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I can't believe people like Luke have no equity for decade+ of grind and now CTO. No union, no equity, poorly paid, sweatshop with added sexual harassment. Mad

I can't believe people like Luke have no equity for decade+ of grind and now CTO. No union, no equity, poorly paid, sweatshop with added sexual harassment. Made all the worse by how regularly he brags about how much money he has while saying he won't spend $100 to fix a review they totally fucked up. Oh and he wants you to come round to his huge new house to do chores on camera "for a video". Yuck.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>I can't believe people like Luke have no equity for decade+ of grind and now CTO. What leverage does Luke have? He's a CEO only in title, not in experience or qualifications. He went from university, straight to being CTO, purely because he's Linus's high-school friend, without any prior experience in the tech industry engineering trenches. From his WAN show talks, his knowledge about web technologies and SW development seem to be very superficial, limited to what he gathers from talking with the engineers, but no deeper understanding of it, which is weird considering he's the CTO of a video streaming company. Who would hire him to be CTO anywhere else? He's just Linus's henchman at Floatplane, not an actual CTO. It's the deal of his life. Get paid big bucks to be an inflated middle manager, best friend of the CEO. He's not gonna find a better deal with equity anywhere else. >saying he won't spend $100 to fix a review they totally fucked up. Oh and he wants you to come round to his huge new house to do chores on camera "for a video". Yuck. Yeah, that's the fucked up part. Despite now having the lab equipment to do so, he refuses to do due diligence when testing, because that costs extra time and money pleading poverty over 100-500 USD, but has no restraint in flashing his McMansion with heated pool and Porsche Supercar, with plenty of labor on house claimed as tax-writeoffs ("you see tax-man, this heated pool is actually a cooling system for my server which I use for work, and the project is featured in several work videos for the company so it's tottaly a business expense").
- Fluorescence 3y ago
  I don't follow LMG too closely but I don't think you are being fair. > He went from university, straight to being CTO The CTO of LMG role is pretty recent and not a "in name only" thing. Judging just on that alone, to be C-suite at a $100M company with 100s of employees and no options? Oof, not that common. In terms of experience, he has been the COO of Floatplane, running a dev team and SASS, shipping product for what 6 years or so and that's a more real qualification than most. I've seen him comment sensibly on development. Sure I've seen him not know some things but not enough to ding him. I'm sure he is highly employable now precisely because he does have real world experience in the trenches of something very successful. He is a popular known face and has industry connections. They were basically cofounders and I hope I wouldn't have to explain, here of all places, why it sucks for someone in a startup to take 100% of the equity themselves (Linus and his wife). That goes without saying right? I'm not saying 50:50 but 100:0 is not cool.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    > to be C-suite at a $100M company with 100s of employees and no options? Oof, not that common. It's not common because he didn't earn that job. It's not like he submitted his resume to Linus and after several rounds of interviews with him and other candidates, Linus decided he's the most experienced and qualified to be CTO, and had to make him an insane offer or he'd go somewhere else. He got the job because he wash his friend. Other people at Floatplane/LMG were responsible for the tech/business grunt work that makes the platform work. He's there to oversee things for Linus. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity for Luke to be CTO/COO out of university without any prior experience. It's not like other tech companies were begging him to be their CTO with zero industry experience and could negociate a better deal with equity than what Linus offered him.
    - 7speter 3y ago
      I thought I saw a video saying Luke applied to be Linus’ camera man during the early days, got the job and convinced Linus he did a good job by having friends and family members comment on early LTT (post breakup with NCIX) how good the camera work was. I didn’t know Luke was Linus’ high school friend…
Topgamer7 3y ago
I'm not surprised for a private company. Unless I'm grossly misinformed, it's unusual to give away equity for employees unless you plan on going public.
- iancmceachern 3y ago
  It's common, it's called an employee owned company. Many founders choose to give their fortune to their employees rather than take it to the grave with them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_employee-owned_companies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_employee-owned_compa...
- danpalmer 3y ago
  I don't know why this was downvoted, this is a good answer. If you're not planning to grow orders of magnitude then it just doesn't mean the same thing. Now for voting control, maybe it makes a bit more sense, and perhaps LMG would do better to be structured as a partnership with multiple voting partners – a structure that works well for some types of small business. That's very different to tech company equity though.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

