Madison Reeve explains why she quit Linus Tech Tips (CW: self harm, slurs, sexual harassment)

Having read all of this, I have to say: LTT is dead to me.

They don't care about the quality of their data (e.g. many many errors)
They don't care about their partners (e.g. Billet Labs)
They don't care about their employees (e.g. Madison's story)
They don't care about their customers (e.g. just trust me bro)

Even if you view LTT and their associated media brands solely as a source of entertainment rather than a source of education, at some point enough is enough.

I have reached that point.

Funny, I have always avoided LTT simply because of how arrogant Linus seemed. I guess I was right. He really only cares about his ego.

It's nice that young people are blowing the whistle on the workplace abuse our parents would have probably just put up with or quietly exited from.

I feel extremely sorry that somebody has been treated like that to the point of self-harm. Sadly it's going to take another 20 years before the law adjusts to treat employees with the same respect as employers. If ever.

There's been enough smoke around LTT that I'm willing to bet there's fire.

This is both heartbreaking and honestly disgusting to read.

LTT is currently streaming and so many of the comments are focussed on workload and how she 'didn't have a difficult job', stuff like that.

She was pushed to the edge and ended up harming herself just to get away from the stress for a short time. She was harassed and belittled. None of this is even remotely acceptable, regardless of the perceived difficulty or quality of someone's work.

I hope things have gotten better for her and I hope that those responsible for this treatment are handled properly.

As for my personal view on LMG these days. This alone has made me uncomfortable with giving them any more ad revenue with my views. I'm not going to watch their content any more. The GN video is the cherry on top, and the stuff regarding unions a little while ago also rubbed me the wrong way. Something seems wrong with LMG, something systematic that has built over time and I hope for the sake of the good, talented people who work there, this rot is sorted out.

As someone who works for a large corporation who absolutely won't put up with stuff like this, I just can't fathom working in a place where this type of behavior is accepted. If someone is not meeting their expectations for job performance, they're given professional feedback and a plan. And if that doesn't work, they're just managed out (usually during some kind of layoff). No harassment (physical or otherwise), no berating or name calling. I can't even fathom someone in the office asking a colleague to twerk or asking them about their sexual history.

I remember when the BLM stuff was going on, a couple of employees had put some racial comments into a company-wide chat and were fired instantly. There's just no room for that kind of behavior in today's society.

This is... another nail in the LTT coffin. While their business will probably survive (inertia is like that), I think the whole saga is going to cost them an appreciable amount of their enthusiast fan base. I'll wait to see if there is official comment, but based on how they handled the first set of issues (plugging merch in an apology video? Really guys?) I'm not hopeful.

Update; well this comment went over so well I got flagged as noise at some point, let's rephrase..

I'll have to hear both sides of the story before making conclusions, as always.

LTT have announced a third party investigation is taking place, which is substantial. So we'll see what comes out of this.

With the poor billet labs situation (which yeah, is pretty plainly bizarre, although I doubt there was real malice) it makes sense everyone is coming forward. But until recently we were mostly in the dark on internal communications there too. Which added some, albeit little to the story.

But until more details are revealed or things get confirmed, I'm not jumping to conclusions. I hope LTT are public about the results of the investigation. And handle this more gracefully than a certain three letter streamer org.

I've said as much else where, but as much as I want to believe victims in these circumstances, I still need some kind of actual proof or corroboration from another party involved with the same matter or a similar one before I can really get invested. I've seen these internet guilt by X/Twitter post without any further evidence and it just doesn't sit right with me. A chat log, an email, someone else who worked there with a similar experience, anything that backs up her claims and I'm on board. But, without that, I just can't get behind it.

Having said that, what I would like to see is LMG allow the community or a third party everyone could trust to choose an outside firm to independently look into all this. I think most people aren't going to believe anything LMG say on this matter, regardless of what that is, and it'll just be a thing that exists unless we get some actual investigating done.

There's a new thread on a pertinent internal meeting: https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/15t1mzn/comment/jwhlkus

Goddamn, when it rains, it pours.

Guess I'm glad I've never liked watching them, the last time I saw anything LTT even second hand was Linus thinking that "hard R" stood for mentally disabled somehow.

I was told I was chunky, fat, ugly, stupid.
I was called "retarded" I was called a "faggot"

Speak of the devil, literally.

He told me perhaps I should change my priorities.
He was in this instance referring to the fact my brother had suddenly passed away not even a week before I moved for this job, and that perhaps I should just ignore that I had been mislead because that was more important.

So in other words, Linus isn't some "clueless party" in all this, he was a participant.

After I came forward about being assaulted, Someone accused Linus of inappropriate conduct on twitter.

He came over to my corner and started BERATING HER. Calling her insane, mentally ill, an attention seeker, and just digging into this poor woman who had felt wronged by him.

On top of already having no integrity, sounds like an abysmal place staffed with a bunch of abusive assholes and predators, Linus included as well, if this is to be completely believed, although this doesn't surprise me in the least.

I haven't watched the gamers nexus stuff, which from the initial thread looked probably correct, since LTT videos are pretty poor quality and rushed.

