Some updates I got from threadreaderapp:
Link to the thread provided by @lbj@lemmy.world.
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.
It's sad people have to wait for these opportunities to come, if at all. Otherwise people would dismiss them as a liar or disgruntled employee. There are too many sycophants even now that will back Linus no matter what.
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.
Yeah I wish I could say I'm surprised, but I'm not. This kind of mindset is all too common in tech. I hate it.
I think one of her friends leaked the sexual harassment allegations a while back cause I distinctly remember hearing about it. I think it got quickly swept under the rug win some talk of an NDA. regardless I'm glad it's in the light now.
It’s absolutely bonkers how basically every scandal in the tech industry has at least an element of sexual harassment. Really feels like a lot of guys in the industry have problematic feelings towards women (probably because of their experience as nerdy teens), and unleash those when they have power and when they don’t think there’ll be any consequences.
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.
Imagine just how much worse it would have been if she just came out randomly. The fact she made a glassdoor review long before and it wasn't picked up says a lot about LMG's audence.
LMG has a massive frat boy culture to it. It was never hidden, in fact it seemed like it was welcomed and encouraged.
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 "removed" I was called a "removed"
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.
Someone share the glassdoor post here pretty please? They've got a login wall
1.0 Jul 27, 2022
Disappointed with treatment would not recommend
Social Media Coordinator
Former Employee, more than 1 year
X Recommend
O CEO Approval
X Business Outlook
Pros
a lot of talented people
employee bonding activities
Cons
No proper/or explained HR system.
Sexist remarks, coded language, and harassment were common place.
Inappropriate actions, comments, and discussions frequently occurred.
Including discussion about employees bodies, appearance, clothes, and wealth.
Upper/middle management frequently misuse power.
No way to report most incidents without issue, since the HR team was ALSO upper management.
Feedback was consistently harsh and not constructive.
Inappropriate language was commonly used while giving feedback.
Meetings with unbalanced power dynamics were common place.
Gaslighting situations frequently occurred.
Unbiased 3rd parties were never present, or easily able to be requested in these meetings.
Lack of proper communication between management and employees.
Outside ventures frequently frowned upon, or limited by the company.
Advice to Management
Stop dismissing complaints because "everyone is friends here" it's a workplace, not a group hangout session.
Get a proper HR team and take reports of harassment and inappropriate conduct seriously.
Don't dismiss employees complaints.
Just an fyi, you can get past the wall using reader mode in Firefox and
glassdoor.com^*/gd-hardsellin ublock origin's filters. Reader mode is necessary if you want to see full reviews, the ublock rule is to stop the "please login" popup
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.
Im sorry, but that is conventional toxic workplace. Or ive just heard a lot of horror stories from people.
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.
As someone who has worked in tech and IT, it should not be surprising at all. While internal sexual harassment has not been much of an issue in the places I have worked, women constantly being belittled and treated as secretaries makes it no surprise to me that more women do not seek out the positions.
Just to be clear, women being constantly being belittled and treated as secretaries is discrimination based on sex, and it is extremely likely that they being sexually harassed in ways that you don't see. There are tons of ways for bosses and coworkers to pull people aside, force people to stay late, or even pressure meetups outside of the workplace framed as business/mentoring lunches, to set up situations where they can say and do things that no one else will see or hear. Belittling people is often a practice that abusers use to wear down victims psychologically, to set the stage for ongoing and escalating abuse. Many abusers are very socially clever these days, and will go to great lengths to groom their victims into not realizing they are being abused, target people who need the job/reference/experience etc. and keep as much of the abuse as possible outside of official records like email, and even manufacture documentation in retaliation of the people they abuse, for example, creating false poor performance reviews, so they can dispose of victims when they are done and have a evidence in their own favor if there is a court case.
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.
He should fire himself too, from the sound of 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.
Hopefully you never bought anything / floatplane membership cause Linus has boasted many times (and correctly) that literally any purchase from him would give him more revenue than watching all his youtube videos with ads on.
I was just going to buy some tshirt from him, and I am really glad that I have waited.
That fucking douchebag tried equating adblocking to piracy in one of his videos. If I recall correctly, he also defended that position on a WAN show too, because of course, like he'd ever admit he's wrong. I'll never watch another LTT video... ever. I've unsubscribed from other channels for far less. I left reddit for what I feel is far less egregious then this situation when you factor everything. Because GN did an excellent job in showing how poorly accurate his benchmark videos are, but he could have gone even further. Anytime Linus talks about linux or the server platform, he is equally full of bad conclusions and misinformation. That wasn't even touched on. Take Linus's poor response and some of what we've learned with just how fucking toxic the work environment is there, and how rabid his fans have been. I'll never give them another view. No one should recommend his videos or channel, and those recommendations should be discouraged in all tech communities.
