Linus Tech Tips (LTT) release investigation results on former accusations
Linus Tech Tips (LTT) release investigation results on former accusations
There were a series of accusations about our company last August from a former employee. Immediately following these accusations, LMG hired Roper Greyell - a large Vancouver-based law firm specializing in labor and employment law, to conduct a third-party investigation. Their website describes them as “one of the largest employment and labour law firms in Western Canada.” They work with both private and public sector employers.
To ensure a fair investigation, LMG did not comment or publicly release any data and asked our team members to do the same. Now that the investigation is complete, we’re able to provide a summary of the findings.
The investigation found that:
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Claims of bullying and harassment were not substantiated.
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Allegations that sexual harassment were ignored or not addressed were false.
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Any concerns that were raised were investigated. Furthermore, from reviewing our history, the investigator is confident that if any other concerns had been raised, we would have investigated them.
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There was no evidence of “abuse of power” or retaliation. The individual involved may not have agreed with our decisions or performance feedback, but our actions were for legitimate work-related purposes, and our business reasons were valid.
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Allegations of process errors and miscommunication while onboarding this individual were partially substantiated, but the investigator found ample documentary evidence of LMG working to rectify the errors and the individual being treated generously and respectfully. When they had questions, they were responded to and addressed.
In summary, as confirmed by the investigation, the allegations made against the team were largely unfounded, misleading, and unfair.
With all of that said, in the spirit of ongoing improvement, the investigator shared their general recommendation that fast-growing workplaces should invest in continuing professional development. The investigator encouraged us to provide further training to our team about how to raise concerns to reinforce our existing workplace policies.
Prior to receiving this report, LMG solicited anonymous feedback from the team in an effort to ensure there was no unreported bullying and harassment and hosted a training session which reiterated our workplace policies and reinforced our reporting structure. LMG will continue to assess ongoing continuing education for our team.
At this time, we feel our case for a defamation suit would be very strong; however, our deepest wish is to simply put all of this behind us. We hope that will be the case, given the investigator’s clear findings that the allegations made online were misrepresentations of what actually occurred. We will continue to assess if there is persistent reputational damage or further defamation.
This doesn’t mean our company is perfect and our journey is over. We are continuously learning and trying to do better. Thank you all for being part of our community.
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I feel like the fact they paid the same party that investigated them is an obvious enough conflict of interest to dismiss this out of hand. Whether the report is actually trustworthy or not, there is an incentive to come to a conclusion that aligns with whomever paid them and that alone should make people question the conclusions being made.
At my work we pay auditors to assess our security controls and I would chose a different company if I thought they were being anything less than honest with us on their findings. The agreements and SOW are set up at the beginning of the engagement, so the investigators get paid regardless of their findings. It's not like the bond rating agencies on Wall Street.
There's a difference in stakes and impact and intent: the client firm is actively interested in finding security holes and the outcome of a negative security report does not (usually) directly affect the continuing operations of the business or impact on the personal reputations of the business owners their ability to conduct business, or how moral they're perceived by society.
A negative report here would be a devastating blow on Linus himself, his business is built around him and relies on audiences trusting him, it would also open up the door for legal action that could result in massive monetary damages and fines.
I've had "independent" valuations and audits. I've seen how these firms work - and it's not independent. They obey the people that pay them or they don't get any work in the future from anyone else "that firm destroyed my business".
The most suspect aspect of the report is that they found nothing negative, everything was perfect. This on its face doesn't ring true for any business I've ever seen, as well as how they responded to the accusations and how many people came out to accuse them.
You don't think it's possible that the accusations were mostly unfounded and the LTT crew are just decent people? They did bring up some issues with onboarding which are completely expected on smaller companies.
It's entirely possible that literally everything she claimed was false or exaggerated but there's still enough evidence of Linus acting less than decently on the WAN show with regard to his other actions that cast doubt.
The man who took another company's prototype and auctioned it off then claimed that they already had an agreement before contacting them somehow had zero evidence of abuse of power? We should assume that his willingness to abuse his power ends at his businesses doorstep because some of his co-workers are decent people?
