WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.080 I'm Anthony. I'm a writer. I've been working here since 2017, February of 2017. It's been over 00:00:06.080 --> 00:00:15.520 six years, which what? As a writer, my duties include writing, actually getting the video ready 00:00:15.520 --> 00:00:22.160 to go. So I need to do all of the prep work. I need to do setting up the set, although Andy often 00:00:22.160 --> 00:00:30.880 helps a lot with that. Setting up screen capture, setting up any other like props or or skits we 00:00:30.880 --> 00:00:36.320 might have. Doing up guidance for the editor so that the editor knows what exactly they should be 00:00:36.320 --> 00:00:44.720 doing with the video, like how they should cut it, how they should what they should drill at any given point in time and overlays, that kind of thing. And of course making those 00:00:44.720 --> 00:00:51.200 overlays as well in some cases. So graphs and tables and stuff like that. My duties have expanded 00:00:51.200 --> 00:00:56.960 slightly. I guess I'm what you would call a head writer or a lead writer at this point. 00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:05.680 Senior at least, which is weird to say. But as a result, I've taken part in a lot of the 00:01:07.200 --> 00:01:12.960 consultations and even writing some of the different guides that we use for how to create 00:01:12.960 --> 00:01:18.800 graphs and how to do screen cap, that kind of thing. And for a little while I was doing some 00:01:18.800 --> 00:01:23.440 of the networking, but Jake has kind of taken over most of that at this point. I have watched 00:01:23.440 --> 00:01:30.960 the first video. I was curious as to because I was brand new then. I was curious as to how the 00:01:30.960 --> 00:01:38.080 people who had been working with Linus for years felt about working with Linus. And obviously it 00:01:38.080 --> 00:01:43.120 was interesting to see myself on screen, which is not something I really expected would happen. 00:01:44.080 --> 00:01:50.320 I felt that I would probably be in the background most of the time, but things have changed. 00:01:52.640 --> 00:01:58.240 I don't know how that happened. Honestly, it's going to sound cheesy, but the people, like the 00:01:58.240 --> 00:02:04.480 team, working with people who are knowledgeable in shooting, for example, I've learned a lot about 00:02:04.480 --> 00:02:09.280 cameras. I've learned a lot about lighting. I've learned a lot about a lot of things that I had 00:02:09.360 --> 00:02:15.360 no idea that I even didn't know about, right? And I've also been able to help contribute that back 00:02:15.360 --> 00:02:21.360 to some of the people in the team as well, which I find very rewarding. I guess the other thing is 00:02:22.080 --> 00:02:26.880 there's a lot of cool tech that I get to interact with that I never thought I would be able to 00:02:26.880 --> 00:02:31.920 interact with, including some stuff that's like prototype, never seen the light of day. The problem 00:02:31.920 --> 00:02:36.000 is that a lot of that really cool tech is really high end and it's kind of spoiled me at this point 00:02:36.000 --> 00:02:44.080 and I can't buy a mid-range GPU anymore. Obviously, there was a call for writers. I think this was 00:02:44.080 --> 00:02:50.960 the first call for writers that Linus had put out. And the reason I knew that this was happening 00:02:50.960 --> 00:02:56.560 is because I had been religiously watching everything, Channel Super Fun, Techquickie, 00:02:56.560 --> 00:03:04.000 everything that LMG was putting out. And the reason for this is that in the years prior to me joining 00:03:04.000 --> 00:03:11.440 Linus Media Group, I was in a really bad place. My disability from my previous job, I had developed 00:03:11.440 --> 00:03:16.640 extreme anxiety due to multiple factors. I don't quite understand all of it, but 00:03:17.440 --> 00:03:22.240 that spiraled into depression and basically they were cutting me off from my disability 00:03:22.240 --> 00:03:27.920 benefits as well. So more or less, I was like, well, I'm not going to be able to afford to live 00:03:27.920 --> 00:03:34.320 anymore. I'm going to be dragging down everybody around me. Well, the only thing I can think of 00:03:34.320 --> 00:03:42.400 is very bad. So I'm going to lose myself in YouTube. And the fact that LMG posted YouTube 00:03:42.400 --> 00:03:47.520 videos every day, sometimes multiple videos a day