#TotalDrama would like to announce that this year’s charity is the National Council of Domestic Violence, chosen by fans in honor of the lovely & talented Sarah Lane. We are also sad to announce that in the spirit of Erik Lanigan, Jeff Stewart and Tom Merritt, this year’s Christmas sacrifice is some guy Bruce, an engineer.
*Reminder* Polls for hottest hotties in tech – 2014 were extended due to popular demand for a few more days
So he is using a free Skype connection and yet thinks he’s ssssoooooooooooooooooo special.
Oh’ Doctor still takin’ no shit.
John the 3rd» Quote comment
“We have the worst engineering dept. ever – and people will lose jobs soon.”
What an absolute prick.
First, Mr. Soup, you have BITCHING about Skype FOR OVER HALF A DECADE AT LEAST. Seriously, go back to ’09 and you’ll hear this guy whining about Skype issues back then.
But you refuse to use anything else. And you claim it’s because there’s nothing as good, but that’s a lie – truth is, you don’t want to pay for better-than-Skype services out there that exist.
So, you instead try to duct tape a free chat service into your fancy Tricaster workflow, and expect miracles.
Second, what kind of a prick expects great work from employees when you say they are the worst dept. ever? I’m sure at one point they did their best – BEFORE you had a tantrum one day and labeled them as garbage. Now they likely just show up and get a paycheck…in which case I say GOOD FOR YOU.
Third, he isn’t joking about firing on Christmas. The people soon to be let go will either be told on or before the Christmas party/New Year’s celebration, as Leo likes to shed dead weight near Jan. 1.
Scott» Quote comment
Way to fire up your staff!
TWIT411» Quote comment
Yep, I am in FULL agreement mode with you on this, Leo is an absolute asshole saying that anywhere it could be recorded (let alone heard by more than just his CEO). Absolute bullshit on Leo, unbelivable.
Leo, has lost a lot of respect with me, and that’s not a good thing. I want him to apologize on camera, on air during next week’s TTG, to the engineering staff.
Sorry, I was dreaming for a second…..
STOP USING SKYPE YOU PRICK. SPEND MONEY. FIX YOUR ISSUES.
What. A. DICK.
Bilbo Tea Baggins» Quote comment
Whoa, man, WHOA. Leo can’t take $40,000 vacations and buy six-figure automobiles if he has to PAY for a connection.
You try taking making this shit work on five vacations a year!
macsimcon» Quote comment
I think said car is a company lease.
NormansThirdNipple» Quote comment
Say it wit’ me Leo,Chat had so many less issues.
John the 3rd» Quote comment
What a dick. So his engineering department has to know exactly the cause of a problem related to free software they have no hand in developing? Nothing like injecting that positive workplace momentum into your staff so close to the holidays in front of the public.
This guy is so unprofessional it makes me want to barf.
I still feel so badly for all the truly passionate tech journalists that were effectively crushed by this pig.
It appears that he is slowly getting his come up’ins though. There is no way that this year was a profitable year for them. I think they are finally feeling the crunch to the bottom line by all the monstrous mistakes they are making.
The only person that should be fired in the CEO for under performing and missing yearly goals in continuos succession.
About the only thing she seems to accomplish from a marketing standpoint is to pollute the world with more crappy TwiT shirts. Please, no more.
magic» Quote comment
Wow. Wow. Wow. This is why this site exists to further extend the #truth about this motherfuckin’ asshole. Bravo, Bravo!
HelloWorld» Quote comment
It is unfortunate that they are in a downward spiral. Nobody in their right mind would move to Petaluma to work on TWIT with the history of how he treats people.
a disillusioned twit fan» Quote comment
I mostly feel bad for Jason. Soup’s delusions were on hand after TWiT when he was talking about a formula for which guests to partner up.
In actuality, whoever he gets he gets, no one wants to do the show anymore. If Jason can get three people that should be looked at as an accomplishment.
