Linus Tech Tips (LTT) release investigation results on former accusations

sverit@lemmy.ml to Technology@lemmy.world – 322 points –
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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:

  • Claims of bullying and harassment were not substantiated.

  • Allegations that sexual harassment were ignored or not addressed were false.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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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"We've thoroughly investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong"

Is anyone shocked?

e: imagine being so pathetic you get your rocks off by being a ltt boot licker. Oh wait at least 50 of you don't need to imagine that do you.

We’ve thoroughly investigated ourselves

but that's the point... they didn't

They paid someone with incentive not to find anything, to investigate what LTT decided to share. Yeah, no, I'm not resubscribing. But I guess consultants recommended more trainings so at least there's some competition for the least surprising outcome.

so now it's just shit you made up... (i cannot believe i'm defending lmg)

I think you're forgetting initial responses from LMG to this whole fiasco. They didn't appear to be acting in good faith then and now I'm setting a bar for trust higher than I would otherwise.

i think they did act in good faith, but since linus can't handle any form of criticism and most of them are inexperienced with stuff like this they made a metric fuckton of mistakes... however, this has nothing to do with the outcome of the investigation. "setting a bar for trust higher" does not mean "the outcome is invalid because i think they paid the investigators hush money"

The outcome of the investigation is a statement by a third party which can't present proof so ultimately this is still about trust.

How would you suggest a firm to investigate wrongdoings other than asking a third party to do it?

Release an actual report of the investigation by the third party rather than a statement.

What claim was investigated, what proof did they find if any, what evidence did they have access to etc.

Finding no proof of wrongdoing or proof of no wrongdoing is a big difference.

Release your proof of a negative! Square your circle! Invent a perpetual motion machine!

You can't have "proof of no wrong doing," because you can't prove a negative.

Good point, thank you for pointing it out.

Maybe a better way to phrase it is that a report from the investigator could qualify what they considered/found when they said the claims were false, baseless etc, and any evidence they found/data they had access to. (E.g. if they could look at all internal communication but their data retention policy is 6 months and this happened 7 months ago, its not the same as not finding anything)

For example, "allegations of sexual harassment were ignored or not addressed" is a wide range. It could be there were no allegations recorded from the employee (as in, they weren't reported), or they were addressed by a slap on the wrist or a "just don't do that again" to introducing workplace behaviour training, forcing the perpetrator to go through it, suspending them without pay and so on.

You are right it's not proof of no wrongdoing, but it would serve as proof that they handled things in a generally suitable manner, rather than that they managed to twist things around to check a box for the investigator.

I get it's fun to dunk on them with a meme comment, but that's literally the exact opposite of what they did.

We’ve thoroughly investigated ourselves

They didn't though?

We paid for someone to investigate ourselves and coincidentally they found nothing?

That's the thing though... how could you investigate something (which costs time, thus money) without letting someone pay for it? Would you suggest that alleged victims should pay for the investigation instead?

What construction would be reasonable for you to investigate wrongdoings?

Uh... Do you work for free? I sure don't. If courts assigned an impartial investigator, I certainly didn't hear about it.

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