His bad linux/server stuff knowledge comes from jake. This stupid fuck was so damn badly informed about truenas that they actually lost data because of him. And Linus still relies on Jake, even though he is clearly in waaaaaay over his head. Just overconfident, like Linus. This whole Team of higher-ups is so out of touch.
The linux stuff is directly from Linus, just watch the Linux gaming rig challenge he did with Luke, the guy is a fucking moron. And on the server stuff I recollect from Linus when Jake was trying to get Linus to use TrueNAS instead of UnRaid and Linus kept making fun of the way TrueNAS did things because he didn't understand it. Literally, only because it's not like he is used to doing it in UnRaid... which honestly is par for the course because that's the reason he doesn't like Linux too. Simply because some things are not done the way he is used to doing them. It's pathetic. Linus always bangs for the most pleb software like UnRaid or WIndows... which is fine, but then disparages anything else because he simply hasn't taken the extra step or the extra time to understand it. He only wants to understand tech on a very basic and surface level because he's nothing more than a hardware enthusiast gamerbro douchebag. He doesn't actually understand any of the tech he talks about.
Jake might not know how to use the tooling, and he absolutely bumblefucks around with it, but at least he's trying to use the right tooling most of the time.
I really should have said "His bad linux/server stuff knowledge comes, amongst other factors, from jake"... Ofc, the man himself is an idiot, too.
The fact alone, that he lets a writer, who is a hobbyist server/linux enthusiast with no professional experience in the field whatsoever, maintain that kind of infrastructure, should tell us a lot.
Also, you are correct in saying that Jake is trying to do the right thing.
Yeah, I agree that Jake is just in over his head, and he should have someone with more experience taking care of those things. It's one thing to be setting up Linus's home with some selfhosted shit, but it's completely another story to be setting up the company's systems. One of the podcasts I listen to had Wendall from LevelOneTechs on... he talked a little bit about going over to LMG to help them. And he didn't say it directly, but you could tell that it was an amateur hour clownshow over there.
His bad linux/server stuff knowledge comes from jake. This stupid fuck was so damn badly informed about truenas that they actually lost data because of him. And Linus still relies on Jake, even though he is clearly in waaaaaay over his head. Just overconfident, like Linus. This whole Team of higher-ups is so out of touch.
Linus was anti union? I thought he was pro union... At least I remember seeing a tweet to that effect.
It was in wan show, i think, he stated that he would be offended if there was a union because he is such a great boss and ltt is such a great company, something to that effect. *edit: here it is, go to 26:30 https://yewtu.be/watch?v=0IhmkF50VgE
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.
I wouldn't be so sure about this being brand-destroying. Activision-Blizzard and Ubisoft have been exposed as being full of harrassment and toxic work culture too, and they're still doing just fine. Maybe Linus himself will fuck off somewhere in disgrace, but the brand itself will live on. In a way, it was the perfect time for these allegations to come out as they've not long got themselves a new CEO. He can claim that he knew nothing about what was going on there, and make empty promises about how things will be different now he's in charge, etc.
Blizzard and Ubisoft have huge games under their belt that make them a ton of money, Especially with Microsoft now owning blizzard they're not going anywhere. LTT on the other hand relies on sponsors and the community to make most of their money. It's too early to make a conclusion but if these allegations turn out to be true, A lot of sponsors will absolutely pull out and the community would give them even less support than they're getting now which probably won't be financially viable to keep the company around if they get to that point.
And yesterday I thought the GN video was serious business. Damn.
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.
Agree, ltt is usually left running on the TV on lazy days and assumed they're just guys hanging out bantering, but her admission and myself with daughters why would I want to support the show at all...
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 wasn’t too bothered about tech bros shanking each other in name of ethics in tech YouTubing.
That is a weird way to try and sound superior and dismissive about the original issue(GN video), like I too couldn't care less about the smol cute business shit behind that waterblock company but even then the psychopathic behavior behind pretending you have an agreement, then screwing it up, then auctioning it and then still having the narcissism of "we auctioned not sold it" BS alone is enough to put him out of any serious business for life and honestly probably even legal action.
It was far beyond just "drama".
Yes, it was just drama. You're using the word "psychopathic" to describe the actions a small-to-medium business where three or four people didn't talk to each other and something got sold that shouldn't have. Unless I've missed a big memo, there was nobody cackling in their office over grinding a smaller business under their capitalist grindstone. I doubt Linus knew about anything that happened to the item after the review. The GN piece was "LTT is not well organised". I could have told you that in well under 40 minutes.
"Sure they're abusive employers, but I can't imagine they would have bad business ethics" For real dude? Listen to yourself right now. My man is sitting on a pile of LTT merch I just know it.
