- kliras
- Mar 27, 2021
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ran it through a quick transcribing script, with all the imperfections that come with it
Auto .txt transcription posted:
I think Luke put it best at the rest of the few years ago when he said, "Why the
f***ing you here?" That's a two-part answer. I speak to you today because of the recent
community outcry demanding change. I'm here because I agree with the community. We do have a lot of
work to do. Before we talk about that, while I wish those on better terms, I just want to say
I'm very glad to meet you all. I have spent the last couple decades on the corporate side,
but my educational background is in computer science. My first role in the tech industry was as
the writer at Naseyker. My history building gaming PCs was even further back to when I built
like to sell around 300 a-rig because everyone assured me it was guaranteed to overclock to
450 megahertz. I guess my trip didn't really get the memo. Any case, it feels really good to be back
on most days. I'm only six weeks into the job, but in that time I've seen a lot, I'd like to
some budgeting, team building, and operations. But my main focus has been to be a fly on the wall,
and Gina understanding of what's going right and what's going wrong. There's a lot of both.
I've asked a team to you, "I'm flinchingly address both the concerns that happened raised
and how we intend to fix them, with the money we'll make from our sponsor." Just kidding.
I was asked for unflinching and here it is. Linus is a human gas molecule. You've been telling him
for years and I've been telling him for years. Staying relevant on YouTube is hard for everyone,
but we aren't fighting for survival anymore and we don't need to run at this pace. In fact,
in some ways it's our efforts to keep doing more and keep doing better that have created our current
situation. My background is in managing a pharmacy where the small details matter a lot, and basically
I agree with the community, so I'm putting my foot down. Effective immediately, all YouTube video
production is on pause. And our teams are going to be spending this entire next week focusing on
long-term workflow changes to make our content better in a lasting way. This means for the first time
in over 12 years, LTT will be missing not just one daily upload, but many. But improving to the
degree that we want and need is going to take more than a week. So I'll be working with
Ternan Cole to manage our sponsor commitments and the financial hit of both this housekeeping week
and a reduction in our LTT upload schedule. At least for now, we'll get our house in order.
But before anyone gets concerned that we're going to cut investments into the well-being of
our personnel and our future capabilities, I can assure you that I've read the criticisms that we
weren't willing to spend $500 to test a product. And as the one that manages the finance,
I can tell you that couldn't be further from the truth. Linus made it clear and egregious
judgment error regarding retesting a product he felt was impractical. That was wrong, and I've told him
so. He allowed his personal feelings on the matter to cloud his judgment. And I want to stress
that our organization is committed to our ongoing investments in making our content better.
And we will do better as a team. Why don't I let our chief money spendor take it from here?
Hi, I'm Gary, head of labs. First off, we've made some mistakes. Too many. We're hoping that it's how
we deal with them moving forward that will define who we are. And regardless, it's clear that
we need to serve you better. So our team will be spending our week publishing living documents for
our testing standards and opening them up to feedback from the community and our peers in the
industry. Should they wish to participate? We will also task part of the team with going back through
every video with labs data to ensure accuracy, make full corrections. And if there are any fundamental
issues with workflow designer results, pull or replace that video outright. I don't agree with every
criticism that's been leveled at my team. But for my part, I need to own what we've done wrong
and lay out our action plan for how to move forward. Before I do that, one point I do need to address
here is that Linus misspoke when he said we retest for every video. We retest for every project.
When we use the same data for our RX7600 and RTX 4060 Ti videos, we knew in advance that these
cards would release two days apart. In design of broadcast week that accounted for all the numbers
we would need to make those two videos and ran everything at once with no bios or driver changes.
In fairness Linus, the project video ratio is normally one to one, but the devil's in the details.
Now, let's talk about what's coming. We will release our current Markbin harnesses
is open source items so that the community can audit the code around our test integrations.
We will do a vlog style video and flow plane about our testing from start to finish,
so you can see how the sausage is actually made. We will open a new community forum post
asking for transparency suggestions and more importantly, we will follow up. We will start
placing our testing project number in the credits, so we are always open about the data set that
was used for the benchmark results. And there is a lot more still to come ranging from test
variation percentages for workbench to each benchmark we utilize in videos among others.
