As a casual viewer of LTT this is surprising. The show seemed relatively wholesome and helpful, but obviously I missed moments to the contrary that people are pointing out now. Being an infrequent watcher, seeing threads suddenly popup that call for Linus to step back/step down are like whaaaaaat. Internet is a fast moving place.
Seriously. This doesn’t belong here. I don’t know why PCG is wading into some youtuber controversy that seems to have only the most tenuous connection to their bailiwick.
Honestly, after the allegations on Xitter, I think it’s time for Linus to not just post apology videos but actually take a leave of absence. He’s the problem and he needs to admit that to himself. Bring in experts on fixing a broken company culture, reorg the company, let those experts fire some problem people, go take some classes on leadership full-time, and come back in a few months and just be a talking head at his company. No leadership at all.
Either way I’m done with them now. Maybe not forever, but I’m not giving them any benefit of the doubt for a very long time.
The obsession with the fact that GN didn’t reach out for lmg’s response to the story is extremely rich given that ltt didn’t give billet labs that exact same courtesy
I mean Billet sent them a unit for review. That implies they’re expecting to be reported upon. Now, LTT half-assed the reporting and then accidentally put the prototype into their auction system, but I’d say “damning reporting” is an expected possible outcome of sending something to a reviewing org to be reviewed that doesn’t require special notice.
However they sent a 3090 GPU and a prototype cooler for that specific board, which they mounted on a 4090 board which has a potentially different layout and was not tested.
Imagine they were a small company , whose first product was the LTT screwdriver, and they had sent an early prototype to a YouTuber who complained that none of the bits he had laying around worked on that screwdriver, so no one should buy the LTT screwdriver because it just doesn’t work. When people complain that they weren’t doing the product justice by testing it with the wrong things they replied “I’m not spending money retesting a screwdriver that no one should buy because it’s useless”. Then turned around and sold the prototype at an auction. Then when people complained they said “we didn’t sell it, we auctioned it for charity, and have already sent money to replace it” having sent the email agreeing to pay seconds before saying that stupid excuse.
They did a LOT of wrong things there, a bad review is the least of the problems. For all I know the product is in fact shit, but because of their methodology, plus all that they did afterwards, I can’t trust that they would ever produce an honest review of the product. And this is a house of cards, as soon as one review can’t be trusted, no review can be trusted. Can you assure that they used proper protocol when testing other things if they can’t even use the GPU that was sent together with the cooler? And that when people point this instead of retesting they just dig themselves deeper into “we’re right”… Plus you should watch the GN video, they point a LOT of inconsistencies and errors in other videos, showing that the cooler is NOT an isolated thing.
For all I know the product is in fact shit, but because of their methodology, plus all that they did afterwards, I can’t trust that they would ever produce an honest review of the product.
I mean yeah I’m not arguing that point. Maybe calling that “half-assed” is an understatement when they were clearly showing their whole asses on that effort, but still:
Billet sent a unit to get reviewed, and the reviewers made a review. A grossly incompetent review, but a review. I don’t see why that would be worthy of special notification. Losing/selling the prototype was just a further demonstration of that incompetence.
Whereas if you’re going to do a long-form report on a group’s involvement in an event, it’s considered good form to reach out for comment.
Either way, imho the Billet story has kind of been eclipsed by the Xeets by their ex-employee about the toxic workplace.
Basically, Linus’ company is a complete trainwreck and he has no credibility on fixing it since it seems like the disastrous culture is his own fault. Sitting and saying “this is fine, I’m taking care of it” to every disaster while pushing for more and more content to the point that quality slips to legally actionable levels is piss-poor leadership.
I understand that point but my counter is that if someone sends you a product/video in private to review you have more reson to contact them about what you will say before you do than if the product/video is publicly available.
Do you think LTT should contact the companies that they do secret shopping before releasing the video? Any comments that they might have won’t change what happened on their experience, and any promises of improvement won’t prevent them from publishing the video so it’s kind of pointless.
