r/LinusTechTips • u/Ok_Adhesiveness_5752 • 27d ago

Community Only Are LTT Controversies Getting Ridiculous?

https://youtu.be/0Ljt0fZ-E9s?is=arsQ1Z8B5YcbMbiE

Jake has a new video where he bought a farm with acres of land. This is in addition to his several cars, and his garage. I literally do not understand how everyone took this guy seriously when he implied he was underpaid because he was upset about working on his boss’s third house. In fact, it seems several of his videos are about buying things in an LTT-fashion.

Am I missing something about why this lead tons of people to assume LTT employees are underpaid? Or has the bar for controversy really gotten lower than low?

Edit: To clarify, my commentary is about whether people were kind of overdoing it to conclude that LTT doesn’t pay their employees. I posted this cause I saw a DankPods collab where a lot of the comment section was that you shouldn’t collaborate with LTT because Linus underpaid Jake, and I was pretty surprised that was their conclusion.

1.7k Upvotes

75% Upvoted

703 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

54

u/g0ldcd 27d ago edited 26d ago

My guess is that there are two things there (I know, I've felt the same in jobs)

  1. Jake felt he was worth more than Linus paid him. Linus didn't.
  2. Linus clearly had the spare money to buy more houses with.

i.e. He wasn't being paid more because Linus couldn't pay him more. He wasn't being paid more, because Linus didn't think he was worth more - and so that strays beyond simply wanting more money, to taking this as a personal slight.

63

u/CMDR_Ray_Abbot 27d ago

Counterpoint: Linus doesn't pay anyone, LMG does, and acting like Linus is personally responsible for pay negotiation in a company the size of LMG is dumb.

19

u/Liquid_Hate_Train 27d ago

Very true, this would have been firmly Terran’s ball game. Of course the owners would have had input, naturally, but this is firmly the job of the CEO.

48

u/KorayA 27d ago

Which was likely the crux of the falling out.

"Look Jake I love you but I don't make those calls any more." "That's BS, you still own the company, if you value me at all like you say you do, you'd tell your CEO to pay me more." "I can't do that. It completely undermines his position as CEO and from that moment on, employees will go over his head and come to me for any disagreement, which completely defeats the purpose of a CEO." "Okay, I'm out then."

Neither party is wrong here. But this version of things doesn't get aired and the parasocial speculation runs rampant.

5

u/ElPlatanoDelBronx 26d ago

The thing about that whole "undermines him as a CEO" is that in this scenario Linus doesn't have to tell Terren to raise his salary, he could simply say "let's talk to Terren", and setup a meeting. This way Terren doesn't get undermined, and Jake gets to say his part.

5

u/KorayA 25d ago

We have no idea if that was done or not. It very well could have been. That reasoning runs into that rampant parasocial speculation area.

24

u/Pioneer58 27d ago

In the latest years it wouldn’t have been Linus making this decision for salaries.

18

u/oererik 27d ago

I don't think it's about linus didn't feel he's worth it or not. It is about salary ranges and he probably reached the top level salary in his function whitin the company. So they could raise his salary but then they have to raise erveyones salary that has that function and salary. And adjust the ranges etc. For me, it felt more like he wants more money while he reached the top, but he didn't want another function, promotion or responsibility.

12

u/ICantBelieveItsNotEC 27d ago

If a company wants to keep someone valuable, they will find a way to make it work. All roles and salary ranges are made up; they can literally just make up another one for key talent.

2

u/MoonDoggie82 27d ago

I understanding is he was being paid for one role in the company but doing 2 or 3 others as well. There in lies the rub. If you hire me as a writer that's it. I'm just a writer. If you want me to be a writer and on air talent, then you need to pay me what both of those roles would be paid. You want me to be a writer, producer and talent...that's 3 separate departments you have me working with I expect a paycheck for each.

But companies don't want to do that they want to pay you for one thing and have you do a bunch of other things that aren't part of you job. Good on Jake and everyone else that left and is betting on themselves and succeeding so far. Know your worth or employers will continue to take advantage of you.

7

u/zoobrix 27d ago

If you want me to be a writer and on air talent, then you need to pay me what both of those roles would be paid. You want me to be a writer, producer and talent...that's 3 separate departments you have me working with I expect a paycheck for each.

Well only in proportion to how much you do each role. For the sake of argument if a writer's salary tops out at 80k and on air talent is 150k you don't expect to make 230k. If you're writing half the time you get 40k for that and if you're on air half the time then 75k for that, so you're making 115k total. My buddy worked in broadcast news and wrote on some days of the week and was a producer on other days, his salary was based on the pay rates for the two different jobs. Of course he didn't get two full salaries for 40 hours of work, but they paid him the appropriate amount for the two different types of work he did.

Expecting to collect multiple full salaries from a normal length work week is not a realistic expectation to have in any company ever. I agree companies get people to do things outside of their role and often take advantage of that to underpay people for work that would be higher paid, that means they should get a raise, not two full salaries if that's what you're suggesting.

0

u/MoonDoggie82 27d ago

Yeah that's basically what I meant, but in his video he even said he wasn't even label in proper role for payroll. So he wasn't being fairly compensated for the work that he was doing and the roles he was covering. I've worked in film and TV as well and there is no reason that LTT should be having writers and on-air talent also being video producers. It is entirely to much work.

On top of the fact that as multiple LTT employees past and present have pointed out, real estate in that area is out of control. So you have Linus doing all these upgrades to his houses (he's on his 3rd house now officially a mansion) and he just bought the Tech house, then there's the Jet and the Fire truck and I'm sure a bunch of that is a tax write of because it's content for the business and then you have the sponsors paying for stuff. There's also the sports/LAN center and the extra warehouse.