He also called JCD a clown.
Ghostdog» Quote comment
Yet another example of how Leo Laporte can make insulting comments about a ‘friend’ and then sit there and talk to their faces like he had never uttered it.
I would suggest that #Soup is the Clown, or the Village idiot, he certainly doesn’t have the ability to realize that sometimes you should read the sentence to yourself in you head before you open mouth and ejaculate the statement on camera.
BHB» Quote comment
Bit this week’s guests were amazing! I think the three of them had the combined age of Dvorak.
When you can’t even get one decent guest for a TWiT you’re screwed.
Richie Rich» Quote comment
Ya, whtat the fuck, I heard that, but then I re-listened in context, he was referring to an old style court from the 14th century.
Bilbo Tea Baggins» Quote comment
Yes Leo blame engineers for TWIT being DDOS that’s going to help things. If people were wise they DDOS their Skype during their flagship show TWIT that would cause some fireworks.
specie8470» Quote comment
It’s really sad and at the same time very telling the kind of person Leo really is. He goes after his “staff” for a service he doesn’t pay for on a live feed for all the see and hear. Leo knows these people have families and can’t just walk away from the abuse he dishes out on a daily basis. No normal business owner would discuss operational issuses and tactics out in the open as Leo has. And bringing in his children and step child into the programming as Leo has borders on abuse, both child and listener . It’s all I can do from throwing up when Leo thrusts one of his offspring in front of the camera. And Lisa, that little whore, I’m calling her exactly for what she is, but, it takes a john ( not this John or that John or the third John), but that Leo john , to make Lisa the little bitch whore she is. She trolls TD, it’s reflected in her actions on her blog(she isn’t bloging anymore) the inside TWiT landing page hasn’t changed in a month, still pushing out those fanboy shirts. No more inside twit live talks , that call-in was a joke and Lisa doesn’t dare allow live , unmoderated interactions with Leo. And it’s really pathetic how Lisa is interjecting charity causes into the Programing in order to justify it. The New Years show will be a joke.
John» Quote comment
“No normal business owner would discuss operational issuses and tactics out in the open as Leo has. ”
————————
Sad to say, this isn’t true. My last boss was a small business owner like Leo is, had about 15 people on staff and often talked in the open about how he was losing money on us workers, how we were lying to him/not doing our job, not charging enough for dev/web work, etc.
It was terrible.
So terrible I didn’t even stay a whole year and won’t list any of the work I did in my portfolio, nor will I ever list the company on any resume anywhere.
Unfortunately Leo is not a hiccup in the world of small business owners — MANY, if not MOST, are like him. They get just big enough to feel like bigshots, and instead of relinquishing control to others so they can expand even more, they dig their heels in and act like the smartest person in the room BECAUSE they are the ones signing paychecks.
But as we’ve discussed before, Leo’s easily replaced in every single show he’s on – he just refuses to leave. The non-Leo hosts are what keeps Windows Weekly, MacBreak Weekly, etc. thriving – NOT Leo.
Scott» Quote comment
Leo: World’s worst manager, ever.
The Wandering Jew» Quote comment
> Leo: World’s worst manager, ever.
Well no… technically, that’d be Lisa.
Fred» Quote comment
She’s a manager of buzzwords and tshirt campaigns…not sure if she’s a REAL manager in any official sense.
Scott» Quote comment
That video was actually a little painful to watch. I can put up with the disingenuous , fake jovial Leo we all see most of the time but whenever he lets his true colors show it’s pretty ugly. If we all chip in and buy him some extra soup this week maybe that will help a bit.
thoughtpolyp» Quote comment
This type of reporting is TD at its best. Kudos to Ghost Dog and the rest of the team.
The Ghost of Ring Lardner» Quote comment
Yup – more of this, less of the Tom Hanks post stuff.
