Great summary! Here is the other side of the debate:
The backpack is overengineered and spares no expense in materials and durability, making it expensive. It is not overpriced. It may be unreasonably costly and not worth the purchase. The reason being it costs a lot to manufacture, not because it’s overpriced.
Linus was stupid in his “no warranty needed” claim, as most people won’t (and shouldn’t) take his word for it. Nevertheless, it is true his store always replaced items without issue and continues to do so, warranty or not. The customer experience is generally much better than the average store, where you may have to fight for your warranty claim only for it to be refused anyway. This is what he meant. If stores are not honoring warranties, and his store is accepting returns without a warranty anyway, then what’s the piece of paper worth anyway? But people like the piece of mind it provides, they learned the lesson and are providing it now. Of course the warranty never mattered either way.
I did buy the backpack. Months later I received a replacement set of zippers. There is nothing wrong with the original zippers, they just felt these ones are better and people who bought the backpack before the change should get them too. This has never happened to me with another purchase in my life, where the store decided to upgrade it for free and ship it to another continent for free, without me asking.
Months later they discovered the material used for the backpack floor isn’t what they wanted. So they offered me (and all purchasers) a full refund and additional store credit. Nobody noticed the issue, nobody asked for refunds. They discovered it and offered refunds proactively, even though it’s a non-issue. Again never happen in my life with another purchase.
Shitty for the employee to shit on GN. Commendable for Linus to stand by his employee publicly instead of blaming him.
You are correct they had lot of quality issues. It is also worth mentioning their overhaul that happened after that, improved processed, slowed down upload cadence, and the formation of volunteer “beta tester” viewers who watch videos pre-release to find errors not found internally. Good for them to try to improve.
Auctioning off the prototype cooler was quite egregious! As usual Linus took the heat on himself and never named the responsible employee who misallocated the cooler in their inventory.
A third party investigation found the sexual harassment allegations unfounded. Due to the nature of this we might never know the details though.
Linus invited Naomi to meet him in the meeting rooms of his hotel’s lobby, which exist specifically for business meetings. She later untruthfully misrepresented it as an invite to his hotel room.
In general, the transparency at which their business operates makes it very easy to point out flaws. I think it’s better than the opaque businesses where this can’t happen.
I agree with these of your points I didn’t address.
Hope this provides both sides for readers, and thanks again.