This, it's very, very difficult for me to take call out posts like this seriously, maybe that's a me thing, and I'm not necessarily meaning to discredit, but is it too much to ask that if someone wants to reveal awful details about a workplace they keep it readable? I read through the entire twitlonger linked and seems to be apparently everyone at LTT nearly hated her/harassed her constantly, that just doesn't to me jive. Overwork, dismissive of harassment, those seem 100% true, LTT clearly has shit all as far as proper organizational controls/procedures. The fact the matter wasn't immediately handled by HR through proper channels is a big indictment for them. That said, stuff about a mirror, a notebook, ram, someone asking her to twerk, being told to get drunk or fuck other employees who were harassing her? That seems just....cartoonishly evil. Even gamer bro awful culture blizzard, we didn't get stories like that, maybe because (stole breast milk) is literally awful enough to stand on its own, idk.

I'm glad she got TF out of that environment for her mental health. I just hate call out posts that seem to not be concise or have a lot of hearsay. I sure as fuck wouldn't want to work at LTT though just bayesing it out

Genuine question for those who are reserving judgement to hear what proof was found: What kind of evidence would change your mind? As in, would it need to be audio recordings of a manager saying, “I’m gonna mess with Madison so she looks incompetent!” or video camera footage of events she described? More employee testimonials? The thing about harassment, is that people have been refining how to get away from it since the corporate workplace has existed. Most harassment is done in through conversations and strict environments where having any evidence is next to impossible to get. Her experience could be hard to find because LTT hardly ever showed females on camera as regular hosts.

I’ve seen a lot of comments talking about how having an external reviewer is such a great move, but I don’t really agree 100%. Given that Linus Media Group is paying for this company to do the Audit, its a clear conflict of interest. This is exactly how Enron went belly up - they were technically audited, but they paid for it and were able to convince the auditors to approve of the fudged numbers. I hope this third party is reputable, but I just can’t 100% think that this is still somewhat of a conflict of interest. In order to get a more thorough review, we would need an audit from a firm that has financial interest to find something damaging and has no real influence from the accused company. The only way I could think of this actually happening is through a lawsuit, which likely wont happen.

This is a big sidetrack but please bear with me: I resonate with this as I’ve gone through a similar process in a toxic work environment and how to handle conflict resolution and the HR process, however her experience is WAY worse than what I experienced. When I was about to graduate i was trying to find a job and interviewed with a fortune 20 company. During that interview I explicitly said I couldn’t do night shift work as I couldn’t function. I had tried doing Night Shift work to help me go through college but after 4 months it just didn’t work, my grades dropped significantly and my mental health spiraled. I told them all of that and that I had another job offer that guaranteed that there would be no Night Shift work. The interviewers said that would not be a problem and wrote “no Night Shift work” on my resume. They extended a job offer a little bit later and I accepted it because it paid a little bit better, had a better location, and the benefits were great. They gave me a start date sometime during the summer, so I acted accordingly by selling my apartment lease, signing a lease in the new city, paying for first and last months rent and the security deposit (Which was a lot for a broke college student). This all happened within two weeks. A week after getting all of my details in order I was told that they got my start date wrong and wanted to push it back by 2 months! I told them I couldn’t do that because I had everything all set up, my new apartment wouldn’t delay my contract, and people were going to move into college apartment, and my wife and I had no place to go for that month. They said okay, no problem we’ll keep it as is. Well, when it came time to come start, NO ONE knew I had started, so they all rushed around trying to figure out what I should do. I got no real orientation to the company other than “We’re all a big family, if you ever need help, feel free to contact me as the HR rep!” I learned that they weren’t going to do direct deposit for my first two paychecks, but instead put them on some BS debit card that “we should have received in the mail”, which never happened to me. They had sent it to my old college apartment halfway across the country because they thought my start date was going to be later. I was lucky enough to know who took over my college apartment lease and have them forward it to me, but for about 1.5 months, I never got paid. I had some many things rack up as part of that. I had little money to even survive, it was awful.