Of course it's possible. But after that devastating Gamers Nexus debacle, Linus being actively dismissing of peoples concerns until it became a public issue, the multiple employees saying they were worked off their feet unable to do their job properly, and generally being a toxic environment... this firm gives it a perfectly clean bill of health - that's not likely.
yeah, lets remember that the sexual misconduct allegations were just a part of a far larger overall issue with regards to LTT. From Linus being a cunt about warranties, to stealing prototypes and refusing to return them, to lying to the public about having to come to an agreement with the said victims of the theft before ever having even contacted the victims in the first place, to putting out a fake apology video where they joke about the actual crimes they committed.
and this firm they paid saying they are clear does nothing to absolve them from all the other shitty, asshole, dishonest shit they've done, nor does it make Linus any less of a cunt.
Yep, the law firm here says anything bad and they're opening themselves for ltt being sued by ex employee. And if employee loses ltt will go after law firm for defamation.
Who else should pay them?
LITERALLY ANYONE THAT DOES NOT STAND TO GAIN FROM ONE CONCLUSION OR ANOTHER.
Okay. Who are those people and why should they have to pay?
Develop an original thought instead of the same one the other linus simps copy pasted as a response.
I don't get it mate, you had me at your first comment because it seemed fairly written. But lose me at the following 2.
So, a charity should fund it?
Because the acuser cannot afford it. And you take issue with the company doing it. An unrelated 3rd party thst gains nothing wod literally just be losing money for no gain at all. So a non-profit or charity.
So you advocate for charities underwriting corporate sexual assault investigations instead of the companies involved?
Maybe the journalists that levelled the accusations public ally should contribute?
Shut up
Fuck back off to reddit.
Get off my internet
Pissing you off is fun. And easy. So very easy.
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Okay. So what should LTT have done?
Ignore it completely and not respond?
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Okay. So you didn't want LTT to do anything, and just wait for the courts?
The courts who, almost certainly, are not going to get involved in adjudicating a social media post accusation
Update: The parent poster removed mention of waiting for the court system from their post.
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Why would there be an automatic court case?
Great. A court case would satisfy a lot of the people in this comment section. It would be a third party. It definitely wouldn't be paid for by Linus tech tips.
However, on the balance of data we have, there will be no court case. The complainant specified they were not going to file with the labor board. Without an official attestation a labor board will not investigate.
As far as a criminal prosecution goes, almost certainly the original complainant would have to testify as well.
In either circumstance, I don't see any government action, without somebody going on the record and officially complaining under penalty of perjury.
So then who pays the investigators? Money trees?
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Why would anyone who has no skin in the game bother?
Are you randomly paying legal firms to investigate companies you are completely unaffiliated with?
Invite a third party to do it. The funds could have come from crowd-sourcing.
They hired an outside firm to audit them. That's industry best practice
As far as the payment for the outside fund, I think they would have come under even more criticism if they crowdfunded the third party investigation. And then they would still be accused of having undue influence, because they would have chosen the third party.
In one sense they did crowdfund it, they just paid for the whole thing themselves.
They hired an outside firm to audit them. That's industry best practice
That practice has lost its credibility.
The independent outside organization to do this, is the labor board. The original complainant did not want to involve the labor board for whatever reason. And chose to air their grievances on social media.
I don't believe a business can invite the labor board to prove they didn't do something they haven't officially been accused of doing. And that's the only organization that would be a credible third party, not paid for by the business
So in the realm of standard business practices, they did the best they could do
for whatever reason
The reason is probably because LTT hasn't done anything wrong in this case, as this report shows.
Sounds like you have a bit of a hate boner.
I'd like to receive criticism to what I presented instead of you resorting to ad-hominem, please.
Nobody wants to watch a video to participate in a text-based debate
Agreed. Plus the video only says, when companies hire third parties to audit them, there is a conflict of interest. That's true. In the sector of financial auditing, there's a discussion to be had about the reputation of audit firms, versus their desire to get more clients. And that's very interesting and deep discussion.
But the video does not present a better option. Especially when no third party is doing an investigation, or really cares about the outcome at all.
Nobody wants to watch a video to participate in a text-based debate
Why not? What's wrong with using the most presentable, easy to digest content? If I needed to present a graph to support my claim would you rather have me describe that information in text rather than link to a picture or a video that shows that graph?
Also, there's no need to watch the videos in length either to get what I'm presenting either. They describe and support proof to my 2 claims,
- Investigator should be independent
- There should be no conflict of interest in where money is coming from to pay the investigator
I presented 3 videos in a few comments but didn't want to spam it to every reply. But here they are for your convenience.
