My name is Kyle. I've been here almost three years. I was originally hired to work on the screwdriver.
I am now the engineering manager of Crater Warehouse.
And, you know, I lead a growing design team of engineers.
And we keep filling positions to kind of make Linus' crazy ideas realities.
My favorite part about working here is we basically get full autonomy
on how to implement Linus' crazy ideas,
which is actually already refreshing from a design point of view.
So the way it works in Crater Warehouse is Linus is kind of the creative director.
He's like the be-all and end-all of kind of what we create.
But he gives us a lot of freedom on how that creation comes to be, if that makes sense.
So while he will say these are the specs it needs to kind of meet
in order for him to be happy with it, we get to figure out how that happens and then present a term.
And he's like, yeah, this is good, or it's not. And we have to go back to the drawing board.
But having that freedom and not being told, like, minute by minute,
this is what you're doing is kind of really great.
I mean, I do live far away, so I do have to travel, like, a decent amount of time in.
But, like, I listen to audiobooks, so it's not really that bad.
We're growing pretty fast right now, and that presents a bunch of challenges
in terms of, like, getting systems in place. I don't really think that's a negative thing.
That's just something we have to push through. Sometimes Linus comes up with really crazy ideas, like, really dumb ones.
And sometimes we have to end up doing them.
That's not bad. It's just, like, weird.
No, I can't really think of anything, like, really bad.
Parking sucks.
It used to suck before we moved half the people out.
Yeah, I can take it back from the first day I met Linus in my interview.
We just ended up, like, having, like, arguments against each other on product design
was really interesting. It was one of the weirdest interviews I've ever been in in my entire life.
I think that's kind of par for the course. If you watch the previous video on this, you will find a lot of interesting stories
about first interviews or first meeting Linus.
My first day working here, I was in a 45-minute meeting with him,
and he unloaded all his project ideas that he wanted me to work on.
Later which I found out, most of them were passed down and, like, rejected by every
single other designer before me, and then it's like, I just got the leftovers.
I leaked one of them in my Floatplane exclusive, The Lider.
I don't know if you've ever seen The Lider. If you haven't, go to Floatplane and check it out.
It was one of his, it was one of the moments where I was like,
what did I do quitting my previous job and coming to design stuff for Linus?
It was one of those ones where it's like, this project is legitimately stupid.
But no, then we did screwdriver and it was cool. But working with Linus is really interesting.
When I'm training new designers on my team to work with Linus,
the first thing I say is, don't tell him no, right?
Like, he's going to come with you with an idea and he's going to be super passionate about it.
And your job is not to say no, but it's to give him every single reason why not to do it,
or if it's not a dumb idea, what challenges present him in going the path that he chooses, right?
It's kind of like diverting his attention into a channel rather than him doing a shotgun of like,
this is what it should be. So working with Linus is like trying to guide a river sometimes.
It's like, you can't stop it, but you might be able to get it to move in a particular direction.
There's a lot of energy behind it as well. So to put it in perspective, when I was hired, I was the 26th employee of Linus Media Group, Umbrella, right?
So there was only 26, like 25 other people other than me.
Creator Warehouse was myself, Nick, Sarah, Lloyd, and a brand new customer support person called Nolan.
Both of us, both of me and him started at the same time.
That was 26 people three years ago, right? LMG as the Umbrella is way over 100 people right now.
Creator Warehouse as a team is now almost the size of the company when I started, right?
So to say it's a night and day difference between when I started is probably a bit of an understatement.
And if you probably talk to people who've been here longer, they'll have more of a story.
But it kind of went from a small to like a big company.
It's technically still counts as a medium, but it feels like a lot bigger company.
Like I knew everyone's face like two years ago, there are still times I have to do double takes when I walk past people, right?
And it's like, huh, that's interesting. And then as you grow that rapidly, you have to start dealing with like real company stuff.
Like, hey, we need a system for this because it's almost like unmanageable by a single person.
