know. I’m glad they got an outside investigator though; hopefully that’ll clear everything up
why hasn’t anyone else said anything,
People don’t speak up for many reasons. Retaliation is a big thing: if you speak up then your job there is toast whether or not you’re still employed there. You still “have” to work with or around the people you’re accusing, until and unless you leave. Have you ever had to work with someone who’s abused you? It’s… not fun.
If you need the money, you’re kind’ve stuck: if you quit then you have to have a savings account to keep you afloat while you look for another job. While you’re looking for another job, your accusations here can prevent you from getting another job. Whether or not you leave, you still have to deal with the fallout: investigations take time, especially your time. If you have to take time off of work (eg, to see an attorney or visit a court) then that time might not be paid – can you afford to take that time off? Worse; you might even have to pay someone for that time (eg, an attorney). Can you afford that? That’s especially true if your compensation barely meets your financial obligations such that you’re not really able to put away savings. There’s a term for that: wage slave. Those costs are partly why there’s government agencies designed to help you.
Thoughts about cost is just the tip of the iceberg. Many don’t realize that they’re being abused. A lot of people don’t realize that others might also be victims too. Some people trivialize it. Friends around you tell you that it’s “normal” behavior or that it’s normal for coworkers to “socialize” and banter, that they didn’t mean anything about it. People start to second-guess themselves.
When’s the last time your company gave you anti-harassment training? If it’s been more than a year (or never) then you might want to speak up about it and ask for it to be provided. Or, reach out to your government agency and ask for some training guidance.
or at least put an anonymous negative review on Glassdoor or something?
Glassdoor is notoriously business-friendly. It’s fairly trivial for businesses to have reviews removed.
This dropped a few hours ago, so let’s wait a bit and see. Often times rot gets exposed in waves. One skeleton falls out of the closet and then a bunch of other skeletons follow.
Even if Madison is the only employee that ever experienced this (doubtful) that is already horrific. She isn’t claiming that it was a single small incident that might have been a bad joke or a misinterpretation of some comment. It’s a bunch of incidents, so not like one thing got blown way out of proportion.
Why has nobody else said anything before? There’s tons of reasons why that might be the case. First, maybe people have and it has remained internal/supressed. Maybe other instances were more “mild” and the victims didn’t feel the need to quit. Maybe the other victims were too frightened, felt they had too much to lose, were pressured more harshly.
I’m standing with Madison until proven otherwise. There have been plenty of hints of this sort of thing for a while, and like I said, scandals tend to come in waves. Nobody says anything for a long time until something bad enough happens that triggers the cascade of testimonies.
Best case scenario, LTT is a toxic workplace that overworks its employees, places profit and marketability over quality data/reviews, and is more and more in bed with corporate powers vs consumers.
Sad, I grew up with LTT through my tech journey, now bye-bye to yet another company/project that fell to the effects of capitalism and enshitification.
It’s possible their turnover is low enough that a Glassdoor review would be easy to figure out the author, even if anonymous
This reads like every rape apologist asking why the person didn’t react like your idea of an “ideal victim”.
To be clear I’m NOT saying that you would ever help create a permissive environment that passively encourages the type of behaviors described in her post, my question is just why you’d feel compelled to write 750 words of “I’m just asking” around your structural dismissal?
Wouldn’t you realize that you’re parroting a rhetorical style that has been used to justify and paper over mistreatment of women in business and personal settings? If this were a good faith statement why would it repeat every trope trotted out by Joe Tacopina?
I just don’t know, I’m not saying I do or do not think that OP’s statement is an example of unwitting enrollment in institutional sexism, or whether I do or do not think it’s trolling.
I just don’t know.
She did write a review on Glassdoor, and Linus downplayed it then IIRC
Linus is not declaratively stating it didn’t happen, he’s using PR doublespeak to minimize his legal exposure down the road.
That’s why I said “essentially saying they didn’t”. He’s doing it for business reasons, but at it’s core, his message was he wasn’t aware of it and didn’t think it was happening, while Madison was saying he did know and didn’t care Maybe one is lying, maybe both are, maybe neither are. At this point, we really can’t know until something like that third party investigator releases their results
at least put an anonymous negative review on Glassdoor
the review on glassdoor is hers.
My question is if she had such a bad experience, why hasn’t anyone else said anything, or at least put an anonymous negative review on Glassdoor or something? […] (and the turnover is pretty low for LMG if I’m not mistaken, so that also doesn’t make sense)
Indeed, why is that? Why would she have such an abnormaly bad experience at this particular company? I can’t seem to think of any particular traits that she might have which would have caused her to be treated differently. If sexist comments and sexual harassment are such a problem, then why do people like Gary, James, Ed, Nick, Colton, or Luke apparently seem blind to it? I have no idea what disparity in the distribution of power could possibly account for this phenomenon!
She did leave a 1 star review in glassdoor when she quit.
I know she did, but what I was saying was why didn’t anyone else
I only see two other reviews on their Glassdoor which are both positive, but that isn’t a lot so it’s hard to draw a definitive conclusion
why hasn’t anyone else said anything,
This question has been asked a million times. It has been shown time and time again that whether more people come forward has no correlation to how common something is. This is mostly because it’s really hard to do so while being bullied (which is really just abuse).
Even an outside investigator might have issues getting the real story, and is biased due to being on the same payroll as all the other employees. I have had personal experience with this: an outside investigator called in to resolve a conflict with a person whose bullying had previously caused multiple people to quit. It was resolved “amicably” (which is to say not at all). An employer only gives a damn so far as their bottom line goes, and that goes for Linus too. This investigator is going to come in and tip-toe around LMG’s and Linus’s involvement in this, mark my words.
Again, to summarize, Linus saying the things didn’t happen is exactly why people don’t come forward: my word vs the boss.
I mean another piece of evidence is that she had really choose a hard path to walk IF there was nothing going on. She could have just left and kept this bridge unburned if their was nothing to this.
Jesus, that is beyond awful. I’m really sorry she had to go through so much bullshit and I’m really glad she’s speaking up.
