The largest tech channel on YouTube, “Linus Tech Tips,” is in serious trouble. Following justified criticism from a competitor, the company is now facing allegations from a former employee. Terren Tong, the company’s CEO, says: The allegations are taken very seriously and they are shocked. The ex-employee sees it differently.
What are the allegations?
- We reported on MeinMMO about the allegations against the channel on August 16. A competing channel accused Linus Tech Tips of misconduct, including misconduct during the testing of a prototype.
- Further allegations came from a former employee. A former social media manager stated: The company had a toxic work environment and she had to manage a huge workload.
- This overload made it “undesirable” to call in sick. She ultimately severely injured herself to justify a day in the emergency room and to get a day off.
Linus Tech Tips focuses on hardware; technical innovation is also being pursued elsewhere:
CEO says: He is shocked
This is what the company said: We received a statement from Teren Tong, the CEO of the group, that he is shocked by the allegations. However, Tong himself has only been part of LMG since May 2023, when he took over the role of CEO from Linus Sebastian. Thus, he joined the team shortly after Reeves’ departure.
“We are proud to maintain a safe and inclusive environment,” said Tong. The HR department will conduct a thorough evaluation of the allegations.
In addition, they want to appoint an external investigator to examine the allegations. LMG also commits to publishing the results of this investigation and taking any resulting corrective actions.
This was also made public on the official Twitter account of Linus Tech Tips:
Employee says: Bad jokes were made in the meeting after her departure
What does the ex-employee say about this? Madison Reeve has since commented on this statement from Tong and similar statements from Linus Sebastian on Twitter.
She says:
- You are not shocked that the things (that I highlighted) happened
- You are shocked that someone said it
She heard recordings of the HR meeting that took place after her dismissal. In the conversation, management allegedly referred to the allegations only as “drama.”
People made inappropriate jokes in the meeting and downplayed the situation.
Reeve criticizes, among other things, that it was said in the meeting that problems should be resolved in one-on-one conversations instead of involving HR.
Imagine what that means: Someone tells you that you are “dog shit,” and now you are expected to approach that person and talk to them about it.
A recording of this meeting is circulating on reddit.
On reddit another former employee is also quoted, agreeing with Madison Reeve. What she says corresponds to what was heard back then while she was still in the company.
It takes a lot of courage to express this.
The mood against Linus Tech Tips seems to be heating up in recent hours. Parallels are already being drawn to the sexism scandal at Blizzard:
“Cocaine in the restroom, sex in the lounge” – scandal around WoW developer Blizzard escalates
