I think Luke put it best at the roast a few years ago when he said, "Why the are you here?"
That's a two-part answer. I'm speaking 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 I was 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 a writer at
NASA. My history building gaming PCs goes even further back to when I built
Acceleron 300 A rig because everyone assured me it was guaranteed to
overclock to 450 MHz. I guess my trip didn't really get the memo. In any case,
it feels really good to be back on most days. I'm only 6 weeks into the job, but
in that time I've seen a lot. I've looked at some budgeting, some team building and operations, but my main
focus has been to be a fly on the wall and gain an understanding of what's going right and what's going wrong.
There's a lot of both. I've asked the team to unflinchingly address both the
concerns that have been 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. Lus 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 Taran and Coen 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, while we 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. Lionus made a 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 spender 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
it 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 the workflow design or 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 Lionus misspoke when he said we retest for
every video. We retest for every project. When we used the same data for
our RX7600 and RTX 4060Ti videos, we knew in
advance that these cards would release two days apart and designed a broad test
suite 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 to video ratio is normally 1 one, but the devil's in the details.
Now, let's talk about what's coming. We will release our current markbench
harnesses as open source items so that
the community can audit the code around our test integrations. We will do a vlog
style video on 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 per workbench to
each benchmark we utilized in the 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 jobs 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 interdep
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 Lionus and other members of the team just goofing around with tech and
having fun. That is not going to stop, but others like GPU 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 4060 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 crowdsourced
factchecking system for both LT and TechQuiki so that our contents
correctness satisfies even our most discerning community members.
I'm Ed, a 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 edit
side of things, but I've seen some examples where we've 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 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. ltstore.com. What? Somebody had to say it. But the
theme of today's video is transparency and accountability. You might not see me
NVIDIA credits, but I still serve as a last line of defense in reviewing most
LT 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. Errors in our supporting assets like
tables and grass chip away our credibility. So continuing to improve
our process issues to minimize errors will remain a top priority under my
leadership. I guarantee there will be future mistakes. We are human. But next
week, we'll be creating and publishing a clear policy for correction handling.
And I'll be working with the community management team to be prompt and transparent with corrections that are as
visible as possible. I think what happened with the punish mouse is a
perfect example of the kind of breakdown that should never happen again. Last
Friday, Lionus was notified of the issue a couple hours before the wine show
where he discussed the errors of the video and ShortCircuit and apologized unequivocally. But while we recut the
video to remove the misleading information, no one closed the loop and dealt with a ton-deaf and frankly
unapologetic correction in the pin 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 than perfect. 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 watering and 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. I was on a call
with a potential partner recently. They asked for a cream puff piece. What's the
cream puff piece? That's when they're 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. I just said,
"Hey, Nick, there's probably a more um a
better way to handle that." um where we could just uh 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 couldn't affect the editori editorial bends. This has and continues
to have significant negative impacts on revenue. I think we're pretty
transparent on how, where, and why we make our money. And one of our strategic
pillars is to make sure that we can maintain editorial independence. This
has included on multiple occasions 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 LT 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. Sponsorships specifically are
an area where Lionus 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 sponsor discussion
sub forum online as techtips.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 brands
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 Anchor, not removing Linus tech tips 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 longtime commitment to
transparency. Finally, I want to apologize to Bill Labs for auctioning
off their monoblock at LTX 2023. Our
processes 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 Labs. Side note, that same team,
God bless them, 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
for future testing. This might ring a little hollow coming from one half of
the Wanchow team that brought you Trust Me Bro in the privateeering 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 drama hard. You win
by fixing problems, improving, and becoming a hard target. We're still up a
lot, and we need to own that, fix it, and move on. Not be defensive or sherk
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 team's 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
flashy video worthy projects. Any production interruptions due to shoddy
infrastructure additional burden to the other teams and our goal is 69s.
We will also continue to maintain and develop our inventory system which with
better processes should be able to help keep things like billet's 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 specs database. Among my other unmentioned and unrelated
responsibilities is keeping Lionus from driving off various cliffs, which I have
failed at 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 Lionus 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 lowown liar straight up piece of we
were slow shipping back the GPU that Billet Lab sent us. There's no way
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 Billet 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 Ivonne 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 I'm sorry. I guess I've actually gotten a little bit
emotional here again. So, I'm going to stop there. Um because whatever is being
said about me and whatever is 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
monoblock, that was obviously wrong, and my lame response on the forum was a huge
and unnecessary blunder. 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 damn content that we can make. It's been over
10 years. Good lord, it's been almost 15. Um, 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 that stood out to me
was, "I need somebody to come in who I know will be respectful in my life's
work." That's when the gravity is asking for Don and me for the first time. I'm
by no means influenced through our social media guy, but suddenly I'm
accountable not only to Linus and Avon and the entire 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 wins together and when we make 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
welloiled machine with better accountability as we've gotten more complicated internally with how
technical writing editing teams all have to coordinate. There are still going to
be deadlines, due dates, and time limited goals that we still need to
drive towards, but the how of all this obviously needs more polish. 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 award warts, 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 continued constructive 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.