It's going to be a busy week of not making videos. Same goes for us. I'm James head of the
writing department. We are extremely grateful for everything the lab has done and continues to do
to make our job easier, but the actual testing is not the biggest source of our recent struggles.
It's the human factor. There have been times when an internal video review caught an incorrect
graph resulting in new versions of the graph being created only for those new graphs to not be put in the
video. Just about every error that has appeared in a video in the past year has directly resulted
in a process change designed to prevent that specific issue from ever happening again. But this
kind of problem pops up, create a new process whack-a-mole isn't working. We'll be using our time to take
feedback from our team on all of our processes and comb through all of our pending projects for
areas where we can improve as we move forward with our reduced upload schedule. You'll see some of
these videos go up during our time off. We already have multiple videos that are scheduled for
release, but my main message to the team is that we want to spend this time working on inter
department communication and cleaning up our house. What we won't be doing is sanitizing things too
much. We know that some of our best videos are centered around Linus and other members of the team
goofing around with tech and having fun. That is not going to stop. But others, like G
P.U. and CPU releases certainly require all the rigor we can muster. Those launches don't happen
as often these days, so it will take some time before you see the full payoff of our continuous
improvement. But it has already started happening. Not only did the community love our 46th
review, but our team found it less stressful to put out. Have we had a flawless victory? No.
But since these last reviews, we've onboarded a dedicated visualization person whose full-time
job it is to create graphs that are correct, digestible, and accessible. We've done serious
development on our automatic specs database thing so that our visualizations pull the correct
info in every time. And we'll soon be announcing the details of a new crowd-sourced fact-checking
system for both LTT and tech-quickie so that our content's correctness satisfies even our most
discerning community members. I'm Ed. Head of our production team. We have some of the most
comprehensive documentation and processes in the company, from automations to keep project information
accurate to communication procedures to standards for how loud videos can be. Those systems
have helped with the video at its side of things, but I've seen some examples where we failed to
see the forest for the trees and allowed well-edited, but erroneous content to slip through the cracks.
So for our part, we'll be spending our time looking at how we can improve communication to help the
team address anything that seems off as soon as possible. A personal task for me will be putting the
finishing touches on some cool ways that we can make small edits that avoid the slap-dash text on
screen corrections whenever possible. As for how we catch those bugs? That's not my department,
so I'm throwing it over to Nick. Hold on, hold on. I'm mostly on the product side LTTstore.com.
What? Somebody had to say it. But the theme of today's video is transparency and accountability.
You might not see me in video credits, but I still serve as a last line of defense
interviewing most LTT videos before they are published. I typically check for security links and
inappropriate or NSFW jokes, but there are times when I catch a factual error or a weird
graph that doesn't really tell the full story. To be clear, we also have checks for technical
aspects from our writing team, and in some cases, the lab, but our processes for ensuring those
checks happen and following up these findings haven't been perfect and our corrections are
often made quickly. So while we take this time to reflect, I'll be focused on helping build a
set of guidelines for our pre-release reviews and trying to set up a system that allows our team
to take a finer look at every aspect of our videos, every single time. And maybe with time,
everyone here will be so aligned with our mission that my input is no longer needed,
and I can focus my full attention on making little widgets that you don't need, but definitely want,
like this retro-themed screwdriver. Arizona supporting assets like tables and grass,
chip away our credibility. So continue to improve our process issues to minimize errors
will may not top priority under my leadership. I guarantee there will be future mistakes. We are human,
but in the next week we'll be creating and publishing a clear policy for correction handling,
and I'll be working with a community management team to be prompt and transparent with
questions are as visible as possible. I think what happened with the Polish mouse as a perfect
example of the kind of breakdown that should never happen again. Last Friday, Linus was notified
of the issue a couple hours before the one show, where he discussed the errors with the video
in short circuit and apologize unequivocally. But while we recut the video to remove the misleading
information, no one close the loop and dealt with a tone deaf and frankly unapologetic correction
in the pinned comment, our mission is to get the information to the community, which includes having
a degree of humility about our mistakes, even if it makes us look less imperfect. The other side of
my job as CEO is keeping the lights on ensuring our staff is well taken care of and putting dollars
into some fun stuff like water cooling a PC with a pool. And that's through sponsorships,
affiliate programs, paid subscriptions, or merchandise sales. One thing that's not negotiable with me,
ownership, or the business team on sponsored content is we need to maintain control of the
creative as a call with a potential partner recently. They asked for a cream prep piece. What's the
cream puff piece? That's one of their like, how much money do we have to give you just so that you tell
the story that we want. Before I can jump in and say anything, just because I'm in shock at this point
in time, Nick turns over and says, no, absolutely not. I started laughing a little bit and I just said,
hey Nick, there's probably a better way to handle that, where we could just soften up a little bit.
