this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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Linus Tech Tips
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Maybe it's because I'm old and have worked at a number of different sized companies. But, Linus always struck me as very fake and inauthentic.
He gives off the vibe that he's one of the little guys, an independent journalist, just another employee - while completely ignoring the fact that he (and his wife) own the company and are YouTube millionaires and run a relatively large and influential company.
I can easily see Linus being an abusive, toxic person to work for.
I've worked for people like him before and their public and private personas are often complete opposites. In my opinion, this is Linus' mask slipping and we're getting to see the real him.
The home improvement videos always rubbed me the wrong way, it didn’t feel right to watch him use his employees to do all these renovations to his home for them
The one that really bothered me was one where he went to one of his employees houses to work on a project and was super disrespectful the whole time. At the beginning of the video the guy was talking about how he's just bought the home and was so proud, then there were multiple parts in the video of Linus making fun of different parts of his house. And I recall a part where the guy specifically asked him not to put something on a table he was afraid would break and Linus was like "no, it's fine" and does it anyways. The whole video made me super uncomfortable, I think it was actually one of the last videos I watched from the channel
Do you know which one?
I don't, it was maybe 2 years ago so I'm having a hard time searching for it
I remember a few years back when Dennis almost fell through his roof while he had him running cables and there was no concern for his wellbeing, just shitting on him for being useless. Made me super uncomfortable to watch
Remember how they all treated him in the beginning? Felt like bullying, but in front of a global audience.
TIL paying your employees for work is "using them"...
Yeah I'm firmly on the anti-linus train at this point... But this one I don't get. If I hire you... and the whole point is we make videos... If the best video idea we have at the moment is to upgrade the wifi in my house... You bet that's going on the list as it has direct appeal to the community because every one of us will be thinking about upgrading at wifi at some point. The fact that it's in my house has no real bearing on any of it except as an excuse to do it at an actual location that actually needs it... Unless the dude is writing it all off 100% as business expenses... Then that's a bit shady. But considering they do the $5k rig reboots for their people it doesn't seem like he's wholesale limiting videos to just his own property/assets. I'm sure if/when his employees have ideas on their personal stuff it comes up to. One video in particular I remember is the guy that did wedding camera work.
It's written off as a business expense. Part of the house is used for business (so write off mortgage, home improvement costs), part of the employee time is used for home improvement (so labor is free for your own home).
Replace "CEO" with "employee". Can an employee get his colleagues to improve their own home at the expense of the company? Can an employee independently take that decision without anyone being able to question it?
That's the ethical quandary here.
You cannot say this with ANY degree of certainty. You don't know what he's attempting to write off. And it's Canada.... what is he even allowed to write off. But he certainly cannot write off 100% of the equipment he's buying, as it's going to live long lives outside of the video as non-company assets in his home for personal use. I cannot write off 100% of my cell service unless I show that it was ONLY used for business purposes.
I'm not sure I agree with your premise anyway. It's up to the ownership what to do with the money that the company makes. It's not the employee's decision at all... period. In this case those decisions were made by the CEO who happens to be the owner. CFO's garner their power for handling the money through delegation from the owner(s).
But in this case... it's actually true.
Yes... They can choose to participate in the $5k upgrades that LMG does. At this point I doubt Linus has any real direct interaction with the planning of these videos and just shows up at the personality on screen for shoot time.
This is a behaviour Linus has simply failed to grow out of.
At one point, he was just one of the little guys; sharing that common ground with his audience. That dynamic has vastly changed, but Linus has not adapted to it.
I genuinely didn't see that. He seemed like a cool dude and wanting to do the best and figuring things out.
So for me, this news is disappointing. Although, it'd be more disappointing if I was still watching. The thumbnails really got to me over time. I know why people do them, but you know, still...
That was the trend for me too. Avoided his videos because of thumbnails. Saw some youtubers I watched on scrapyard wars and liked the series then came to like LTT after giving it a chance. But then over time his thumbnails and shill vibe of do everything possible to monetize got to me and I stopped. That strategy for their videos is so ingrained in their culture that even their apology video is monetized and has affiliate links and sponsor segment jokes. Just a fatiguing channel.
This is Linus Sebastian, not Linus Torvalds. Has nothing to do with Linux. In fact, he tried running Linux a few months ago and made a huge mess of it.
Hahaha - okay, that makes a lot more sense. I had so completely lost track of the community and have just been getting back into it lately because of the fediverse community, and so when I heard “Linus Tech Tips,” I completely assumed it was Linus Torvalds. I had even talked to him on usenet (iirc) a couple of times, and couldn’t square the reports.
Thanks for the clarification.