I'm Anthony. I'm a writer. I've been working here since 2017, February of 2017. It's been over
six years, which what? As a writer, my duties include writing, actually getting the video ready
to go. So I need to do all of the prep work. I need to do setting up the set, although Andy often
helps a lot with that. Setting up screen capture, setting up any other like props or or skits we
might have. Doing up guidance for the editor so that the editor knows what exactly they should be
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
overlays as well in some cases. So graphs and tables and stuff like that. My duties have expanded
slightly. I guess I'm what you would call a head writer or a lead writer at this point.
Senior at least, which is weird to say. But as a result, I've taken part in a lot of the
consultations and even writing some of the different guides that we use for how to create
graphs and how to do screen cap, that kind of thing. And for a little while I was doing some
of the networking, but Jake has kind of taken over most of that at this point. I have watched
the first video. I was curious as to because I was brand new then. I was curious as to how the
people who had been working with Linus for years felt about working with Linus. And obviously it
was interesting to see myself on screen, which is not something I really expected would happen.
I felt that I would probably be in the background most of the time, but things have changed.
I don't know how that happened. Honestly, it's going to sound cheesy, but the people, like the
team, working with people who are knowledgeable in shooting, for example, I've learned a lot about
cameras. I've learned a lot about lighting. I've learned a lot about a lot of things that I had
no idea that I even didn't know about, right? And I've also been able to help contribute that back
to some of the people in the team as well, which I find very rewarding. I guess the other thing is
there's a lot of cool tech that I get to interact with that I never thought I would be able to
interact with, including some stuff that's like prototype, never seen the light of day. The problem
is that a lot of that really cool tech is really high end and it's kind of spoiled me at this point
and I can't buy a mid-range GPU anymore. Obviously, there was a call for writers. I think this was
the first call for writers that Linus had put out. And the reason I knew that this was happening
is because I had been religiously watching everything, Channel Super Fun, Techquickie,
everything that LMG was putting out. And the reason for this is that in the years prior to me joining
Linus Media Group, I was in a really bad place. My disability from my previous job, I had developed
extreme anxiety due to multiple factors. I don't quite understand all of it, but
that spiraled into depression and basically they were cutting me off from my disability
benefits as well. So more or less, I was like, well, I'm not going to be able to afford to live
anymore. I'm going to be dragging down everybody around me. Well, the only thing I can think of
is very bad. So I'm going to lose myself in YouTube. And the fact that LMG posted YouTube
videos every day, sometimes multiple videos a day because Channel Super Fun and Techquickie,
it was one of the things I had to look forward to. And in kind of the six month period to a year
leading up to me joining Linus Media Group, I started to get a little better. Like I was
exercising more, I was trying to take care of myself and I was feeling more confident. And
when the call for writers went out, I thought, well, if I can't do anything else with my life,
as I am right now, I'm just sitting in a room surrounded by retro consoles. Like I was the
plan was for me to just repair and modify retro consoles that were broken and just resell them.
That was my plan if this fell through. But if I could do something that could give
that kind of escape, if not like lifting people up, then at least give them something to,
you know, get out of their head for enough time that they actually can maybe recover in the way
that I did, then, you know, it wouldn't be a waste. And so I felt like, okay, well, I have
nothing to lose, literally nothing to lose. I'll write a script, I'll put in an application,
I'll write a script, I'll do as best I can, and hope that it works. And a couple months later,
I'm in British Columbia and trying to find a place to stay. So yeah, I mean, I don't know, it's
it's a bit of a heavy story, I know. But that is why I joined. I wanted to give that back.
How hasn't it changed? Really? It's gone from it's sort of a company to it's definitely a company.
Like it has grown tremendously, even over the past year, like I think we doubled our
headcount of the past year, which is insane. I don't think any of anybody even Linus included
would have thought that that would happen back in 2017 when they hired me on and, you know,
and James and Jake and Alex during that hiring spree. I think that was like, that was a big expansion
back then. But now, like I'm going to level, I'll level with you, I don't actually know half of
the people who work here anymore. There are people who work here that I don't know exist.