because Channel Super Fun and Techquickie, 00:03:47.520 --> 00:03:55.040 it was one of the things I had to look forward to. And in kind of the six month period to a year 00:03:55.040 --> 00:04:01.680 leading up to me joining Linus Media Group, I started to get a little better. Like I was 00:04:02.560 --> 00:04:07.280 exercising more, I was trying to take care of myself and I was feeling more confident. And 00:04:08.080 --> 00:04:15.200 when the call for writers went out, I thought, well, if I can't do anything else with my life, 00:04:15.840 --> 00:04:20.880 as I am right now, I'm just sitting in a room surrounded by retro consoles. Like I was the 00:04:20.880 --> 00:04:25.680 plan was for me to just repair and modify retro consoles that were broken and just resell them. 00:04:26.240 --> 00:04:31.120 That was my plan if this fell through. But if I could do something that could give 00:04:31.840 --> 00:04:36.320 that kind of escape, if not like lifting people up, then at least give them something to, 00:04:37.920 --> 00:04:43.200 you know, get out of their head for enough time that they actually can maybe recover in the way 00:04:43.200 --> 00:04:51.440 that I did, then, you know, it wouldn't be a waste. And so I felt like, okay, well, I have 00:04:51.440 --> 00:04:57.840 nothing to lose, literally nothing to lose. I'll write a script, I'll put in an application, 00:04:57.840 --> 00:05:05.680 I'll write a script, I'll do as best I can, and hope that it works. And a couple months later, 00:05:06.400 --> 00:05:13.920 I'm in British Columbia and trying to find a place to stay. So yeah, I mean, I don't know, it's 00:05:16.640 --> 00:05:22.480 it's a bit of a heavy story, I know. But that is why I joined. I wanted to give that back. 00:05:23.280 --> 00:05:31.520 How hasn't it changed? Really? It's gone from it's sort of a company to it's definitely a company. 00:05:31.520 --> 00:05:35.840 Like it has grown tremendously, even over the past year, like I think we doubled our 00:05:35.840 --> 00:05:42.480 headcount of the past year, which is insane. I don't think any of anybody even Linus included 00:05:42.480 --> 00:05:47.680 would have thought that that would happen back in 2017 when they hired me on and, you know, 00:05:47.680 --> 00:05:55.600 and James and Jake and Alex during that hiring spree. I think that was like, that was a big expansion 00:05:55.600 --> 00:06:05.120 back then. But now, like I'm going to level, I'll level with you, I don't actually know half of 00:06:05.120 --> 00:06:09.920 the people who work here anymore. There are people who work here that I don't know exist. 00:06:10.640 --> 00:06:15.040 And that's a weird feeling. As a result, we've had to get a lot more, 00:06:17.360 --> 00:06:21.840 I guess the word that I want to use is corporate, but it's it's kind of like we have more structure 00:06:21.840 --> 00:06:28.000 where we're more rigid now than we were before. It feels less like I'm like a group like in a group 00:06:28.000 --> 00:06:32.000 of like peers who are trying to just do something. And I feel like I'm more of like a part of an 00:06:32.000 --> 00:06:39.040 organization, which is it's got its pros and cons. It's not that it's bad. It's that it's 00:06:39.040 --> 00:06:46.960 different. And I I'm still trying to process how that all works out. I do. I do. There are some 00:06:46.960 --> 00:06:51.680 things that I don't miss, like just doing things wrong a lot like we still do. But 00:06:52.720 --> 00:06:59.200 like stuff like doing screencap at the wrong resolution. And then it looks blurry as crap on 00:06:59.920 --> 00:07:07.040 YouTube because it has to be resized and squished. And it's basically like three different levels of 00:07:07.040 --> 00:07:15.600 resize blur. You know, like things like hardware reviews before I started here, we didn't really 00:07:15.600 --> 00:07:21.760 have much in the way of testing. I looked back at like some of the reviews that happened even in 00:07:21.760 --> 00:07:27.760 the couple of months before I started. And a lot of it was just like Linus standing there with 00:07:27.760 --> 00:07:33.200 nothing else on the screen just talking about, you know, what this chip is, which when you think 00:07:33.200 --> 00:07:37.760 about it compared to today, we have a lot more production value, we have more information on 00:07:37.760 --> 00:07:44.960 screen, we have more information to actually say, we have a lot of testing. And the testing