My name is Jake Belvance, but I'm more commonly known as Belle, because there's just so many
jakes here, and I am a channel manager slash a producer for ShortCircuit, and I guess I'm a
host now too. I've been working here for just over two years now, which is wild. It feels like
it's been way longer. It's going to sound cheesy, but my favorite part about working here is the
people I know, blah, blah, blah. It should be something better, but genuinely some of my closest
friends are people who work here, who I've met through here. I even lived with Jeff and Chase
at one point, and you don't do that with people you don't like, and yet here we are going to concerts,
doing stuff together, and living our best lives. Other than the comment section, man,
I don't know if there's anything that's truly that bad about working here, other than the fact that
we just released a lot of content. I'm responsible for posting all the Short Circuits videos and
making sure they get shot, so it can be quite a bit of a workload, but even then I don't think
it's a bad thing. It's just something to be aware of is that we work hard and we play hard,
but we work hard. I mean, at first it's very scary. He's the CEO. I wasn't even a huge fan of LTT
when I started working here, but still knowing that this is the guy. This is the lioness of
lioness tech tips. It can be a little daunting, but once you get comfortable in a position and he
starts to get to know you, he's a great guy. When he's outside of his persona of on and getting ready
to be on camera, he's super generous, super nice, and usually intense a little bit when he's filming,
but I think in the way of wanting to be constructive and get things running the best they can do,
he farts a lot just constantly. I used to be the WAN Show producer and always farting. Short
circuit, always farting. And he knows it's true. Otherwise, it's just that passion for the craft
can sometimes seem blunt, but again, once you realize that it's because he wants to grow and
things to be better the next time and it's not actually directed at you, it is more frustrating
about the situation, you realize that it's not that bad, but the guess is that bad. I was employee
number 50 and now we've doubled that. It's crazy. We have a different building. I've gone from working
on the business team, writing the ad spots and selling those spots to now directing and managing
a channel and working with Labs to launch a new channel. And it seems like there's just big push
to just do bigger and better, which is great. And I cannot wait to see what we're able to do next
because I think this is only the beginning of the changes. And yeah, there's a lot coming.
I think what people get wrong about working here is that, you know, it is loud and rambunctious and
that we're kind of crazy influencer stuff all the time. But a lot of time it is just like quiet
people with their headphones on writing, people quiet with their headphones on editing, things
like that. Though we like to have fun in our off time and enjoy the lounge and go and do stuff,
there's also an awareness of like, we are a business trying to make 17 plus videos a week,
which means a lot of time we're just grinding, which I mean is like any workplace and people
probably just don't realize that how much goes into making these videos that you're watching for free,
or if you're my best friend or watching on Floatplane. I would say that we need more
ShortCircuit merch. I think there's not enough appreciation for it. But more realistically,
I think just adding more people and personalities and getting to show more vloggy stuff. And that
can be hard with something like Linus Tech Tips, the channel itself, because a lot of it is about
Linus or about tech tips. And I think having an opportunity to show off some of the great people
here that the camera, the audience doesn't get to meet that are really awesome people that we
we needed a chance to showcase them more. And that's what was really great about the Intel
upgrades and hopefully the AMD upgrades if it continues going on. So we could see these people,
but I think we should continue to raise up the new or next generation of hosts and personalities.
I started working at LTT because I used to watch the WAN Show and tackling those are the only two
LMG things I ever watched. It's because I just like wanted an update on the news. And I was watching
the WAN Show working an accounting job from home. And they were like, we're hiring a salesperson.
And I thought YOLO being a YouTuber sounds fun and started working here and happened to get the
job and work under Colton. And it's been an absolute blast. And I think my lucky stars every
day that happened to be watching the WAN Show and that they announced it because I did not want to
be sitting in my dark dank room during the heat of COVID, just crunching number numbers all day
when I could be instead doing what I love, which is entertaining people and working hard and writing
and changing processes. And it's a lot of fun here. I worked as a bookkeeper for a
accounting startup. So they used AI to track all of the business's expenses so that your
bookkeeping would just be done automatically as you use your card. So I was a guy checking to make
sure everything was correct. And then I helped them launch their banking division where they
actually had their own debit card. So I was on the team launching that, which is very different
from selling ad spots, writing, and then directing and producing content for YouTube.
But luckily I watch a lot of YouTube, which is my greatest skill set here. I just watch
so much YouTube. It's a sickness. The weirdest thing I've had to do here, there's a few. There's
the ASMR build guide in parentheses that everybody hated. The most offensive video title, that was
my first video. Then a couple of channel super funds. There was one that never aired, but it was
the tester for the ice block challenge one where they had to find the keys to unlock brief cases
to get a prize. We did one at what was lab one originally before we had HQ2, where we had to
get keys and unlock stuff and we filmed it all, but it never aired. And I got covered in gold paint.
I painted a Mona Lisa, which has been on the ShortCircuit set and other places that were
in the office. It's a good time. There's a lot of weird B roll shots. You'll just see me in
shouting China joy in the background pretending to be businessman. You never know what you're
going to do any given week. I think that if you want to work here, it's really important to know
again that we work hard. Content is fun. A lot of these ideas are a lot of fun and executing
them is a lot of fun, but there's the pre-planning stage. There's the writing stage. There's the
getting sponsors. There's the calendar planning. There's the meeting with people to make sure this
idea works. There's a lot of things that go into a fun idea that you're not really aware of until
you're in it. Even this video would have a ton of meetings going through a lot of back and
forth to make sure this works perfectly that you just don't really imagine. You just kind of think,
oh, I want to build a fun PC. I'm going to build one. But no, it goes through a group of people.
It goes through a writing stage and a review stage and revisions to then editing and guidance.
There is a lot of stuff that goes through it, but if you put in the work, you will be rewarded.
And I think I luckily get to be a poster child of that from starting a business with no experience
on YouTube, to showing a passion for creating and changing processes, to then being the WAN
show producer, to ShortCircuit producer, to now working with Labs for things that will be coming
soon. It just shows that if you're really willing to put in the work, you will be rewarded, but
it's a lot of work and you need to put in your time to get those opportunities.
The first time I met Linus, I was actually at a grocery store in Vancouver and I was just shopping
around. I was like, that's Linus Tech Tips. Like even not as a fan, you know I'm from the memes and
such. And I saw him and I was like, hey man, I'm a big fan. I don't want to be rude and ask for a
photo or anything. He said, oh, be rude like you're being now. And I was like, huh? And he said,
huh, huh, huh? And he started snapping his hand in front of my face and I was like,
okay, and I left. And as I was leaving, he chuckled and I was like, that's weird.
So anyways, I finished up my shopping and everything and I was kind of thrown by it, but as I was leaving, I saw he had like 15 milky ways in his hands as he was trying to
leave the grocery store. And the woman was like really, the employee was really nice and she's
like, hey, sir, you had to buy that. And he pretended to like be tired and didn't hear
as he had like all these milky ways. He was like juggling and dropping. But eventually he went back
and started scanning them. And she kept trying to like ask, like, you know, she tried to scan them
all in. And he said, whoa, whoa, whoa, don't scan one multiple times. Like I want you to scan each
individual Milky Way bar. I don't want any electronic in veterans. And then he like turned
around and he winked at me. And I don't even, I don't even think electrical in veterans is a word.
But anyways, he just then threw cash at her and left and it was just a really odd experience. But
hey, that's an influencer life.