Even if GN had contacted and they had explained what they already explained, the GN video would be the exact same with an added part for LTT’s response, which LTT is perfectly capable of doing themselves, and would do regardless of GN’s video.
I’m glad GN didn’t reach out. Linus emailed Billet Labs 2 hours after the GN video with an offer to reimburse them for the prototype, so that he could claim that GN got their facts wrong. But we have the receipts!
That was the nail in the coffin, for me. Making mistakes is fine, even big ones. I understand that Youtube is the devil, and it’s easy to fall into a trap of shoveling nonsense out onto the platform. I’m honestly sympathetic to that. If Linus said “You’re right, quality has suffered cuz we’ve been going too fast. We need to take another look at this.” I’d be completely happy.
But to lie – not just by words, but by actions – in order to cast doubt on the people who are trying to give you a reality check and get your work back on track… That’s really bad.
Did you watch the response video? It explains that. Colton responded…but had forgotten to add the billet dudes email to it. So it was a bone head mistake that is compounded by bad processes and bad decisions.
It’s not as nefarious as people are making it seem.
I did watch the response video before commenting. Did you read the forum post? He said it’s all settled, it’s just gotta go through the bean counters now. But the fact that he emailed them immediately before posting proves that he knew it was not all settled.
What if they replied “Actually, you can’t just reimburse us for that. The manufacturing process that produced it is being overhauled and we won’t be able to replace it for at least 6 months and we’ve got conferences to demo at between then and now. We need you to get it back.”
I'm not really that familiar with LTT. I did subscribe to his channel, mainly because I was bemused by him borking his PC by rushing an install of Pop_OS and Steam. ("yes, do as I say", if you recall). Reading the PC Gamer article, it appears he did the same, "just drive on without thinking it through" approach to this prototype cooler. I haven't watched a lot of his videos and anyone can make a mistake but, there is an expectation that a "tech expert" show a bit of diligence. Plus, if he's showcasing a vendor, he should make sure they have every chance to shine.
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.....this guy is starting to look like a poser now....
imho, what’s happened at LTT has a few separate root causes:
A focus on extremely high output that means poor-quality work and poor working environment.
Extreme unprofessionalism that works okay when you’re a handful of guys who are close friends and all personally invested in the mission, but not when you’re a big company with communication problems across the various working groups. This is normal growing pains when a company moves from “nimble start-up” into “big production”, but Linus has been handling it really badly, and seems like a big part of the problem. Stepping back from the CEO role was a good first step but he’s obviously still de-facto running the company.
I can’t call Linus a poser since he and his team quite apparently know a massive amount about PC hardware, but the above factors mean they’re going to make near-constant screw-ups, and now they’re seeing real comeuppance from that.
edit: I just read the rest of the allegations on Xitter and holy shit this is worse than I thought. She really buried the lede. It’s still “unprofessionalism” but a level of unprofessionalism that totally crosses the line far beyond normal growing pains. Flubbing workplace sexual harassment is a serious leadership fuckup.
GN sticks to tech news, and I respect that that Steve sticks to his area of expertise when it comes to reporting on issues in the tech field. LTT has repeatedly shown glaring errors in their testing, and that’s what was reported on by GN.
The staff and professional issues the company faces are for an entirely different style of journalism, and I do hope someone picks up that story.
Linus has always struck me as someone who would be kinda cool to be friends with, but the worst person to be your boss. He can be arrogant, dismissive of employee ideas, and penny pinching. I’ve seen it time and time again in videos where he participates, and it’s always rubbed me the wrong way. I only hope the people who faced discrimination and burnout at LTT are in better places now and have found ways to let their obvious expertise shine.
I also hope one of these employees can summon the strength to report LMG to the relevant Canadian authorities for their blatant abuse of their employees. No matter the “opportunities” and employer offers, or the “contracts” they make employees sign, workers have rights, and their should be a reckoning when those rights are violated.
Yeah, Canada is not the country to fuck with people’s rights in. Many still do, of course, but if they actually fight back companies will usually be willing to give 5 figures once their lawyers get word of what’s happening, in hopes of avoiding the 6 or 7 figure judgement that the courts might give them.
