It is good they are taking public steps to change their corporate culture, but it is clear they had a top down culture of not taking harassment seriously. Hate to share a reddit link, but this video: https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/15t1mzn/mandatory_meeting_the_after_madisons_departure/ purports to be from when Madison left. The language here is not the language of a corporate culture that takes harassment seriously. Especially since James didn’t get immediately corrected.
If they want to win back the viewers (and likely sponsors) they are losing or have lost because of all of this toxicity, they are going to have to continue to publicly show they are committed to improving not only their culture to move away from a harassment friendly, grindset focused content farm, to one worth our time (and sponsor dollars).
I guess I’m kinda naive. “You gonna dance on that table, or just stand on it?” doesn’t sound like a sex joke to me, but that’s what people are calling it.
Maybe it’s being in corporate america for a while, but holy shit that made my head literally swivel back to the video after kinda paying attention. That is definitely not something you say in corporate america, let alone literally listening to a speech about harassment.
You never even get close to anything sexual in corporate america. Just steer clear. I don’t care if it’s funny, or you think it’s funny, or if you think everyone else will think it’s funny, you don’t. You avoid the topic completely. Make the joke later at home or with your friends but not in the workplace.
Even if the joke is only partially offensive, it’s offensive. (If you aren’t sure if it is or not - you don’t make the joke. You’re instincts are trying to tell you it’s not the right place) You don’t do that in the office, and to do that seconds after the meeting it shows how fucking terrible it is there. I’ll be honest, I was taking Madison’s allegations with a grain of salt, but that just solidified to me what the culture is like. If they don’t have HR nipping that shit in the bud, what else are they letting fly
I agree. I was caught off guard because it didn’t show up on my radar at all. It’s not like I thought “eh, it’s only a little bit racy”. I just missed the sex implications completely.
From what Madison said it sounds like it goes far too deep for this to change much. I hope things get better (since it’s unlikely LTT just up and disappears immediately), but from what we’ve seen this culture of dismissal goes right to the top.
I honestly believe that Linus is a well intentioned dumbass. He likes his people and believes that everyone can just get along and that nobody would harass another employee seriously. He knows that the mistakes are just honest mistakes which is why he gets so defensive, take the whole “trust me bro” thing… I think it never occurred to him to fuck his customers over which is why he didnt handle it well.
He doesnt believe his employees need a union because I dont know about you but if I owned a company Id hope that my people felt looked after well enough that they didnt feel like they needed one either.
But that kind of attitude just doesnt work with so damn many people, he should have hired a full time HR manager YEARS ago, as well as the company lawyer on staff. He SHOULD NOT be doing the WAN show, or if he does it should be on a 5 minute tape delay with someone from legal and hr present.
The reason why so much bullshit corporate structure exists is to largely protect the company from itself.
You only have to watch him interacting with his staff in a few videos and you can see that the bullying comes right from the top. That’s not something that’s going to change easily.
From what I’ve seen his staff also “bully” him as well, to me it looks like casual ribbing each other that friends do, I could be wrong
“After this brutal belittling, gaslighting, and sexual harassment, you’re gonna have a lot of baggage. And the best way to carry it? The LTT backpack!”
Comes with trust me bro warranty (aka no warranty)
And a trust me bro guarantee that no employees were harassed in the designing or making of this product
Omg this is spot on