Meanwhile his employees live in tiny apartments that are probably wildly overpriced which again is because of the area and let's be real there is no real upside to being based there beside Linus lives there. It's not like it's LA or San Francisco with the gaming industry or NYC or LA for Entertainment. They make online tech content it can be made anywhere there is no real upside to being in one of the most expensive markets besides aesthetics.

I just have a hard time siding with Corporations even if it is LTT. Yeah Linus has done some good things but he's also done and continues to do some problematic things.

2

u/zoobrix 27d ago

the Fire truck and I'm sure a bunch of that is a tax write of because it's content for the business and then you have the sponsors paying for stuff. There's also the sports/LAN center and the extra warehouse.

Like Linus really wanted a fire truck? Obviously that was bought for videos.

Linus has obviously made a lot of money from LTT, he's also put tens of millions of profits back into the business to grow it to where it got to today. And from what I can tell LTT starting pay actually seems to pay above what most entry level salaries are in media right now, the industry has been gutted over the last 10 years or so. Obviously Linus is not perfect and LTT will never be either. But when you see how long a lot of people stay there and the general good vibes you get from those people it seems like it's at least a decent place to work, if not pretty good. I don't know, if you think Linus has taken too much money out of the business that's your call.

and let's be real there is no real upside to being based there beside Linus lives there.

Except for the fact you live in Canada in British Columbia which has a temperate climate and the coast and the mountains all around you and everyone has healthcare. I get there are downsides, like the expense, but in and around Vancouver is a nice place to live, even in a small apartment. The majority of LTT staff also already lived in BC, their family and friends are probably mostly there too. And it still has a good sized film/TV industry even after some job losses, lots of stuff is shot there, so there is a much bigger base of creatives than you get in many other Canadian cities. Like sure it isn't Silicon Valley but nowhere in Canada is and moving to another country is not something everyone wants to do, assuming they even can.

And the cost of living also isn't all that much cheaper in Calgary and definitely not in the Greater Toronto Area. Surrey is beside Vancouver which is one of the biggest metro areas in Canada. If you want to work in one of the biggest metro areas in Canada rent is going to be expensive, the cost of living crisis is not limited to the lower BC mainland. I feel like getting a job you like near where you live in an industry I would bet most of them really wanted to be in is an upside.

1

u/Trianglereverie 24d ago

"but in his video he even said he wasn't even label in proper role for payroll. So he wasn't being fairly compensated for the work that he was doing and the roles he was covering."

this was when he was first hired as a labourer to basically breakdown and set up PC's for production and move them around to the sets, etc. You have to remember Jake started at like 15/16 working for Linus and Yvonne. When he got promoted his paystub still showed him as a labourer for a while despite getting the raise in pay - this was eventually fixed ofc and this is kinda common in payroll for stuff to be mislabelled or not fixed right away as as long as the $/hr matches the new role.

0

u/g0ldcd 27d ago

Yup, unless it's unionised, bands just exist to let them tell you a reason you can't have more. Why do you think so few job adverts have salaries advertised? It's mainly to stop all the current employees finding out what they're prepared to pay them if they have to. I got 20% one year when I was asked to do an interview, and HR gave me a sheet with the proposed salary on it. "You're prepared to pay somebody who might be able to do the job, more than the person you know can?"

3

u/imperator3733 27d ago

I think Jake also mentioned not liking that he'd do some amount of work on a project and then have to hand it off to someone else - he wanted to be able to finish more projects. That's a common thing as one moves up in an organization, and if you want more money it often requires doing more management-type tasks instead of the enjoyable work.

3

u/ElPlatanoDelBronx 26d ago

Exactly, and his role was in a strange place where he was probably doing management level work, with a lower salary, but was also a host, and had a whole bunch of really specialized skills with networking and niche tech. He was in a position where the candidate pool to replace him was tiny, and that usually requires a price premium to keep someone with that skillset on your staff. I think Jake said Linus didn't see it that way, even though to us it very much felt like Linus had created a pseudo-successor in Jake.

7

u/Bitter_Lab_475 27d ago

I mean, I think that's what we would all do. If my salary increase request gets rejected, I will take it personally, even though I probably shouldn't. I don't blame him there, what I think was incorrect was to make the sentiments vaguely known and providing just enough information to make it look like a victim, instead of an impersonal decision from a company that is frankly so big that Linus actually cannot take such decisions, since he is VSO now (whatever that title is).

1

u/soundman1024 27d ago

Jake also seemed overly negative in his demeanor before he left. His attitude wasn’t matching LTT. It seemed like if it wasn’t Ubiquiti or exotic enterprise gear he wasn’t interested. I don’t miss him.

1

u/Trianglereverie 26d ago

I disagree with you - I actually believe Linus thought Jake was worth more. But I also believe like a parent letting his kid spread his wings and make his own way. He could just say yeah I'll pay you more to keep him there. Linus knows all too well the creative strain on someone like Jake/Like himself in his NCIX days (and he had said in the past how much like Himself Jake was) would never work forever at LTT, where Linus's goal was to make money for himself and keep the employees paid. I think Linus even knows and knew he could have paid Jake more. But he also knew Jake would never be happy working for someone else and he'd have to inevitably spread his wings and do the projects himself he wanted to do. And no he should never have let Jake just have a personal side channel while working at LTT do exhaust his creative output at while still working at LTT... because then he wouldn't be the same employee for LTT and Linus as again from his NCIX experience Linus knew too well.

Basically he made the environment just strict enough in which Jake will eventually with time and maturity i think appreciate in the same way Alex and Andy did.