>I can't believe people like Luke have no equity for decade+ of grind and now CTO. What leverage does Luke have? He's a CEO only in title, not in experience or qualifications. He went from university, straight to being CTO, purely because he's Linus's high-school friend, without any prior experience in the tech industry engineering trenches. From his WAN show talks, his knowledge about web technologies and SW development seem to be very superficial, limited to what he gathers from talking with the engineers, but no deeper understanding of it, which is weird considering he's the CTO of a video streaming company. Who would hire him to be CTO anywhere else? He's just Linus's henchman at Floatplane, not an actual CTO. It's the deal of his life. Get paid big bucks to be an inflated middle manager, best friend of the CEO. He's not gonna find a better deal with equity anywhere else. >saying he won't spend $100 to fix a review they totally fucked up. Oh and he wants you to come round to his huge new house to do chores on camera "for a video". Yuck. Yeah, that's the fucked up part. Despite now having the lab equipment to do so, he refuses to do due diligence when testing, because that costs extra time and money pleading poverty over 100-500 USD, but has no restraint in flashing his McMansion with heated pool and Porsche Supercar, with plenty of labor on house claimed as tax-writeoffs ("you see tax-man, this heated pool is actually a cooling system for my server which I use for work, and the project is featured in several work videos for the company so it's tottaly a business expense").

Fluorescence 3y ago
I don't follow LMG too closely but I don't think you are being fair. > He went from university, straight to being CTO The CTO of LMG role is pretty recent and not a "in name only" thing. Judging just on that alone, to be C-suite at a $100M company with 100s of employees and no options? Oof, not that common. In terms of experience, he has been the COO of Floatplane, running a dev team and SASS, shipping product for what 6 years or so and that's a more real qualification than most. I've seen him comment sensibly on development. Sure I've seen him not know some things but not enough to ding him. I'm sure he is highly employable now precisely because he does have real world experience in the trenches of something very successful. He is a popular known face and has industry connections. They were basically cofounders and I hope I wouldn't have to explain, here of all places, why it sucks for someone in a startup to take 100% of the equity themselves (Linus and his wife). That goes without saying right? I'm not saying 50:50 but 100:0 is not cool.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  > to be C-suite at a $100M company with 100s of employees and no options? Oof, not that common. It's not common because he didn't earn that job. It's not like he submitted his resume to Linus and after several rounds of interviews with him and other candidates, Linus decided he's the most experienced and qualified to be CTO, and had to make him an insane offer or he'd go somewhere else. He got the job because he wash his friend. Other people at Floatplane/LMG were responsible for the tech/business grunt work that makes the platform work. He's there to oversee things for Linus. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity for Luke to be CTO/COO out of university without any prior experience. It's not like other tech companies were begging him to be their CTO with zero industry experience and could negociate a better deal with equity than what Linus offered him.
  - 7speter 3y ago
    I thought I saw a video saying Luke applied to be Linus’ camera man during the early days, got the job and convinced Linus he did a good job by having friends and family members comment on early LTT (post breakup with NCIX) how good the camera work was. I didn’t know Luke was Linus’ high school friend…

Topgamer7 3y ago

I'm not surprised for a private company. Unless I'm grossly misinformed, it's unusual to give away equity for employees unless you plan on going public.

iancmceachern 3y ago
It's common, it's called an employee owned company. Many founders choose to give their fortune to their employees rather than take it to the grave with them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_employee-owned_companies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_employee-owned_compa...
danpalmer 3y ago
I don't know why this was downvoted, this is a good answer. If you're not planning to grow orders of magnitude then it just doesn't mean the same thing. Now for voting control, maybe it makes a bit more sense, and perhaps LMG would do better to be structured as a partnership with multiple voting partners – a structure that works well for some types of small business. That's very different to tech company equity though.