And that's a weird feeling. As a result, we've had to get a lot more,
I guess the word that I want to use is corporate, but it's it's kind of like we have more structure
where we're more rigid now than we were before. It feels less like I'm like a group like in a group
of like peers who are trying to just do something. And I feel like I'm more of like a part of an
organization, which is it's got its pros and cons. It's not that it's bad. It's that it's
different. And I I'm still trying to process how that all works out. I do. I do. There are some
things that I don't miss, like just doing things wrong a lot like we still do. But
like stuff like doing screencap at the wrong resolution. And then it looks blurry as crap on
YouTube because it has to be resized and squished. And it's basically like three different levels of
resize blur. You know, like things like hardware reviews before I started here, we didn't really
have much in the way of testing. I looked back at like some of the reviews that happened even in
the couple of months before I started. And a lot of it was just like Linus standing there with
nothing else on the screen just talking about, you know, what this chip is, which when you think
about it compared to today, we have a lot more production value, we have more information on
screen, we have more information to actually say, we have a lot of testing. And the testing is more
thorough. That's not to say that that was all me, but the focus changed a lot at that point in
time. And it seems like it's changing again to become even more in depth. So I guess I'm not
sure where I was going with that, but basically we're at a point where we're a lot more professional
in what we do. And it's weird being thought of as a professional. Oh, yeah, absolutely,
still. Yeah, it doesn't, doesn't go away. Imposter syndrome, I had that the very moment
that I sent off the application, I'm like, yeah, this is not going to work.
Imposter syndrome is just one of those things that I think everybody has.
For me, it hits a little harder because of where I was before I started here.
And just going from being nobody and throughout school being somebody that people just straight
up didn't like to being seen on the street and like people like, oh, minus tech tips. Or like,
oh, hey, you're Anthony, right? And like, I'm totally fine with that just to be clear. But
that is completely baffling to me. I have no idea that that was going to actually happen.
I thought that I would be invisible, right? The possibility that I would even appear on camera
was in my mind very slim when I first started. I mean, I would probably say Colton. No,
the real worst part I think is because of the rising production values in our videos,
I feel a lot like I'm crunching more than I ever was that and we're much more strict about how
much time we're able to work in the course of the day. So like, I can't stay a little longer
in one day to make sure I don't have to rush the next day. So everything's kind of more compressed
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
miss the more laid back way that things were a couple of years ago. There's a few things that
I can think of. I mean, for one, like there are people who think that, you know, somebody sends
us a product to review that we value having that product on hand. We could just go out and buy that.
It doesn't really matter that the value in that is having it before having to go buy it so we can
have a review ready for people to see on launch day. Like, realistically speaking, Linus has
over 100 employees now. So, not EVGA anymore. AMD or NVIDIA sending Linus a GPU is not going
to sway his opinion one way or the other. It's just not how that works. Not at the scale anyway.
It does work that way with smaller, smaller creators, right? Like that is a that is a concern.
But for us, it's not a big deal. I guess the other thing would be it's not an amusement park.
I mean, if you wander through the warehouse, you could spend hours looking at all the cool stuff
we have, which I mean, we could probably charge tickets for that, right? Just have guided tours
through the warehouse. Like LTX. But everybody here has a job to do, right? And whether you're a
writer, you're a shooter, you're logistics, you're the accounting team, business, create a warehouse,
it doesn't really matter. You have a job to do. And there's a bit of a notion that we're very
laid back here. And we are in comparison to say, you know, a floor shift at Best Buy or Walmart.
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
sitting back and playing video games all day, which would be great. But
it's just not how it is. This is an interesting question. Because when I first started, I still
had that kind of starstruck feeling. So if you look at me in the first video, I say,
I'm working side by side with the CEO of the company. And I'm like, super impressed by that.
And now it's like, whatever, it's Linus, right? It's weird how that changes. But part of it is
because Linus is a really not quite genuine person who honestly and truly wants to do the best that
he can in pretty much everything that he does. So be it delivering an A-roll, like a lot of the
time he'll stop after doing, say, an intro and say, how is the energy? Should I be more energetic?
I can do better. I'll do better. And that's something that he does a lot. He doesn't have any time.
That's the worst part. There's nothing specifically wrong with working with Linus,
aside from the fact that he's kind of ADHD and he's kind of said that that's true. I think I
might be too. But his, yeah, every writer is a little bit different. But Linus,
I feel like he has trouble letting go of the day to day, you know? So over the course of the day,
he's got so many meetings and so many different things that he needs to do now that trying to get
a video shot is basically like, okay, we got to get everything ready for him to just walk on set,
deliver the lines and then walk off set immediately. I can't really talk to Linus anymore, you know?