is more 00:07:44.960 --> 00:07:53.440 thorough. That's not to say that that was all me, but the focus changed a lot at that point in 00:07:53.440 --> 00:08:02.720 time. And it seems like it's changing again to become even more in depth. So I guess I'm not 00:08:02.720 --> 00:08:08.240 sure where I was going with that, but basically we're at a point where we're a lot more professional 00:08:08.240 --> 00:08:15.280 in what we do. And it's weird being thought of as a professional. Oh, yeah, absolutely, 00:08:15.280 --> 00:08:20.000 still. Yeah, it doesn't, doesn't go away. Imposter syndrome, I had that the very moment 00:08:20.720 --> 00:08:23.440 that I sent off the application, I'm like, yeah, this is not going to work. 00:08:25.520 --> 00:08:28.720 Imposter syndrome is just one of those things that I think everybody has. 00:08:31.200 --> 00:08:35.200 For me, it hits a little harder because of where I was before I started here. 00:08:38.240 --> 00:08:44.160 And just going from being nobody and throughout school being somebody that people just straight 00:08:44.160 --> 00:08:51.920 up didn't like to being seen on the street and like people like, oh, minus tech tips. Or like, 00:08:51.920 --> 00:08:57.200 oh, hey, you're Anthony, right? And like, I'm totally fine with that just to be clear. But 00:08:57.200 --> 00:09:02.800 that is completely baffling to me. I have no idea that that was going to actually happen. 00:09:03.760 --> 00:09:10.640 I thought that I would be invisible, right? The possibility that I would even appear on camera 00:09:10.640 --> 00:09:18.720 was in my mind very slim when I first started. I mean, I would probably say Colton. No, 00:09:19.600 --> 00:09:26.720 the real worst part I think is because of the rising production values in our videos, 00:09:26.720 --> 00:09:32.720 I feel a lot like I'm crunching more than I ever was that and we're much more strict about how 00:09:32.720 --> 00:09:37.280 much time we're able to work in the course of the day. So like, I can't stay a little longer 00:09:37.280 --> 00:09:43.680 in one day to make sure I don't have to rush the next day. So everything's kind of more compressed 00:09:43.680 --> 00:09:51.680 and there's more to it. And I feel like a lot of the time I'm just like rushing. And I do kind of 00:09:51.680 --> 00:09:57.280 miss the more laid back way that things were a couple of years ago. There's a few things that 00:09:57.280 --> 00:10:02.480 I can think of. I mean, for one, like there are people who think that, you know, somebody sends 00:10:02.480 --> 00:10:10.480 us a product to review that we value having that product on hand. We could just go out and buy that. 00:10:10.480 --> 00:10:15.920 It doesn't really matter that the value in that is having it before having to go buy it so we can 00:10:16.560 --> 00:10:23.120 have a review ready for people to see on launch day. Like, realistically speaking, Linus has 00:10:23.120 --> 00:10:32.880 over 100 employees now. So, not EVGA anymore. AMD or NVIDIA sending Linus a GPU is not going 00:10:32.880 --> 00:10:38.560 to sway his opinion one way or the other. It's just not how that works. Not at the scale anyway. 00:10:38.560 --> 00:10:44.240 It does work that way with smaller, smaller creators, right? Like that is a that is a concern. 00:10:45.760 --> 00:10:52.000 But for us, it's not a big deal. I guess the other thing would be it's not an amusement park. 00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:56.640 I mean, if you wander through the warehouse, you could spend hours looking at all the cool stuff 00:10:56.640 --> 00:11:01.520 we have, which I mean, we could probably charge tickets for that, right? Just have guided tours 00:11:01.520 --> 00:11:09.600 through the warehouse. Like LTX. But everybody here has a job to do, right? And whether you're a 00:11:09.600 --> 00:11:15.760 writer, you're a shooter, you're logistics, you're the accounting team, business, create a warehouse, 00:11:16.480 --> 00:11:22.880 it doesn't really matter. You have a job to do. And there's a bit of a notion that we're very 00:11:22.880 --> 00:11:30.880 laid back here. And we are in comparison to say, you know, a floor shift at Best Buy or Walmart. 