But the truth is, I don't disagree with them. We've had many rocky periods of sponsors where they're
not happy with the content or the conclusions and because they can affect the editorial events.
This has in Canadians a house in a negative impact on revenue. I think we're pretty transparent
on how, where, and why we being our money. And one of our strategic pillars is to make sure that
we can maintain editorial independence. This has included an multiple occasion saying goodbye
and good luck to sponsors ranging from thousands of dollars a year to hundreds of thousands of
dollars a year over remaining independent and doing right by the LTT community. While we were
deciding if we were a good fit for each other, I was very pleased to see the integrity of the team
here based on the deals that these guys have walked away from. I think one thing that we've done
a poor job of however is publishing these standards where a community can see them. That's
something I'll be improving upon. And so will I. I'm Colton, the Head of Business Development,
which includes departments like HR, procurement, logistics, events, and sales and marketing.
Sponsorship specifically or an area where Linus has more limited oversight than he used to.
And in my opinion, we haven't done a great job conveying that. It's up to my team to vet incoming
sponsor requests and deal with issues that you, our viewers have with our brand partners.
One way we do that is using our LMG Sponsored Discussion Subforum on LinusTectives.com to create a
dialogue between our business team and the community. It's obvious from some of the issues we're
seeing that we need to be more communicative when we're actively working with brand
to rectify issues. Most content creators can attest to the fact that brands sometimes take forever
to respond to messages or address problems. A perfect example is anchored not removing Linus
tectives from their Amazon pages even though we've been asking to be removed since our partnership
with them ended months ago. We work hard to push for accountability, but we also understand that
these businesses are either large with lots of moving parts or small with limited resources.
So things can take time, but you shouldn't be waiting in the dark. It's critical for us to get the
sponsorship piece right because real talk, you guys are the boss. If you're not happy with brands we work
with, you won't engage with our sponsors and suddenly we won't be able to support all the cool stuff
we're currently able to do. Moving forward then, you can expect weekly updates in the sub-forum on
issues that need addressing and we'll also include an up-to-date list of product verticals
that are off limits for our channels. We hope this will enable us to make better calls consistently
from here on out, all while maintaining our long time commitment to transparency. Finally, I want to
apologize to Bill it Labs for auction off their Monoblock at LTX 2023. Our process is failed when I
was selecting items to include in the charity auction, but then it was compounded because when the
issue was brought up to me via email, even though I replied two hours later apologizing and offering
to pay for the component, I forgot to actually include our contact in that email, so it went to
our procurement team instead of Bill it Labs. Side note, that same team, God bless him, didn't ask our
event team who won the silent auction items and proceeded to email everyone asking, we don't need
any of that. Certainly not for tax purposes, I clearly need to spend some of my week training the team,
unless I actually get fired for real this time. Moving forward, we'll be implementing a more
rigid process for separating items that need to go back and which ones we'll be holding on to
you for future testing. This might ring a little hollow coming from one half of the Wansho team that brought
you trust me bro and the private hearing incident among others, but we need to be better about our
communication. Now I have no intention to like kill the silly humor or be less open with people.
I don't want anything to be less fun, but we do need to be respectful and conscious of the
impact of our words. We should be proud of the work that we do, but we shouldn't negatively
compare ourselves to our fellow tech reviewers. When issuing corrections, we need to apologize,
we need to respect people's time and their money. I said after the last round of this that you
don't win by screaming loudly or draming hard, you win by fixing problems, improving and becoming
a hard target. We're still f***ing up a lot and we need to own that, fix it and move on, not be
defensive or shirt blame. That being said, I'm not really on the production side of things these days,
what my teams and I are working hard on is to support the other teams in other ways.
