WEBVTT

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it's been a long time since my boss called me into their office and gave me

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a string talking to it wasn't easy and I had it coming but the good news is that

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most of what the boss that's you is asking for has been underway for months

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or in some cases even years that's why we're Under New Management

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but as happy as I am that taryn's here

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he can't make these kinds of changes alone which is why step one was an all

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hands meeting to hear directly from everyone on our team and step two was to

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kick off an unprecedented company-wide period of introspection no videos no

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tweets no product launches for an entire

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week we have done almost nothing but dig through every misstep and conduct

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face-to-face meetings between our teams with the goal of surfacing the

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communication and the teamwork challenges that have brought us to this

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point it's been a bit of a roller coaster full of passionate disagreement

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and then finding common ground Aaron Grievances and then reconciliation

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but through it all we put together a plan it took longer than the week that

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we promised you but the way that I see it that's not a bug that's a feature and

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it underscores our new commitment to do whatever it takes to move Beyond just

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entertainment to become the authoritative voice that you guys deserve and the one that we all want to

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be before I laid it out though I just want to address two important groups

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first to everyone who wanted to see us Rise Up

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from this better than ever I just want to say thank you for being here

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um thank you for sharing our passion for technology

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um thank you for the countless messages that you guys have sent encouraging us

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as we navigate this difficult time and most of all thank you for being

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willing to criticize something that you love in order to make it better we're

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here for you we are not going anywhere second I want to address everyone who

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wanted to see us fail I guess all the same stuff

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um we're here for you we're not going anywhere and you're going to have to

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deal with that let's kick off with the content reforms then shall we for starters along with

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our reduction NVIDIA output to get a handle on all of our new quality focused

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process changes we have officially killed the haven't missed an upload in

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10 plus years mentality and we've made it explicitly clear that if a video is

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not ready for prime time we're going to stop the presses until we've had a

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chance to make the proper fixes now that might sometimes come in the form of an

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on-screen correction but there's going to be better transparency we've created

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a clear rubric that defines error severity and prescribes the appropriate

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fix which can range from a pinned comment to a full reshoot or even the

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outright cancellation of the video you're going to find that linked down

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below second we've made significant changes to project management and load

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balancing with a prioritization on in-person meetings to help Define

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project scope and ensure that everyone is aligned our expectation going forward

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is that nobody is ever just making

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graphs about something that hasn't been explained to them or that they don't

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fully understand this will not only improve accuracy but it will give us the

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opportunity to present data in more interesting and more digestible ways

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I've actually got a preview of what this might look like from an upcoming video

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that the Labs team is super proud of where they're analyzing the consistency

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of performance across a 12 unit sampling of what are supposedly identical AMD

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ryzen processors based on these preliminary results looks

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like you can buy the exact same computer as your friend and end up with pretty

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different performance interesting if true

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of course I'm not going to ask you to take my word for it we have a lot of

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progress to make on our goal of publishing our full testing methodologies but we've opened up the

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Forum thread that we promised soliciting feedback and we've outlined the dates

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that we're expecting to deliver on some of our methodologies and the open

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sourcing of our in-game testing harnesses for those who don't want to click the

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link you can expect to find some updates around the middle of September

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a good methodology is only a small part of the battle though and if there's one

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thing that we learned from all of this it's that we need better processes for

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accuracy checking the good news is that flowcharts are

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good for more than just memes and we have just such a process now every video

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with Labs testing will be checked by Labs one to two times before shooting

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and then an additional time after the video has been edited any show stopping

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issues found during these reviews will do exactly that they will stop the show

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you guys deserve better than what we've delivered up until this time and that's

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what we want to give you after our internal reviews this week we

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have unlisted and demonetized multiple videos that contained erroneous data and

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we will be updating or otherwise issuing error Corrections on others you'll find

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a link to a summary of these changes to previous Labs content down below but our

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priority going forward is to publish our error Corrections according to the new

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guidelines that I gave you guys a moment ago one problem that we can't solve

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internally is that nobody can know everything and even experts can make

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mistakes that's why we're kicking off the error checking Community or ECC

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Squad it's still in the alpha stage right now with a group of fewer than 10

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extremely knowledgeable community members and we may or we may not ever

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expand beyond that but we are going to have a link down below if you're

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interested in hearing more about this program in the event that we roll it out

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more broadly in the short term as we roll out all our new processes and

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inevitably find some wrinkles these folks might find stuff that does get

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missed but in the longer term our goal is to have our internal systems be so

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solid that the ECC Squad pretty much turns into a free Early Access group for

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subject matter experts in our community with the odd

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um actually to help us do better now something I want to be clear about

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is that you are still going to see some ad hoc less formal testing I mean we've

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got a video coming up where I'm fixing my computer and I've run over to Lucas

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in the lab to help diagnose a dead power supply we're going to conduct quick and

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dirty tests where we just take two laptops and Press buttons and how long it takes to

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open an application sometimes the full treatment isn't

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necessary but we're going to make sure that we are

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clearly communicating that to you finally recognizing that Improvement is

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a journey not a destination we're using our Newfound time to run weekly writing

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team postmortems to identify the areas where we're killing it

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and the ones where we're really not our

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findings will be used to both improve accuracy and also the quality of our

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content moving on to the business side of things there's not much changing here

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except more transparency and that's actually a common theme throughout all

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of this we've recognized many of our

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biggest areas for improvement for years I mean that's why we have the

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sponsor complaint thread on the forum for example which we've now committed to

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providing weekly updates on and that's why we had our internal sponsorship

