My name is Riley Murdoch. I run Techlinked and LMG clips and the pre-production part of the WAN Show.
And I've been here since April 2018. That was part-time though.
My favorite part of working at LMG has to be the fact that I get to kind of give news while making jokes about the news.
It's kind of like a late-night monologue thing, so that's what I love most about Techlinked.
And then I'm also just a curious cat, so I get to like do a lot of research and see what's going on in there.
Out there, rather. And there's free snacks here, so I'm...
And Cooffee. I need my Cooffee.
More broadly, for me, one of the best parts of working at LMG is the fact that it feels as if something kind of exciting is going on all the time.
Even if, for my workload, we're kind of doing something that is more routine.
You see people running around and they're doing cool projects and we're running nine gaming workstations off of one CPU or something silly like that, you know?
And there's multiple channels all doing something cool and you have opportunities to be involved in all those things.
So that's exciting. The first part of working here is also related to Techlinked, which is the fact that it is a one-day shoot.
So we have to find the sources, write the script, shoot the script, have it edited, review it, publish it with the thumbnail and everything all in one day.
And that can be kind of stressful, especially when there's not many stories out there or whatever.
On the other hand, I've been doing this more or less nonstop since 2013, so I'm kind of used to it by now.
And we've hired on other writers, so we're spreading the load.
So things aren't as bad as they used to be, for sure.
It's my own, it's my special curse, generational, you could say.
Friends of my family. My son will be afflicted by the same curse.
He'll have a daily deadline for a show. I'm sure, I'm sure of it. It'll happen.
The worst part of working at LMG is sort of related to what I said about the best part, which is that sometimes there's so much going on, it can be a little bit overwhelming.
Where, you know, maybe I am trying to, like, get something for Techlinked done or something for, like, my channels, and I'm coming up against other things that are happening in the company.
And, you know, there's push and pull there, but it can be a little frustrating sometimes when I want to make something and I have to kind of, like, wait for the gap in the content schedule to kind of fit that in.
Like, Techlonger. I want to make more Techlongers.
But I can't even complain about that because Linus gave me the chance to, like, take eight months to make a video.
So it's like, at the same time, there's pros and cons, you know.
What the f*** with Linus? Linus is hard to describe because he's not like other people.
How do you... It takes a special kind of person to A, be a YouTuber.
B, decide to upload YouTube videos every single day.
See, hire, what, a hundred people now to help you make more than one YouTube video every single day?
Linus has some qualities that make him able to do that.
He has incredible drive. He has incredible expertise in certain areas.
Like, describe him psychologically.
I have a psychology degree. I could talk about Linus for decades.
How has the LTT changed since you've started?
I mean, LMG has been changing drastically ever since I started at a near constant pace.
I mean, when I started, there were, like, 30 people and even that was kind of crazy compared to where they were, you know, a few years before that.
Now we're at a hundred people and it's just a completely different situation.
I mean, like, we're in multiple buildings, multiple different departments, managers.
I mean, even just the standard hierarchy that you have of, like, a department and a manager reporting to the CEO is, like, fairly new.
And so, yeah, it's been a ride to kind of, like, riding LMG up as they get more into real company territory.
Like it or not, I guess we're a real company now.
I do miss the old days of, you know, just kind of, like, a couple people trying to, like, scrap out a YouTube video real quick, you know?
And I think that you would, you would miss that because it's fun, you know?
It's like there's not really a hierarchy. There's not really, like, an overall structure that's like, you have to do things this way.
You're just kind of trying to get it out the door. And to a certain extent, we still do that.
But the old days where it was like, you know, there was one time when I was working at NCIX with Tackling Daily,
I would write, set up the camera myself, put a lamp there so I could focus on the lamp and lock that in, go stand in place, film it,
ingest the footage, edit it. You know, I was, like, I was doing the whole thing myself.
And now it's just like, like, there's a single person for every one of those steps.
And so it's scrappy and it's hard, but it's rewarding and fun.
And so obviously you're going to be a bit nostalgic for the old days.
But as I get older, particularly, it's nice to not have to do all that stuff yourself.
Because doing the hard stuff is fun for a while.
And then you kind of get sick of it. And now you want help.
So that's where we are. So listen, I'm not a business person, okay?
I don't have the sense of what is going to make LMG successful as much as some other people here.
So the things that I would change are probably things that would just hurt us overall.
I'd be like, let's not have deadlines. Let's publish less videos, you know?
Let's have basically a flat hierarchy where everyone's at the same level and no one's, anyone else's boss.
And I say that as someone who's supervising other people, you know?
The thing is that when you get to a certain level, those things are impractical.
But I still have this idealistic center in me, even though I know that we probably shouldn't do those things.
The number one thing you need to know before you work at LMG is computers.
You need to know them front and back. I'm just kidding.
You need to know your ports, your processors, your disks, towers, cases.
Definitely HDMI cords.
USB 3.5. USB 3.5?
And you're fired. If you...
If on your first day, you can't point to...
Oh, wait. If on your first day, you can't differentiate between a 3.5-inch SATA drive and an M.2 SSD...
You're on the curb. You're done.
If you want to work at LMG, you should know that a lot of people apply.
We tend to hire people who are really good at their jobs.
We have up to 100 people now, but each one of those people have been selected from a lot of applicants.
And so because we have a fast production schedule and we need to put things out...
Oh, this sounds weird. I don't like this.
You know what I'm getting at, though, right?
Other people have already said this, but in a better way.
You don't want to tell me?
You can give me a gist, though, can't you?
What you're saying is fine. You're thinking too much about it. I am thinking too much about it.
I know that other people are already going to say stuff like that, so I want to say something different.
For the content. One of the weirdest things I did while working at LMG for sure was one of the first things I did,
which was pretend like I had been living in a dumpster for a year and a half,
so Linus could find me and recruit me to start Techlinked.
And the reason that was weird is because, well, to be honest, I hadn't been living in a dumpster.
I haven't even done that many weird things here.
It's hard for me to think of an example of the weirdest thing I've done at LMG
because most of the time when something truly weird is going on, I'm just kind of like,
I don't want to jump into a pit of whipped cream or something.
I want to stay clean.
Let Linus do all the crazy stuff.
I just want to talk about tech news.
I think the biggest mistake that I've made while being part of LMG
was allowing them to take away Lucky, the red dragon, from the background of the Techlink set.
I miss him. I wish he was back.
He gave warm hugs and he always knew the right thing to say.
No!
No, I know, but that's not... It was a life-size lucky.
Ah, I would put the Christmas hat on him for the Christmas specials.
I love Lucky. I miss Lucky.
Okay, now a real one.
One of the big regrets I have from working here is taking so frickin' long to make the techlongers.
The first one took me four months. The second one took me eight months.
I was doing other things in that time,
but if I could have kind of got my budding gear and maybe took one month to make a single video,
that probably would have been better. But, you know, stuff happens.
Go watch Techlonger.