Reintegrating into LMG has been somewhat terrifying. One of my teams jobs is to take over management
of the infrastructure and while I have brought an experienced team member into the fold,
it needs a lot of work. So far we've mostly just been focused on documenting what we even have,
and most of our initial steps beyond that will be improving overall stability,
rather than flash you video or the projects. Any production interruptions due to
shotty infrastructure add additional burden to the other teams and our goal is 6/9.
We'll also continue to maintain and develop our inventory system, which with better processes
should be able to help keep things like bill its prototype from being mishandled, misplaced,
and misused in the future. And the foundational work we're doing on reliable data management and
storage should enable teams like the editors and the engineering folks in the lab to move faster
and more confidently with lower risk of errors thanks to new tools like our spec state-of-base.
Among my other unmentioned unrelated responsibilities is keeping the Linus from driving off various
cliffs, which I have failed that a number of times. And let's face it, he's going to fail again.
Hey, it's me. I'm chief vision officer now, but realistically I'm not going to be able to hide
behind my recent demotion here. I was the one at the head of the company for each and every mistake
that our community has rightly brought to our attention. And once again, I made things worse by
allowing myself to respond emotionally. It's honestly really hard when people take an internal
process error and then they run that all the way to Linus is a thief and wants to auction someone else's
intellectual property to the highest bidder. Or accuses me of trying to brush something under the rug
just because I do think it's important to get all the details before declaring me to be a low-down
liar straight-up piece of s***. We were slow shipping back the GPU that bill it labs sent us. There's
nowhere around it. That's our bad. But the delay in communication, the one that prompted the post that you
guys just saw, it was less than two business days. The second that I was made aware of the situation
on the 14th, I emailed bill it labs and I explained what happened. I even included Colton's
attempt at apologizing and offering no questions asked full compensation for their stated value of
the product, which happened on the 10th before we were under any pressure to do so and without Colton
even bothering to check with me or Yvonne before just saying go for it. He knows that our
internal policy is to do the right thing. So he tried, bless him. I guess his job is safe for
another day. And I, sorry, I guess I've actually gotten a little bit emotional here again. So
I'm going to stop there because whatever's being said about me and whatever's being said about
the team should never have allowed my feelings to distract from any valid criticism of our work.
My decision, for example, to not bother retesting the mono block, that was obviously wrong
and my lame response on the forum was a huge and unnecessary blender. I owe you guys better and
I'm sorry. For my part, first, I'm going to be working through the other members of the
exec team for any crisis communication moving forward and second, I'm going to spend my week
working with the other teams to develop a system of processes that will help our company fulfill
my vision of being a world-class tech media organization. I'm also going to be spending my week
just refocusing guys on what matters most, which is bringing you guys the best drat content that we
can make. It's been over 10 years, it's been almost 15. But I still love tech. I love my team
and even though our relationship's a little rocky right now, I love this community and everything
that it stands for. None of that has changed and none of it is going to.
During my interview, one line from Linus at Stoodout to me was, I need somebody to come in who I know
will be respectful of my life's work. That's one of the gravity of what he was asking for, Don Nummy,
for the first time. I'm by no means influenced your social media guy, but suddenly I'm accountable
not only to Linus and a bond and then hire staff at LMG, but most importantly, to the entire LMG
audience. I'm fortunate to be inheriting a wonderful team that is passionate and has a
ton of energy who shares the same goal. We celebrate our ones together and when we mistakes,
we also share the responsibility. I'll be coaching the team on the kinds of deep state corporate
stuff that I think I'm reasonably good at. Budgeting, team building, relationship management,
business development, operational processes. All things I consider to be essential by skills,
rather than the tactics of some sort of weird, Illuminati conspiracy. We need to be a more well
old machine with better accountability as we kind of more complicated internally with how technical,
writing, editing, themes all have to coordinate. There are still going to be deadlines, due dates
and ten hundred equals that we still need to drive towards, but how of all this obviously needs more
to accomplish. I planned these topics to be covered in internal conversations over the coming weeks,
but instead I'm talking to you about it during this on the job experience of what it's like to
work at a YouTube company. For all our words, the team has worked hard to build up trust in the
community and share the joy and the passion that we all have for tech. So I do not take for granted
the responsibility and stewardship that comes along with this position and I welcome continue
to construct a feedback. Thank you for all for holding us accountable. I feel ready for the challenge
and ready for this message from our sponsor. Just kidding again. But [dbrand] did offer.
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Aug 16, 2023 09:57