Then I get oriented on my specific job - European application support. I had asked if I was going to work European nights, but they said nope, you’re going to work the Night Shift! They promised me overtime pay (which I never got btw) and that there would be a shift differential (never got that either). I said I couldn’t work night shifts because its something I just can’t do, I never adjust well and it really affects my mental health. I was told there was nothing they could do. I gave it a try, but it was awful and depressing. They MADE me come into the office, even though I was the only person on my floor. They turned off the lights while I worked to save money. They arbitrarily gave me some applications without knowing anything about them. The notes on those scripts were all written in Spanish as the devs were from a Spain. Due to European laws, the developers couldn’t work over a certain amount of hours, so if I needed help it would be limited. Forget needing help on weekends, couldn’t happen. I remember my first day on Night Shift there was a Sev1 incident that involved my applications. They were “my apps” so I HAD to know what the problem was, despite being handed them within 24 hours. We were in the process of insourcing the operational support from another country and our company just decided to cut our contract, so any support from our contractors wasn’t possible either. That Sev1 incident lasted over 48 hours, of which I only got like 6 hours. I was brought in and told that I needed to watch these apps carefully. Not only did I have to work my Night Shift, but the system was so fucked that they always broke during their “closedown cycle” which happened at the end of the day, this took over 8 hours to do, and would always fail at random times, any failure was an automatic Sev2 incident, so I had 5 minutes to respond. I would always get maybe 3-4 hours of sleep, and I lost over 25 pounds in 1 month from everything. I asked my remote workers for help, but was told that “notes are personal, so they wouldn’t mean anything to you” and “you just have to figure it out for yourself” There was supposed to be one other guy on my team that was supposed to be my mentor and was supposed to be local, but he never talked to me and never came in. It was always remote work for him. I tried contacting my manager saying this wasn’t working for me. I was told I couldn’t transfer until 1) after a year and 2) if I could find a backfill for me (this part is actually false). I was told in my recruitment interview that people transferred all the time if they wanted and it was easy. I felt so trapped and helpless. I was made to think I was stupid and had no technical ability (despite knowing more than my “mentor”, as he admitted). Behind the scenes my manager was complaining to her boss, the director, saying “i wasn’t a team player” among other things. As a last result, I tried to talk to the HR person who was at my orientation ( i had to stay longer to wait for her to come into the office). Keep in mind that she sat in a cubicle with her and another HR colleague, so it was a cube shared by two people, as this is important for later. I said that I couldn’t keep doing this job, and that I had a hard time functioning. I needed guidance and that I didn’t have any help from my team, and it was really hard doing this alone. They asked where my “mentor” was, and I said offhand he was working from home most times. She said that everything was between us, and confidential, which is why I even decided to tell her anything. Well, two days later I saw my “mentor” who said “ I got your complaint from HR” and was super pissed. I went back to the HR contact and asked why they told me it was confidential yet used my name, and not even getting the point of me seeking help ( i didn’t care that the guy worked remote, no one was helping me). They told me that while the conversation between me and that person was private, if anyone else from HR overheard what we talked about wouldn’t be confidential, so maybe it was the other HR rep who said something. I was in shock and at a loss for words. I felt so betrayed and disheveled. After this, my manager put me in a meeting. Their solution was to have me start at 2 am instead of 11 pm, which I stated didn’t really solve anything for me because most of my work is still in the nightshift. They also wanted to take away my shift differential since “i wasn’t working the Night Shift anymore”. They hated me and it was incredibly hostile. I had no where to go, and I honestly had suicidal thoughts — I thought there was no way a company could hire me. If I quit before 2 years of employment I would have needed to pay back money that eventually made it my way for relocation, which I couldn’t afford on the salary they gave me…..By sheer luck, I found a team that had no problem escalating things when hiring people. They wanted me to join their team and my team pushed back and escalated right to our CIO (again, of a fortune 20 company), which ultimately allowed me to leave. All of that fuss for someone who “wasn’t a team player” and didn’t fit in. Strange how they wanted me all of a sudden. Even after it was approved, I STILL did work for the other team for a little bit to show good will, despite them dragging my name. There’s so much more I could put into this story, but I think I’ve gone into enough detail.
All of this to bring it back to the original topic, I had no evidence other than HR’s note misrepresenting what I came in for. Everything was done through phone so nothing was recorded. There was no trail, and an audit even from an outside firm would find that my company didn’t do anything wrong, especially if they funded that 3rd party audit. When you’re under so much stress you don’t think clearly and its damn near impossible to formulate an exit plan. Madison mentioned that it was a coworker that helped her get out, and it was exactly the same for me — a friend from college who worked at the same company told me about the team who was wiling to escalate to transfer me. In toxic environments/sexual harassment cases, you’ll never find evidence that will satisfy any doubters, you have to go into the situation beforehand with recordings, which no sane person does. I feel for her because I know what its like to go through a toxic workplace, but being a white cis male, I don’t ever have to worry about sexual harassment, let along ravenous armchair detectives trying to pick apart stories to make them feel good about their para social friend that doesn’t even know they exist. People in the forums at LTT are already asking why she waited so long, or talk about how she’s opportunistic to wait for the GN callout to say anything, showing edgy humor she posted in the past, and other stuff just to dismiss her stories, and its disgusting. She was in a lose-lose during the whole thing, even when leaving: stay quiet yet have drama hounds try to sniff out any bit of drama to get karma points and create rumors, all while having the truth eat you away, or actually immediately speak out and have terrible fans abusing you while you’re already in an vulnerable state. I hate fandoms for this very reason, they create an already horrible situation even worse.

I hope Madison gets the justice, but I don’t know what that would look like. I also hope Linus Media Group actually learns from this and becomes a good place to work at, but again I will never know if this ever happens. Linus was always a “trust me bro” and “we’ve never had controversies before, so we’re good” attitude towards things. It was always such a bullshit response any any criticism or allegations, and now they can’t use it. Their trust is gone and it’ll never come back. This will always follow them, and I hope Linus is prepared to talk about it for FOREVER. Knowing him though, he’ll eventually just say, “we’ve addressed it on a specific video, just go watch that” and try to sweep it under the rug.