00:11:32.240 --> 00:11:38.240 But at the end of the day, we do still have stuff we need to do, right? It's not like we're all just 00:11:38.240 --> 00:11:41.840 sitting back and playing video games all day, which would be great. But 00:11:41.840 --> 00:11:50.240 it's just not how it is. This is an interesting question. Because when I first started, I still 00:11:50.240 --> 00:11:57.200 had that kind of starstruck feeling. So if you look at me in the first video, I say, 00:11:58.560 --> 00:12:04.720 I'm working side by side with the CEO of the company. And I'm like, super impressed by that. 00:12:04.720 --> 00:12:14.000 And now it's like, whatever, it's Linus, right? It's weird how that changes. But part of it is 00:12:14.000 --> 00:12:22.320 because Linus is a really not quite genuine person who honestly and truly wants to do the best that 00:12:22.320 --> 00:12:29.760 he can in pretty much everything that he does. So be it delivering an A-roll, like a lot of the 00:12:29.760 --> 00:12:34.640 time he'll stop after doing, say, an intro and say, how is the energy? Should I be more energetic? 00:12:34.800 --> 00:12:40.960 I can do better. I'll do better. And that's something that he does a lot. He doesn't have any time. 00:12:42.080 --> 00:12:48.560 That's the worst part. There's nothing specifically wrong with working with Linus, 00:12:48.560 --> 00:12:55.440 aside from the fact that he's kind of ADHD and he's kind of said that that's true. I think I 00:12:55.440 --> 00:13:03.600 might be too. But his, yeah, every writer is a little bit different. But Linus, 00:13:06.400 --> 00:13:11.840 I feel like he has trouble letting go of the day to day, you know? So over the course of the day, 00:13:11.840 --> 00:13:16.560 he's got so many meetings and so many different things that he needs to do now that trying to get 00:13:16.560 --> 00:13:22.960 a video shot is basically like, okay, we got to get everything ready for him to just walk on set, 00:13:22.960 --> 00:13:30.800 deliver the lines and then walk off set immediately. I can't really talk to Linus anymore, you know? 00:13:30.800 --> 00:13:34.400 That's not really a thing that happens anymore because Linus doesn't have any free time. He even 00:13:34.400 --> 00:13:42.320 has an assistant now to manage his time because he couldn't manage it himself. So yeah, that's the 00:13:42.320 --> 00:13:47.680 big issue right now is that Linus as the CEO of the company and also the face of the company is 00:13:47.760 --> 00:13:57.280 competing for two different goals. And when I'm on one side of those goals, obviously I want that 00:13:57.280 --> 00:14:05.760 side to be more of his focus. But being the CEO, he has to have his detention divided like that. 00:14:05.760 --> 00:14:12.320 No, I don't think Linus has changed at all. And that might be where some people get the idea that 00:14:12.320 --> 00:14:19.600 he's out of touch because it's a big company now, but he hasn't changed how he looks at it. 00:14:19.600 --> 00:14:27.120 Like he still thinks of LMG as kind of like a tight-knit group. And obviously as you grow in 00:14:27.120 --> 00:14:34.400 size and you become a corporation saying that we're all one big family is increasingly hollow. 00:14:34.400 --> 00:14:41.920 But I don't think to him that actually, I don't think he actually disbelieves it. I think that he 00:14:41.920 --> 00:14:47.280 really and truly feels like we're still like a cohesive group that all works together. And 00:14:48.560 --> 00:14:54.320 like I said, I don't know half the people who work here anymore. So that's kind of where 00:14:54.320 --> 00:15:01.120 that comes from, I think. From his perspective, nothing has changed. But the thing is that 00:15:01.120 --> 00:15:05.440 everything else around him has changed and he hasn't. And that's what I'm trying to say. 00:15:05.520 --> 00:15:12.960 And that's where some of the the idea that Linus is out of touch because, I don't know, 00:15:13.760 --> 00:15:17.280 spending a thousand dollars on a GPU doesn't sound like a bad idea anymore, 00:15:17.280 --> 00:15:22.160 but that's mostly because the shock is worn off. Like it's been like that for years now. 00:15:24.400 --> 00:15:29.920 I wish it weren't the case. He's got so many hot takes. The people who want to work here, 00:15:30.640 --> 00:15:34.240 well first of all, they need to know that they need to be a Canadian citizen or 00:15:34.240 --> 00:15:38.800 legal to work in Canada. For some reason, the legal to work in Canada thing is 00:15:39.600 --> 00:15:43.920 so difficult to understand because a lot of Americans think they can just come up here 00:15:43.920 --> 00:15:49.680 and work, but they can't. They need a work permit. But aside