Or, you know, we have 26 people. Where the heck are we going to park?
Oh, we need a bigger building. Oh, now there's like, you know, double the amount of people using the shop.
So that means there's triple the amount of mess. So just stuff like that.
I wasn't here for that long in the used to be stage, right?
By the time I was at the end of my first year, we were already over 50, right?
50, 60, right? So like, I didn't get a lot of that.
And I think that close knit company is now just close knit teams, right?
Because the teams are now the size of the company used to be. So like Creator Warehouse will be more integrated with themselves as they will with the rest of LMG.
So like LMG used to be one big thing and we all used to interact.
Now LMG has their own spot. Creator Warehouse has their own spot.
Flowplan has their own spots. So while teams are connected in the same way that they used to be in the old days,
I think as a company, there's still a little bit of a, hey, that person's in you.
Never seen them before. Talk to them like once, right?
So I don't think missing is the right word.
It's like, this is the natural course of a company doing very well.
And you can change as inevitable and you kind of just have to roll with it.
There's no real use dwelling on the past. You just kind of have to send it forward.
Nothing pisses me off day to day though. Like, I don't know, maybe I just have a, maybe I have a unique mindset.
Like, I just, or maybe I come from a company that was just way worse.
It was like, yeah, I came from a manufacturing environment, which is a little bit more deadline focused than even here.
Right. So like, I'm used to deadlines that are yesterday, not like what we have now.
So like, maybe I just have a different viewpoint.
Like, I mean, really, the only thing that pisses me off day to day is the street leading up to here is like,
you can't like see when you come out, but that's just, that's like out of our control.
But day to day stuff, I mean, maybe I'm just viewing it through the guise of like, create a warehouse, right?
And, and my team specifically, and, you know, as, like, as my team is growing, it's like, we're trying,
we're putting our own systems in place, right? And being able to create your own systems is like challenging, but great.
So like, anything that pisses you off day to day, well, you have control over to fix that, at least in my case.
So it's really hard to say if there's anything I change there.
I get rid of Trello, actually. Honestly, I actually, yeah, like, I do not like Trello.
Okay. Mainly because it's very useful for film, filming, like, because your projects are like very limited in scope,
like they're like within a week, right? So like Trello works for that.
Or, you know, if you are doing software, Trello is great for that because, you know,
every software is a story and you move it. But if you have a design project like the screwdriver that takes multiple, like, years to get through, right?
And there's multiple different facets and stuff like that. Trello is flipping useless.
Like, you cannot do proper project management on at least a like a physical hardware scale with Trello, right?
To a point, and then like, when I, because we use Trello company-wide,
there is a very hard like paradigm to like move away from it, right?
You kind of got to like work within those tools and we don't want like rogue people using other forms of stuff.
So I had to find an add-on that integrates into Trello that adds what I need,
which is mainly like Gantt charts and like a longer term project tracking that has dependencies on it.
So like, if I'm designing that, I have to finish designing before I can go into toolmaking, for example, right?
So the toolmaking is dependent on the design. So programming those dependencies and being able to extrapolate out a timeline of like a project delivery over multiple months with dependencies
so that we know if we're delayed here, what knock-on effect does it have is something that needed to be like shoehorned into Trello
rather than choosing a software platform that was designed to do it in the first place, right?
So that's something I change is like, at least for my team, I need to Trello out the window and use something properly.
But that's all kind of system level stuff. And that's really only been like, yeah, it's that that's a thing that really only became a problem as as the, you know,
the engineering design team and Crater Warehouse started growing beyond just me, right?
Like, I can manage my own projects, but when I have like seven people and I need to know what stages projects are,
so I can tell Linus when he's getting his fought lighter, you know, like, that's when, like, do you not watch the Floatplane video?
Do you watch my Floatplane thing? Oh, my goodness, seriously? No, no.
Again, watch the Floatplane, go subscribe to the Floatplane, watch it.
Linus asked me to make a lighter that like has a puff of air to blow stuff out.