Scott» Quote comment
He is having Skype problems…..Any problems with any other Internet applications?…. My guess would be maybe you should stop using Skype then? Have hangouts and other alternatives ready…Whatever happened to them going all Lync, that they were touting about a year ago…Did it go the way of Vidyo (i.e. didn’t work first time he tried, he had a tantrum and burned all bridges connecting to them?)
I have video over sip calls working perfectly in Asterisk….Maybe TWiT should run their own Asterisk server for video calls, let the guests use sip phones with video (Leo could spend $200 on a Grandstream GXV for each recurring guest), or use soft phones like Jitsi or Zoiper…Could even put the whole thing on a VPN to cut the ddosing…
TWIT411» Quote comment
Please, get real, Leo wont do phones as any resort, just wont happen.
Bilbo Tea Baggins» Quote comment
His sponsor, Ring Central now has video calling and conferencing services also. http://www.ringcentral.com/office/features/video-conference/overview.html …
Along with their endless plugging of Citrix HD GoTo meetings, you think they would use that on air to prove how well they work…
Oh wait, one has to pay for those services….Why would you want to pay for something core to your business operation? If he subscribed to Skype premium, he would likely be able to contact a support person at Skype to work with on resolving issues….Using a free account, it is use at your own risk…
if it is DDoS issues, maybe he should get IP block changes for the TWiT connections, and then use a VPN provider for Skype connection…He can then change around VPN providers, if they start happening again, and also get the VPN provider’s anti-ddos benefit..
TWIT411» Quote comment
He’s a classic small business owner – is ultra cheap in things that matter, and when things eventually have issues, the problem isn’t him or the stuff he chose to use…..NOPE! It’s the workers! Always the workers!
Scott» Quote comment
HOLY FUCK, that IS a good idea.
Bilbo Tea Baggins» Quote comment
Could you imagine being a guest in the studio while Leo has one of these shit fits? That has to be extremely awkward.
StinkyButt» Quote comment
Megalomaniac Leo’s disdain for his own staff is an interesting reflection on one of his sponsors, ZipRecruiter. He touts their capability to find the cream of the crop and has stated that’s his go-to source for job recruiting. So listening to Leo’s rant that must mean one of two things, either his staff is substandard or ZipRecruiter is just another paper-shuffling headhunter service. OR, maybe a more accurate explanation is he has a really competent bunch of tech support working there and ZipRecruiter is indeed a great job recruiting service, but the actual problem is the abysmal management skills of Lisa.
So a hat tip to all TWIT engineers, we all know how difficult it is to accomplish anything when you’re working inside a really dysfunctional organization. As for Leo dissing them in a public way that is blatantly unprofessional, an ignorant thing to do that accomplishes nothing and only makes small problems into bigger ones. I’m guessing Leo has a chemical imbalance in his internals due to the high sodium content in most soups.
thoughtpolyp» Quote comment
Or he doesn’t use zip recruiter and just lies and says he does
Ghostdog» Quote comment
He has certainly advertised through them so I would say that it really shows that Zip Recruiter is of dubious quality and personally I would be wary of any recommendation that is given by Leo Laporte in the advertising of other products.
BHB» Quote comment
I have to say, inm agreement, that Leo’s constant use of advertising Personal Captial , who has the WORST secureity login I have EVER seen, pisses me the fuck right off. Leo has never gotten back to me on that issue, and yet, has gotten back to me on every other issue I have ever emailed him about.
Really pisses me off.
Bilbo Tea Baggins» Quote comment
A few years ago, I wouldn’t touch an advertiser on TWiT, because they were all bottom-of-the-barrel: Carbonite had lost users’ data, GoToAssist was slow, and RingCentral had terrible support.
I don’t know that this is still true. Our experience with RingCentral has been terrific, and GoToAssist is at least as fast as LogMeIn, maybe faster.
I’ve found Harry’s razors to be OK, but not great, and I wasn’t crazy about Nutribox, so maybe the scammers are back on TWiT in force.
macsimcon» Quote comment