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Comment by fnimick

3 years ago

He's also vocally anti-union and actively tried to stop his employees from marketing themselves on personal social media (to stop them from building a following and then leaving, I'm guessing), so I refuse to watch any of his content or support his business in any way now.

I know this is completely subjective, and his millions of subscribers tell me my opinion is far from ubiquitous, but he's also just straight up obnoxious to me. One of those people whose voice, demeanor, appearance, everything, just immediately turns me off.

  • Because he sounds like the stereotype of a Hot Topic-shopping turbonerd c.2002 ? Personally, I find it nostalgic, and even endearing.

  • I think he, personally, is largely entertainment. His company does produce some genuinely useful (as in, not total SEO spam) reviews etc. though.

  • Agreed. I always think of his Amazon go video where thinks he “stole” tampons that were actually pads.

Do you mind sharing some links to back up these claims?

Just watched a video [0] where he clearly comes across as being pro workers rights, and against passing prop 22 in California. He seems to be generally pro-union while still trying to point out some general issues with them. He also says he would be "offended" if his employees unionized at LMG, which while maybe is a bit stupid to say, I don't think counts as anti-union.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpyiNOD-MOk

  • People should also understand why he said he would be offended. He would be offended because it meant they didn’t talk to him and work with him - and that he did such a bad job as a manager that they decided to unionize.

    He’s pro-union - he just hopes he is a good enough boss that his employees don’t feel like they need to unionize. He clarified his viewpoint in later videos. Offended was probably not the best choice of word - and he admits that too. I don’t recall the video but someone can find it. (I’m on mobile and on vacation - idk why I’m even here)

    • Anyone who is truly “pro-union” would recognize that seeing yourself as a good manager/boss doesn’t mean you don’t take advantage of your employees. Furthermore, there is ALWAYS a power dynamic at play that makes it difficult for individuals to speak up about their concerns or ideas for improving working conditions — even “nice” managers will disagree or see certain things as pointless / unnecessary / frivolous. Not to mention, Linus is both the owner AND the manager of LMG, making the relationship between employer / employee even more complex and unbalanced.

      Unions are a tool to give individual workers more leverage in negotiations that almost always favour employers / managers.

      A side note: Linus could be a great day-to-day manager, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a bad “ceo” if that’s what he calls himself. He can be incredibly personable and kind and supportive, but also have unreasonable expectations about work hours, employee’s social media activities, compensation, etc.

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a lot of LMG employees have personal social media and either YouTube or Twitch streams, often getting viewers from fans of their persona on LMG videos. I think the issue is only with competing content and/or leveraging the LMG platform. For example, if an employee started a GPU review channel and called it out in an LMG video, like ok yeah probably not. More like non-compete than some draconian restrictions

Ah, that's pretty brutal. Thanks for the information I will keep that in mind. Seems less funny now. :/

Honestly, I would expect that from him as CEO. He only makes money off people watching the channel and subscription numbers are hugely important. Any efforts by employees to gain subscribers for their channels could dilute visitor numbers and subscribers to LMG. And obviously he doesn't want to create competition.

In the end he's still a CEO and the others are his employees, not his friends. For that, he doesn't appear to be a terrible boss.

Can you elaborate in the anti-union thing? I can't seem to find anyone discussing this.