Yeah, and he wanted the I think he called the snuff or something else, just the most stupidest thing ever.
Sounds like something Linus would ask me to make, right? After like quitting my, you know,
It took me four months to convince him to buy a $400 skeleton and he's like, I'll pay you to make it.
Oh, what? Seriously? I never have to convince him to spend money.
I know, man, it's weird. Like, I, he just, maybe I just, I've spent so much of his money.
You don't need a skeleton. You got it though, right? I don't need it.
Yeah. Did you get what though? After four months.
Yeah? What did you call him, Johnny? I called him, I actually did.
No, I'll call him, I'll call a skeleton, Johnny.
It's a lot more corporate than it looks on camera.
Like, it's,
there are fun times, there are challenging times. It is a job, we work, we get stuff done, you know, it's,
I'd say it's a great place to work.
You might not see Linus a lot, if that's what you're coming to work here for, depending on your role.
I mean, I've been involved a lot in the hiring process in the last couple of years.
I did a lot of the early hiring for the Labs until Gary came on.
I've hired a bunch of people for my team. I'm probably going to be hiring a whole bunch more before the year's out.
Generally, what I look at is like people who like to make stuff,
at least for my team, obviously every other team is different. They're looking for different things.
The lab is probably looking for more head knowledge as we try and like,
you know, get some laboratory grade testing.
My team is more focused on creation and we put a hard focus on,
like, building the things you design.
So, like, you know, depending on where you look,
like what role you're looking at will require different things.
So speaking specifically to my team, it's like, hands-on skill in whatever you do.
So if it's mechanical, like we're looking for skill with, you know,
CNC, laser cutting, 3D printing, as well as, you know, the CAD skills and solid works.
And then if it's like electronics, we'll be looking for Altium in terms of,
like, you know, the CAD design stuff, but then we're looking for people
that can actually, like, solder the stuff they design because right now we do
all our prototyping in-house until we outsource to contract manufacturers.
So my team is mainly built off a bunch of people who love to create stuff.
And then we make sure that you have the tools that you need in order to create those things.
So we've added, like, a bunch of really expensive 3D printers, laser cutters,
CNC machines, routers, and lots of zeros at the end of the bills, all said and done.
But I think, yeah, like, whatever you do, be passionate about it.
You know, be driven, self-driven. At least, again, speaking out of the guys of my team, we don't really micromanage.
We kind of, like I said, you have really full autonomy in how it gets implemented,
so be self-motivated, you know.
Yeah, I can waffle on for a long time, but why did I start?
Number one, I hated my previous job. Just wasn't a great fit for me personally.
And, you know, I'd been there eight years. And, you know, it's good experience manufacturing.
I love making things. But, you know, I had a fundamental disagreement with how management
was moving, where they were moving the company towards.
And I found the best that I part ways with them. And I am very picky about where I work.
I was a fan of the channel since, like, they created their first how to build a PC video,
like, way back when. That's how, that's the video I used to build my first PC.
So I knew about them. They had never wanted to hire engineers in the past.
So I didn't really have any skills I could offer them until I saw, you know,
an engineering position. And I was like, why are they hiring an engineer?
So I threw my, I tossed my hand in the ring. So it's like, let's see where this goes.
And, you know, when I talked to Nick, they were talking about the screwdriver.
And I was like, huh, okay, I can make a screwdriver.
And then we talked more. And they got me in the door just because it's like, I knew the company.
I liked the idea of the screwdriver. The interview process, though extremely arbitrary and
random and unlike any interview I've been a part of my entire life, felt real, right?
Like I was really meeting these people. And the impression I got from them was like,
how it like, like I say, it's like, this is what you want to make, but we need you to
figure out how to do it. And I love that kind of freedom. And I thrive in environments that give
that kind of freedom. So that's what got me in the door. I could say after like, three months of
working here, I was like, yep, this is probably the best fit for me. Just based on all the freedom
I got to build stuff. Bye.