The thumbnails LTT uses tells you everything you need to know about his content and company.

It's been clear for quite a while that they've focused only on growth/expansion with more channels, the lab, so many new employees, etc and at the same time you can see the sloppiness getting worse with lack of preparation, lack of quality control to meet deadlines, etc.

The Billet Labs thing is absolutely inexcusable. Shitting on the product despite LMG being the one responsible for not even having the correct GPU for it, giving it a bad review, then doubling down when called out over a couple hundred bucks of time? The auctioned off prototype is so much worse as well. Not sure of the Canadian terms but in the US it'd potentially be theft by conversion. Literally sold someone else's property. Even if you give them the benefit of the doubt and accept it as an accident, it seems like more evidence of whoever is running their logistics department being incompetent IMO.

I really hope stepping down as CEO leads to Linus surrounding himself with people he trusts to call him out when he's missing something.

He strikes me as the kind of person who is susceptible to a few certain mental traps you kinda don't want to see in a leader of a large influential organization:

1. Taking an "ends justifies the means" mindset (e.g. stepping on the "growth" gas pedal and accepting sloppiness because it will get better later with Labs)
2. Letting "objective facts" justify big subjective decisions w/o much consideration (e.g. thinking the Billet Labs video didn't need to be re-shot because the "objectively" product rec conclusion wouldn't have been different)
3. Substituting actual solutions to problems w/ commitments to solving them (e.g. implementing "Accuracy KPIs" instead of slowing the pace of video releases)

None of these constitute outright malice, IMO, but boy can they lead to a problematic working environment.

I'm sure there will be quite the flame war as a result of this, which I think is a bummer. Linus strikes me as someone who's acting in good faith, but has an unshakable habit of making rushed decisions without considering the full scope of their impact, and is (or has been) lacking the appropriate feedback structure to help him learn to either a) make more thoughtful decisions, or b) fully delegating those decisions to folks who are better equipped to make them.

Here's hoping this leads to positive change.

Is it real that Linus publicly said that they can't justify putting in another half day to ensure the data is correct before publishing it? Why would anyone watch their low quality content which they admit to be worthless?

My biggest problem right now with LTT:

He has literally admitted that they have too much to do right now (see https://linustechtips.com/topic/1526180-gamers-nexus-alleges-lmg-has-insufficient-ethics-and-integrity/page/27/#comment-16079025)

but at the same time he doesn't see the need to reduce the number of videos to achieve the required quality and just tells people to "stay tuned".

I find that very strange to be honest.

Edit note: The Twitter thread from the former employee eclipses either issue from here. I still think a big root cause for all of this is the pressure and exhaustion coming from their pacing/content schedule. It will take a bit more than that to resolve this.

I watched the occasional LTT video, they are entertaining and helpful at a general understanding but I've often taken their data with a grain of salt.

Emily

spoiler tw

(formerly Anthony)

Young was the one writer at LTT who stood out as really knowing their stuff. She also was their in-house expert with Linux! (*Note: nothing happened to her at LMG, I'm using past tense because I'm not up to date with the latest roles she might be in)

Linus has been way more focused on running the business than the tech, especially compared to his days at NCIX and some years after.

The Billet situation sounds like a fuckup. So long as they make it right with them I don't care tbh.

The data integrity issues and way too frequent post-edit corrections is imperative for LMG to fix, if they want their media to be trustworthy (like if they're hyping up their labs)

Luckily, they've said what the fix is themselves and it's relatively simple. All it really takes is them to either slow down with the rate of content to be able to carefully review it, or bring on more hosts and editors so that mistakes and errors can be caught and re-shot before publishing, and that due diligence is applied when preparing a product review.

Linus' response is just meh, not good nor bad. The one thing is I don't buy is Linus' line of "just talk to us". The community told them plenty of times, the writers and Linus themselves were very well aware of the problems of rushing and releasing half-baked content. Even if GN told them, the direction they were going with Linus Media Group and the new CEO and the buyout offer and all of that suggests where LMG's wouldn't be concerned with it as much as making sure the timing of their content maximizes revenue. Data issues brought to them by GN and the community would be cast to the wayside with just a footnote and silent correction, maybe with a couple empty words sprinkled on top.

So I'll say it again to Linus from a fellow Canadian, whether he'll listen or not: "Slow down, bud!"

Wholeheartedly agree. Wverything else I can understand and maybe even excuse. But auctioning off a prototype that isn't even yours is so far beyond the line. They have turned into another soulless corporation just like Google, Apple, Microsoft etc. And corporations should never be trusted.

Linus' response is here: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1526180-gamers-nexus-alleges-lmg-has-insufficient-ethics-and-integrity/page/16/#comment-16078641

Great video, a lot of the benchmark stuff I was unaware of because I don't pay THAT much attention to the wider youtube review community, but I Did notice that waterblock review when it went up on LTT. Go and watch it, it's honestly embarrassing how unprepared and silly it was. As a comedy sketch it's fine, but as a review of a prototype it's really really embarrassingly under prepared. It brings to mind something like an Asmondgold hardware review... "I don't know, let's just try this".

To see they auctioned off a prototype device after that "review" is kinda disgusting (sorry for the hard word, but it's how I feel).

not to cast doubt on anything he says here, but steve has increasingly been making 'dunk' videos for the past year or two. i feel like his channel has been trying to find (or create) exposés, because those are the videos that pop off. starting from the video of that NZXT case that caused fires.

again, not to cast doubt on the experiences of billet labs, but i question steve's intentions in presenting this. i hope this discussion doesn't end up revolving around gamers nexus.

What a bunch of pricks.

I hesitate to blame them all. In GN's video, some of the clips show LMG people seeming (to me? Somehow I don't see anyone else pointing this out???) anxious to terrified of Linus. In one of the WAN Show clips there's this meek, near-mumbled kind of "Uhm... Linus sir maybe if you'd, um... just tested it properly that could've been maybe better I guess? <.< v.v;" sort of thing, and the person who grabbed the wrong card barely squeaked out a response at all, but Linus just never seems to give a damn about anything except making the quickest possible bucks.

I don't know what's keeping everyone else there but I think at least some of those people are just trying to get by without incurring some kind of wrath as Linus himself repeatedly makes (or causes) a mess then arrogantly doubles, triples, quadruples down on it (or has someone else do so, or maybe other arrogant pricks are involved?) up to a point of "Okay, I messed up and I'll own that now everyone forget about it" after which business-as-usual resumes until the next mess. It seems like no one else has time to learn from any mistakes (or "mistakes") and those who do (presumably a hierarchy-related privilege) are unwilling or incapable.

Now, they may in fact be a bunch of pricks. I just feel like some of those people (such as the one suggesting that testing the water block correctly might made sense (before potentially killing a startup unfairly)) try to help but have no power to inhibit Linus's pompous profit-driven pissheadery.

i watch ltt for alex messing around, and every now and then a video of linus wasting money on cool testing equipment for some reason. I've always assumed GN is superior for actual testing.

Clickbait used to be reserved for the title/thumbnail, but now it’s ingrained in the content itself and goes hand in hand with the drop in quality.

Before I stopped watching them I noticed the drop in quality. Can’t remember which video, but there was one with so many corrections it was absolutely ridiculous.