That's not really a thing that happens anymore because Linus doesn't have any free time. He even
has an assistant now to manage his time because he couldn't manage it himself. So yeah, that's the
big issue right now is that Linus as the CEO of the company and also the face of the company is
competing for two different goals. And when I'm on one side of those goals, obviously I want that
side to be more of his focus. But being the CEO, he has to have his detention divided like that.
No, I don't think Linus has changed at all. And that might be where some people get the idea that
he's out of touch because it's a big company now, but he hasn't changed how he looks at it.
Like he still thinks of LMG as kind of like a tight-knit group. And obviously as you grow in
size and you become a corporation saying that we're all one big family is increasingly hollow.
But I don't think to him that actually, I don't think he actually disbelieves it. I think that he
really and truly feels like we're still like a cohesive group that all works together. And
like I said, I don't know half the people who work here anymore. So that's kind of where
that comes from, I think. From his perspective, nothing has changed. But the thing is that
everything else around him has changed and he hasn't. And that's what I'm trying to say.
And that's where some of the the idea that Linus is out of touch because, I don't know,
spending a thousand dollars on a GPU doesn't sound like a bad idea anymore,
but that's mostly because the shock is worn off. Like it's been like that for years now.
I wish it weren't the case. He's got so many hot takes. The people who want to work here,
well first of all, they need to know that they need to be a Canadian citizen or
legal to work in Canada. For some reason, the legal to work in Canada thing is
so difficult to understand because a lot of Americans think they can just come up here
and work, but they can't. They need a work permit. But aside from that, like institutionally,
which I think is the spirit of the question, I mean, don't expect it to be a cakewalk. It's not
easy working here, no matter what you're doing. It's still a fast-paced environment. It's still a
growing company. Like we're not stopping the growth anytime soon. There's still job postings,
I think, on LTT Stood, like the LNG, the Linus Media Group website. Don't expect to see Linus very
much. That's part of it too. Yeah, it's not a cakewalk and don't expect to see Linus very much.
That's not because Linus doesn't care. That's the big thing. He very much does. One thing is that I
think some of the conversations around Linus don't really understand that Linus actually
isn't like a rude person or anything like that. Like any of the banter that you see in the office
is just banter. People trolling Linus and Linus trolling other people, that's more of a friendly
thing than you might think, even if people don't seem to react in the way that you would expect.
He's very aware. He tries to do his best whatever he does, and that includes with his
interpersonal relationships with people in the office. He doesn't always get it right,
but he tries to make it right, and I think that is the important thing.
And if any of the things that I said throughout my interview here have made it seem like things are
really negative, that's not really my intention. My intention is that things have changed from
when I started. And I guess the only way that I know how to, I guess how to express that,
is all the stuff that kind of affects me directly. The stuff that doesn't affect me
directly, like we've got processes that make things much smoother now. We've got dedicated HR,
we've got an accounting department that works really hard, we've got procurement,
they do actually affect me directly, because I used to have to reach out and talk to people like
from AMD, NVIDIA directly and like say, hey, can we get this product for review? Or
with the arcade machine, I reached out to, I don't remember what the site is called now,
but Andy, not that Andy, over in the UK for Ultimark. And that was harrowing, because that was
the first outreach I had to do, and it's like, yeah, get on a call with them. And I'm like, oh,
and Linus is like, yeah, they should know, they should want to do business with us.
And I'm like, but, but I, what? And like, not having to do that, like, I'm, I'm more comfortable
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
anymore. And there's lots of little things like that, that all of the procedures and processes
and all of the extra structure that we've been building have built up to. And I feel like things
are getting more streamlined, even though it still feels pretty stressful, at least for me.
It's something that I have trouble acclimatizing to. I kind of chafe under, I guess, the additional
restrictions and, you know, management. I don't, I don't like management, you know. But having all
of those systems in place definitely does make life easier for a lot of people here. And I think
that the benefits of that outweigh all of the things that I've been saying that have been like
more negative. So I wouldn't say that what I've been saying so far is like an indictment or anything
like that. It's just how things have changed. And, you know, change is both good and bad.