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.
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.
That practice has lost its credibility.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwbq9OsHvp4
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
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.
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,
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
But they do. IMF pools its money from its member countries, hence crowd sourcing. The country being investigated doesn't pay them.
What pattern is that?
A good weekend for you too.
If the IMF was investigating Linus tech tips, this would be a good example
However if a country is not borrowing money from the IMF, and they want to prove or disprove they did something, and no third party is investigating, that country would have to hire somebody to do the investigation for them.
Right now, no third party organization, the labor board, or a criminal prosecutor, is investigating Linus tech tips. So there is no third party to invite in to do the investigation of the social media post.
That means if the company wants to disprove the accusations, it has to do an audit itself. It can conduct an internal audit, or an external audit. Linus text tips chose to do an external audit, using a reputable third party. Admittedly they did pay that third party, but that is how they incentivize them to actually do the audit. This third party is supposed to be above reproach, because this is the thing they do over and over again.
However, it is reasonable to say this is unsatisfactory, and you should encourage the Canadian labor board to do an investigation instead
So you are saying the countries inviting the IMF can be among those countries that pay the IMF?
So that would be a conflict of interest?
There won't be a conflict of interest because everyone is paying. So it's not in the best interest of the other member countries if a corrupt country is getting a favourable report. Because their member fees are being wasted. So there's checks and balances inherently built into the system.
So in a hypothetical similar scenario this report requested by LMG is funded by GN, Hardware Unboxed, The Verge and all the other YouTubers including the LMG. So there's incentive to find faults in LMG within the group funding the report.