‘I cut my leg open to get a day off’

Madison Reeve has opened up about the toxic work culture at Linus Tech Tips, a popular YouTube channel. Reeve says she was subjected to bullying, reprimanded for taking sick days, deliberately sabotaged and more.

The Linus Media Group YouTube empire, led by Canadian YouTuber Linus Sebastian, has stopped all production under a cloud of controversies – the latest being allegations of workplace harassment from a former employee. The Linus Media Group (LMG) is best known for producing Linus Tech Tips – its most popular YouTube channel which has over 15.5 million subscribers.

YouTuber Madison Reeve took to Twitter (now called X) on Wednesday to talk about her time at LMG. She said she was overworked, constantly belittled, bullied, faced verbal abuse and reprimanded for taking the sick leaves she was entitled to during the time she worked at Linus Tech Tips. Things got so toxic for Reeve that she once cut her leg open on purpose so she would be rushed to the hospital and could get a day off without being reprimanded for it.

“I chose to quit my role at LTT because it, and the working environment I was facing, were ruining my mental health,” Reeve said at the beginning of her lengthy thread. She was with the YouTube channel for less than a year in 2021, per various reports.

During this time, Reeve said she faced incredible work pressure – “I was expected to post 3 tweets, 2 Instagram posts, and 2 TikToks minimum per day,” she wrote. She was also expected to “plan, film, edit, and post 2 Floatplane exclusives per week”; “manage, plan, come up with, execute, get approval for, and schedule out all the sponsored content on socials (excluding YouTube)”; and coordinate with other employees all the while.

“My time at this company brought my mental health to an all time low,” wrote Reeve, claiming that she was constantly belittled by certain members of the upper management. “My work was called dogs**t, I was called incompetent,” she wrote.

She said that when she reached out to her manager, she did not receive any support. Instead, she was told to “put on my big girl pants” and be more assertive. Later on in her thread, Reeve said that being assertive led to people calling her “bossy” and she was told she was being argumentative when she tried to discuss her point of view.

Abuse of power

Madison Reeve said that the opportunities she received at Linus Tech Tips were nothing compared to the day-to-day issues she faced there. There was no system of redressal either. When she tried to talk about the workplace issues she was facing, Reeve was called a “tattle tale”, she claimed.

“It did not matter if I spoke to someone with evidence of an abuse of power, or inappropriate workplace behavior, it was considered tattle taling,” she wrote.

Among her more shocking claims were allegations of sexual harassment. “I was told to ‘calm my t**s’, ‘stop being such a b***h’, and other comments to similar effects,” Reeve said in her Twitter post.

Moreover, she was also given misinformation on purpose that would negatively affect her work. When she tried to bring up the issue of excessive workload, she was apparently told that she was bad at time management.

‘Cut my leg open’

The work culture at Linus Tech Tips was so toxic that Reeve was reprimanded for taking sick leaves that she was entitled to. In fact, there was no concept of days off in the company’s hustle culture, she claimed. Things got so bad for Reeve that she cut her leg open on purpose so she would have to be rushed to the hospital. To her, this was the only way of getting a day off without being reprimanded for it.

“I purposefully cut my leg open so badly I would have to go to the ER to get it stapled back together. It was genuinely the only way in my mind to take a day off without being harassed for a reason why,” she said.

“There are so many instances that led up to that moment,” said Reeve, adding that after she left the company, she thought often about how she could have handled things differently. In the end, she reached the conclusion that she could not have done things differently as “I was not treated fairly and in the moment I couldn’t even see that because I was told I was the problem by people I had looked up to for years.”

Linus Sebastian’s response

When The Verge reached out to Linus Sebastian, the Canadian YouTuber said he was shocked by the allegations and they are not consistent with his own recollections of events.

“I was in a state of shock reading through these allegations, plain and simple. They aren’t consistent with my recollections. They aren’t consistent with our internal processes. They aren’t consistent with our company values,” Sebastian said in a statement.

“We pride ourselves on maintaining a safe and inclusive environment. In addition to our existing report systems (both anonymous and otherwise) we’ve proactively reached out internally today to encourage members of our team to report any workplace bullying or harassment they might be experiencing so we can take quick and decisive action.

“Our HR team will be conducting a more thorough assessment of the allegations, and when we are ready, we will release a more complete statement. For now I would ask that we allow our team the time they need be as thorough as possible,” he said.