Linus Tech Tips: What do we do now? [video]

I really like the GN reviews and technical analysis. It's where I tend to go if I want a product opinion, but I'm not a huge fan of Steve's way of calling people out.

I don't mind too much when it's a big company like LMG, but I wasn't impressed with the way he called Jon Gerow a "Corsair rep" and publicly highlighted some of the mistakes he made on that (IIRC) 4090 power cable debacle. The guy was the OG critical reviewer for power supplies. I think that should have earned him some respect and an opportunity to self correct or, at the very least, an opportunity to comment publicly. That whole thing was a big thumbs down for me :-(

On the LMG side, I think some of the criticism is fair. The water block thing is flat out unacceptable. As if a bad review and follow up criticism from Linus wasn't bad enough, what would possibly give them the idea they can sell that thing without asking Billet first?

I don't think the criticism about making mistakes is completely fair. They're trying to scale up to do consumer focused testing that no one else is going to be able to afford, so, for me personally, I give them some slack on that. I can tolerate some growing pains if it gets them to the point of doing testing that's so expensive that no one else can even take a shot at it.

I think the criticism about doing a poor job of correcting the record is fair, but I think it's unfair to frame it in a way that makes it seem like it's their business strategy. Prior to the GN video, Linus and Luke were talking on the WAN show about the difficulties they've had with accuracy and some of the ideas they'd considered to improve it. For example, I think they considered giving early access on Floatplane so people could critique videos prior to widespread publication, but would never do it because that would simply lead to someone leaking all their videos early (which is likely correct IMO).

I think the LMG video was well produced. The one thing that really jumped out for me is how they mentioned that every mistake results in improved process to help prevent it from happening again. That resonated with me because it's the same thing I do and it can make for a drastically better work environment if mistakes are tolerated as long as the process is being iterated on and improved.

I can also see where someone like Steve from GN doesn't like that approach. I always used to land on the side of "don't do it if the process isn't perfected", but eventually reality creeps up and sometimes you don't have any options besides doing your best and striving to improve. I'm sure there's sentiment that LMG could eat the cost of developing their processes privately, but I think that overlooks the value harsh public criticism can bring to those processes.

I do think Steve deserves some credit for being very accurate / competent, especially if it's limiting the growth of his business.

Overall, I think Steve's critique is fair, but I'd bet it's a situation where they already know about all of it on the LMG side and it's probably frustrating / insulting to have those deficiencies highlighted publicly if they're striving to improve and simply haven't gotten to the end goal.

It's kind of like the time Steve interviewed those Newegg guys. IMO they already know what's broken and they don't need "ideas" to fix things. They need the authority to fix things, which Steve's video might have helped with (hopefully). I would be so frustrated if I had to listen to a minor celebrity chastise me for things that I already know, especially if the publicity was the thing that finally got me the authority to fix it while forcing me to play the role of being the one that was too dumb to deal with it until someone pointed out the obvious.

I won't comment on the staff / working conditions part of the debate because I don't think that's the kind of thing to give an opinion on without first-hand knowledge.