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guidelines which now you will find linked down below available in public

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that's also why we brought in an experienced manager Taryn who is

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off-site this week or I would have brought him in to chat with you guys as well there are some other changes we've

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committed to and followed through on providing more proactive information to

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our team during crisis time we've built out a clear schedule for one-on-ones

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between team members and managers and we've established a path to reducing the

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number of direct reports for each manager and a bunch of other stuff that

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we're going to continue to work on in the background I do think one of the most pressing

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things that you guys want to hear about though is that we have revised our

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process for item tracking to a heartbeat system that requires our procurement

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team to follow up pending projects and update their status

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they didn't do anything wrong before but

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this should help to avoid any confusion going forward around items that start

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out as we don't need it back and then turn into a loan later on I do not want

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to see something accidentally end up in the Christmas party pile or any other

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don't need it anymore pile again now

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let's talk about our workplace culture we offer a solid benefits package

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including extended Health mental health and dental coverage as well as

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Retirement savings contributions and matching we proactively host regular

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team building events including summer of fun which gives every full-time local

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employee up to 300 to spend on any activities they want with other members

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of our team bi-weekly gaming nights in the lounge with free food weekly

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badminton nights bi-weekly softball nights and a quarterly budget for

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department-wide team building events we organize occasional surprise field trips

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where people are paid to have fun together and our Christmas parties are

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legendary with surprise bonuses that over the years have included free

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laptops wild raffle prize halls and ten

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thousand dollars in bonus money per person not once but twice on that last

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one and while we don't make a point of talking about that stuff much and while

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Our intention was never to publish our findings earlier this year we also asked

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our HR team to conduct one-on-one meetings company-wide to identify key

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issues and do a temperature check to see how everyone was feeling our

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communication internally about the actions we've taken based on the surveys

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hasn't been perfect we've gotten some feedback that the Monday morning meeting

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notes are dense and hard to parse but in

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June we laid out a road map for many of the improvements that we had already

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made or planned to make based on the one-on-ones

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now for those of you paying very close attention you probably heard me mention

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our HR team which isn't consistent with

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the impression that many people seem to have of our structure here a portion of

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our community seems to think that the only option to report grievances here is

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to your boss or to your other boss and I

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just don't really know what to say other than that is simply not the case

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there was a time when we were very small and yes I did handle all the HR

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complaints that was years ago and the same is true

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for Yvonne in 2018 we passed 25

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employees and we engaged an outside HR Council to advise us on what we were

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doing right and what could be done better in 2020 we grew to 40 team

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members and we brought in an outside HR firm making them available to all

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employees if they needed to talk to them this was on top of the usual recommended

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conflict resolution steps of discussing your issue with the other person talking

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to your manager talking to their manager talking to ownership or filling out an

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anonymous feedback form then as we approached 100 team members we added a

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dedicated in-house HR department with the goal of providing even more

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resources to our team to be clear Yvonne and I do both still

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have an open door policy so team members do still have the option of talking to

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us directly if that's their preference

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and I don't know how to emphasize this enough

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everything that I just talked about existed before last week this is not

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some kind of knee-jerk reactionary Corporal nonsense the one exception the

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one new thing is the emergency upgrade that we made to our health plan in

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recent weeks a shocking number of our team members have been harassed bullied

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and even threatened on social media so effective September 2023 we have doubled

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our coverage for mental health counseling and

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all I have to say other than that is that if you're one of the people who engaged in this Behavior I refuse to

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refer to you as members of our community you know who you are and shame on you

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not one of our team members deserved that

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we have a zero tolerance policy for any of that crap and we always have

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regarding our workload we work hard here

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I've never denied that but we also aren't running some kind of

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deranged Twitter 2.0 Ultra Hardcore

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operation this is the morning and night

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surveillance footage of our parking lot at the studio for five work days leading

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up to our week of introspection we offer some flexibility around start and end

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times so you'll see that some people roll in starting around 8 30 and then as

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you can see the ones who arrive later are typically gone by around 6 30.

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there are exceptions that Friday you'll see we were filming up until the WAN

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show thanks guys also our cleaning

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contractors come in after hours so that's um that's their van so that they

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don't disrupt production and sometimes folks will stick around if they need a

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big space for tabletop gaming but to characterize our environment as

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some kind of 24 7 Sweatshop is frankly ridiculous

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we also do work overtime sometimes

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we're in a competitive industry it happens and I've never denied that

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either but we care about our team and I

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think this is reflected both in our commitment to cut content moving forward

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until we get our house in order and in our historical turnover rate

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from 2013 to 2023 inclusive our average

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turnover rate was 7.5 percent with a median value of 7.7 those numbers

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include both people who resigned their positions and people who were dismissed

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for context according to Workforce research for Mercer the Canadian average

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is 18 while in the U.S it's around 20 percent we have had two years over that

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span that were less than exemplary but even then we were lower than average

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removing the people who were dismissed from their positions we fall to 3.65

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average 1.9 percent median being a media

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company our departures are a little louder than most but in the grand scheme

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of things I hope you guys can see that the numbers show there really aren't

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that many of them but with that said we have heard you as

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part of our unwavering commitment to improve our turnover may rise as we take

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decisive steps to do better for you to be clear this is not supposed to be

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stressful for the hard-working members of our team

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we have no plans for layoffs we're even still hiring our rainy day fund is going

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to comfortably carry us through this storm the vast majority of this team is world

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class they care so much about our community and igniting passion for

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technology and they are going to be here for you