Btw, if you want to learn about your rights, take a course meant to train HR people. It’s their job to protect the company and they need to know where the lines are to do so effectively.
Don’t wanna say I was expecting it but I was always kinda waiting for “something” to come out of ltt. A bunch of tech bros in their 30s still making penis and 69 jokes every video doesn’t seem like a good environment lmao
Yeah enough of their company culture had leaked into their videos and through some of the things Linus had said that I wasn’t really that surprised to see that thread. The power imbalance was thrown around for jokes and Linus comes off as a stingy bastard who will spend a ton of money in some places and then complain about a relatively trivial expense elsewhere. And the way he talks about it implies that he thinks everyone sees it that way.
Linus really doesn’t respond well to criticism. He’s trying to act like a sale and an auction are 2 different things? If some hardware vendor tried to feed him that excuse he’d devote a whole video to it! Hell, if someone had sold one of his screwdriver prototypes he’d probably have thrown a fit and sued (as is his right)!
He’s picking quantity of videos over quality, so stuff like this is only going to accelerate.
Ignoring everything else, because other accusations seem to have more credibility, although a charity auction is certainly a type of sale, sale has completely different connotations than charity auction when devoid of context. It's a fair issue for them to have and raise.
No it’s not. It’s not how the item got out of LTT’s hands that the issue here. It’s that LTT didn’t return a fucking prototype! Sold, lost, melted down, really doesn’t matter. If I’m making products and want to send one to LMG for a review, I’m insisting on him paying a hefty deposit first, because he clearly can’t be trusted.
I see this as a “you’re technically right, there is a legal difference; BUT the issue here is not how it was passed to someone else and not returned to the owners, but that it happened at all” type deal.
The wording doesn’t matter. Call it an auction, sale, donation, grand theft, whatever you want. But that the end of the day, a small company now no longer has access to their expensive prototype. That’s very damaging to them as a business, let alone the damage that LTT caused to Billet’s image by their haphazard review process. Billet has every right to sue for damages over this, and I personally think they should.
Well yeah, LTT has long gone fully corporate. This was a problem years ago already, it was just always weird seeing so many flock to their channel when it was clearly a rote production like a 15 years ongoing weekly crime drama, not an actual tech channel.
Their production value is often stellar, don’t get me wrong. But that’s it. That’s all they have. It’s all about optimizing the production to maximize ad revenue.
Imo, any large company, even if started hardcore by linus and luke (and co), will always in the end be mostly created by all the employees.
The ownership of any large company should imo always be gradually moved over to the people who work there.
Worker coops are not a silver bullet and will always be corruptible in any way any other democracy can, but at least it has the possibility to be proper, in contrast to strict founder / investor ownership where you are at their mercy.
If they just focused on the drama and fun stuff there would be no issue imo. The weirder videos are sometimes fun to kill time, but it’s clear they’re making a lot of mistakes (look at any server video by them).
Trying to provide accurate and in-depth reviews really isn’t their strong suit.
I fully agree. But that’s the thing, if you don’t consider LTT as a tech channel anymore, like GN or whatever, it’s fine. I now consider LTT as pure entertainment, I will never go to them to actually buy a PC or a tech product. For that I go to forums, I watch multiple reviews, etc. And if the production value is all they have, I’ll just watch it like a show with actors that are - well - acting.
I’m not trying to defend LTT, what they did was shite and I feel that they should be held accountable. But let’s compare apples with apples, LTT isn’t a tech channel anymore.
This is how I feel about LTT too. There should never be one single location you go to for all your review needs - even if it had every single product in existence in for review.
I’ll look at LTT videos to see people doing dumb shit with tens of thousands of Britannian Monies worth of tech, sometimes there’s some genuinely good “hey, this exists” (see: PowerToys which gave me Spotlight on Windows), and sometimes it triggers a “hey I could use X, I’ll do my own research and collation of reviews”.
If they can get their Labs up and running and their tests being transparent enough that they can be peer reviewed, then Labs will be a tool in the toolbox, not the toolbox itself.
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