- https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qwbq9OsHvp4
- https://youtu.be/CTxt96DwaFk?si=0KHoVdFElOoH0-Za
- https://youtu.be/C_0XEIFGK5o?si=Yc_hONVBDGcEV_t6
If you were thinking that we were having a debate, why don't you stick to debate rules and present a rebuttal to my claims?
I had a longer comment here but it failed to post and I don't care enough to retype it. TL;DR: Not everyone can watch videos in their current situation or at all, and videos are often long and you have to fish the person's point out of it instead of them making their own point (making the other person put in way more effort than you did). Your summary alleviates the second point, which is appreciated. I don't care about the underlying debate that much, but to reply, I don't see an alternative for who would pay for the investigation, since the alleged victim did not wish to pursue it themself.
They tried that. It didn't seem to work. This was just plan-b.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=qwbq9OsHvp4
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Unless I'm reading it wrong thats exactly what they did, hire a third party, external agency to conduct an investigation. If the complaint is that it's biased because they paid them, then idk what else you wanted them to do. I could understand not fully trusting them still, that's your opinion and choice, but criticizing them for conducting a voluntary third party investigation is a little silly
What.
In what world does this happen?
It's how all the serious stuff in the world are handled.
- Courts of law
- Open source code
- Scientific peer review
Although there's a fair bit of corruption in all if the above platforms, they are consistently better than "I investigated myself and didn't find any evidence" solutions. Mind you, even EY the financial audit giant was caught red handed presenting what their client wanted to say, instead of trying to find the truth. I recommend that you look into this scandal.
That's not what I was referring to. I meant using a commercial third party investigation for the alleged wrongdoings of a company (just like what happened here), except it's funded through crowd sourcing. When has that ever happened?
Like, who is the demographic that would pay for that? In the end, I figure it would still most likely be an invested party coughing up a substantial part of the money.
Only in fantasy. That's when it happened.
Subscribers donating to Gamer Nexus so that they can do investigative journalism without licking manifacturer boots? That's crowd-sourcing. Didn't you watch their recent couple of videos?
Don't forget that that's how this whole fiasco started. Do you think Linus would have done this without GN doing that video? And the viewers giving Linus hell because of it?
You keep trying to move the conversation to different subjects, but I want to address your initial claim - inviting a third party to do an independent investigation of a company's alleged wrongdoings. I never heard of such a thing occurring.
But fine, let's go with your example.
If there was a scandal at GN, and they'd use that crowd source money to pay for a third party investigation, it would somehow be better than what LMG did now?
Obviously not. That's what I've been trying to say. There should be no conflict of interest. It would be exactly the same as what LMG did.
Always follow the money.
Why do you say I tried to change the conversation topic? All my replies are sticking to
- Independent investigation
- Crowd-sourced funds (or in its essence, no conflict of interest)
Admittedly my wording could be improved in my original comment in hindsight. What I meant was that there should be no conflict of interest in where the money was coming from. So Linus paying for it is a major conflict of interest. I have provided several links that look into this subject in this post. I recommend that you read them.
inviting a third party to do an independent investigation of a company's alleged wrongdoings. I never heard of such a thing occurring.
Look into how IMF (International Monetary Fund) does audits and reviews. They don't do reports proactively. They do it only when invited by a country.
Yes I know you asked for a company but I gave you country. I'll update if a company name comes to my mind that did exactly what I suggested.
Yeah, nor does the country crowd source the money for the investigation, so I'm starting to see a pattern in your answers.
Have a good weekend.
Yeah, nor does the country crowd source the money for the investigation,
But they do. IMF pools its money from its member countries, hence crowd sourcing. The country being investigated doesn't pay them.
so I'm starting to see a pattern in your answers.
What pattern is that?
A good weekend for you too.
So they just have to sit around and hope that another company does the investigation then for free? I really don't know what you want, I understand your point, but there's literally no solution to that problem.
They sue for defamation or don't
Yeah, but who pays for it then?
The point of these firms are to be an imperial 3rd party. You pay your notary to confirm that you signed a document. But if they just lied for whoever paid them they wouldn't be trusted to provide that service.
These firms get paid before they release their findings. They have no incentive to make their clients look good, and it would tarnish their reputation as a neutral third party
ROFL, their incentive is the next job. Companies aren't going to higher a company that finds against its clients....