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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 6th, 2023

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  • No, it’s realistic. If a manager at your workplace asks you to do something you don’t like, you say “I don’t want to do it”, and they insist - you push back. Is it toxic and stupid that they did that? Yes. But companies get away with this shit because people don’t push back.

    Speaking up publicly after-the-fact is great too. It raises awareness and helps give a voice to people whose livelihood is tied up in a company they can’t stand to support due to toxic working conditions. It helps raise awareness to C-suite execs that there may be a managerial issue causing it. It’s a good step that some companies take in stride, and actually turn around to improve things. Time will tell if that’s the case here.


  • I don’t think calling LMG a pile of shit is very apologetic nor an indicator that I’m somebody who works there.

    I also don’t think “management needs to do/should have done better” and “I hope she is doing something that brings joy” and “I hope she was able to pull good insight out of a shitty situation” is very victim blamey.

    It’s hard to run a company, and maintain a positive working culture, but there’s no excuse if they continue to allow those kind of working conditions. Make no mistake, LMG sucks for how Madison was allowed to be treated (and most certainly others, see also in other comments I’ve made that it’s a systemic problem).


  • Not belittling the situation, toxic workplaces are horrible but they can become so very easily without conscience effort to prevent it. It’s clear that, at the very least, that effort hasn’t been made. I would hope Linus and the rest of upper mgmt don’t intend to normalize sexual harassment, verbal abuse, or threats- rather, they aren’t aware of the extent of it or are feeling upward pressure not to retaliate because they have so many toxic employees.

    I’ve made it pretty clear in my message that I blame the company as a whole, and don’t think it’s one person. It’s a systemic issue. Company culture isn’t what you say, it’s what you tolerate, and they’re struggling to even maintain a decent public face.

    To say I’m not surprised is not downplaying the situation. I’ve worked (and fought for coworkers, subordinates, and gotten several upper managers fired at) a few jobs where the culture was so horrible and hostile that our turnover rate was over 200% yoy. The writing generally is on the wall in these situations, and their writing was all the technical inaccuracies, sloppiness in content, and absolute negativity that has been displayed in some videos.

    What I mean by my earlier message (which might be a hot take) is that the addition of fluff (intentional or otherwise) in otherwise perfectly valid criticism takes away some of the bite and gives fanboys room to speculate about the rest. Nobody should be forced to experience that kind of workplace, but hopefully lessons were learned on the affected party’s end that will help them avoid stepping in another pile of shit like lmg.



  • US yes, but in Canada I’m sure there are many jobs where you are required by that job to do or see things you’d really rather not.

    Ultimately there is some ownership of the situation required- put your foot down and say “no, I’m absolutely not doing that”. If they reprimand you- well, time to look for a company that doesn’t penalize employees for that particular issue.

    Idealizing the employer makes it significantly harder to do that. Hopefully the debacle gave Madison insight/life experience that many people never have the chance to obtain.


  • It should have fallen on her manager to handle, and she should have put her foot down on that.

    Other good ways to improve that particular situation could have been separating her identity from the social media accounts, so that it wouldn’t be clear who exactly was managing them. It paints a target on her back as an attack vector (very dangerous due to her lack of experience) and target of harassment. That’s part of why many big brands do not publicize who exactly is managing their social media accounts.

    At the end of the day, management needed to do better and Madison could have pushed back more. It’s just a job, theoretically one she could replace somewhat seamlessly given her capabilities, and the fatal mistake was idealizing it. That probably compounded all of her grievances.


  • Re: Madison, she sprinkled a bunch of non-issues (edit: I don’t mean to downplay the more serious issues she raises! I’m concerned that this would leave room for others to do so) or things that are normal for companies that aren’t super huge- the journal/lined paper debacle for example. Of course the company focused on profit is going to ask you to make do with essentially the same thing. That’s super normal.

    Being asked to manage the OF despite objections isn’t super bad when you are literally hired just to do social media. It’s unpleasant, but most jobs are going to have unpleasant moments. At a similar pay scale, I’ve been required to go into homes where folks had COVID. Coworkers have been shot at. I’ve seen things I really would have preferred not to. No job is perfectly sane in that sense.

    Some of the issues where Madison said “they wanted me to do x and I couldn’t because y” (red footage editing/ram comes to mind) feel like issues where she would be told something, then would vent in her head instead of going “hey, I don’t have enough ram to edit that footage!” - something I’ve encountered a ton with less experienced (in a business sense, not skill) hires.

    The managerial and behavioral issues she brings up are awful but not entirely surprising given the type of folk who stick around there. It indicates a systemic issue and that usually happens due to a lack of oversight and course-correction, or outright malicious management. I’m hopeful that it’s the former.

    Last but not least, she repeatedly states it was her dream job. This is an experience that should hopefully show her to never meet your heroes! Dream jobs usually suck unless you get lucky, because they have lots of rough edges. Hopefully she’s doing something that brings her more joy now.




  • Likewise, I had a “high end” business laptop, that didn’t have many alternatives in the windows ecosystem, and replaced it with a 14” base m1 mbp.

    The battery lasts 3x longer on the Mac than on the old laptop, and I can generally get significantly better performance in photoshop and Lightroom without dealing with the dual gpu problems that windows laptops have. Additionally, my heavy compilation workloads in Go are almost 2x as fast on battery, and around 1.3x when plugged in.

    Top that with a screen and speakers that are so much better there just isn’t a comparison. Windows laptops are a joke unless they live plugged in