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The original was posted on /r/linustechtips by /u/Original_Act2389 on 2023-08-17 15:40:58+00:00.
First and foremost Linus is catching a lot of deserved flak for some very bad moves that have come to light. I am also aware a post in defense of any aspect of Linus' actions is gonna come off as dickriding, but check my post history I'm not just blindly ignoring inconvenient details following my parasocial bestie.
That said, I think Hanlon's razor here is valid. What makes more sense - a small company's proprietary property with malice and forethought was stolen and auctioned for a few hundred bucks at a convention, or an inventory mismanagement error. Like, it's not enough money to embroil yourself in exactly this backlash and end up potentially paying much more in an open-and-shut lawsuit.
Linus and team were dumb as fuck for the Billet labs situation, and they're rightfully receiving a paddlin'. That said, they're addressing it decently well.
With the Madison situation, either Linus flew her all the way out to pursposefully torture her to the point of self harm, or he stupidly gave a very young person way too heavy a workload in a very unclear position in the company. Then, when she brought up complaints the entire HR process was effectively useless, either intentionally or just by a colossal misjudgement and mishandling of the situation on many employees' parts.
It kinda seems like stupidity here is a very likely explanation, though a possibility of malice exists. They will take lumps for what's happened, even if it was stupidity. These are not the kinds of things you can waffle as a business. That said, I feel like painting the crew as pure evil is a shallow take.
Edit: A bunch of people have pointed out those who bullied Madison were being malicious, I would agree.