from that, like institutionally, 00:15:49.680 --> 00:15:53.440 which I think is the spirit of the question, I mean, don't expect it to be a cakewalk. It's not 00:15:53.440 --> 00:15:59.760 easy working here, no matter what you're doing. It's still a fast-paced environment. It's still a 00:16:00.720 --> 00:16:05.040 growing company. Like we're not stopping the growth anytime soon. There's still job postings, 00:16:05.040 --> 00:16:11.360 I think, on LTT Stood, like the LNG, the Linus Media Group website. Don't expect to see Linus very 00:16:11.360 --> 00:16:17.680 much. That's part of it too. Yeah, it's not a cakewalk and don't expect to see Linus very much. 00:16:17.680 --> 00:16:24.960 That's not because Linus doesn't care. That's the big thing. He very much does. One thing is that I 00:16:24.960 --> 00:16:33.680 think some of the conversations around Linus don't really understand that Linus actually 00:16:33.680 --> 00:16:38.960 isn't like a rude person or anything like that. Like any of the banter that you see in the office 00:16:38.960 --> 00:16:47.120 is just banter. People trolling Linus and Linus trolling other people, that's more of a friendly 00:16:47.120 --> 00:16:52.000 thing than you might think, even if people don't seem to react in the way that you would expect. 00:16:52.560 --> 00:16:58.720 He's very aware. He tries to do his best whatever he does, and that includes with his 00:16:58.720 --> 00:17:05.280 interpersonal relationships with people in the office. He doesn't always get it right, 00:17:06.080 --> 00:17:09.360 but he tries to make it right, and I think that is the important thing. 00:17:11.680 --> 00:17:18.000 And if any of the things that I said throughout my interview here have made it seem like things are 00:17:18.080 --> 00:17:26.960 really negative, that's not really my intention. My intention is that things have changed from 00:17:26.960 --> 00:17:39.040 when I started. And I guess the only way that I know how to, I guess how to express that, 00:17:40.080 --> 00:17:46.880 is all the stuff that kind of affects me directly. The stuff that doesn't affect me 00:17:46.880 --> 00:17:52.880 directly, like we've got processes that make things much smoother now. We've got dedicated HR, 00:17:52.880 --> 00:18:00.960 we've got an accounting department that works really hard, we've got procurement, 00:18:00.960 --> 00:18:08.080 they do actually affect me directly, because I used to have to reach out and talk to people like 00:18:08.080 --> 00:18:15.040 from AMD, NVIDIA directly and like say, hey, can we get this product for review? Or 00:18:15.760 --> 00:18:23.040 with the arcade machine, I reached out to, I don't remember what the site is called now, 00:18:23.040 --> 00:18:34.800 but Andy, not that Andy, over in the UK for Ultimark. And that was harrowing, because that was 00:18:34.800 --> 00:18:38.720 the first outreach I had to do, and it's like, yeah, get on a call with them. And I'm like, oh, 00:18:39.440 --> 00:18:44.720 and Linus is like, yeah, they should know, they should want to do business with us. 00:18:45.440 --> 00:18:53.360 And I'm like, but, but I, what? And like, not having to do that, like, I'm, I'm more comfortable 00:18:53.360 --> 00:18:59.600 doing that now. But not having to do that is a lot of time out of my day that I don't have to take 00:18:59.600 --> 00:19:04.320 anymore. And there's lots of little things like that, that all of the procedures and processes 00:19:04.320 --> 00:19:10.960 and all of the extra structure that we've been building have built up to. And I feel like things 00:19:10.960 --> 00:19:17.120 are getting more streamlined, even though it still feels pretty stressful, at least for me. 00:19:17.120 --> 00:19:28.000 It's something that I have trouble acclimatizing to. I kind of chafe under, I guess, the additional 00:19:28.000 --> 00:19:38.400 restrictions and, you know, management. I don't, I don't like management, you know. But having all 00:19:38.400 --> 00:19:43.680 of those systems in place definitely does make life easier for a lot of people here. And I think 00:19:43.680 --> 00:19:48.960 that the benefits of that outweigh all of the things that I've been saying that have been like 00:19:49.920 --> 00:19:58.320 more negative. So I wouldn't say that what I've been saying so far is like an indictment or anything 00:19:58.320 --> 00:20:03.600 like that. It's just how things have changed. And, you know, change is both good and bad.