Hey everyone – What I'm able to say will be slightly limited for employee confidentiality reasons, but I'll do my best to address as much of Jake's concerns that I can.
First to Jake, I feel horrible that you felt overworked or underappreciated. From your very first application, you always went above and beyond my expectations for work, even when I tried to reign in your effort at times, and I want you to know that I tried my best to ensure you didn't end up feeling how you did. I checked in with you personally on multiple occasions, specifically whenever I noticed you might have been feeling stressed or burned out, to see if there was anything about work that we could address to improve how you felt. But whenever I tried to discuss this with you, you almost always assured me you were fine, either writing it off as a temporary feeling that you overcame, or that there were other reasons beyond work making you feel that way. It's hard for me to fix something when I'm not being told the full truth of the matter.
One of the few issues Jake did clearly communicate to me was how he felt his workload was imbalanced specifically as it related to one of his coworkers. Jake felt he was putting in more effort based on the amount of videos output per person, with the other coworker's performance being deemed lesser.
Now I've never worked at a workplace where someone didn't feel like they did more work than another, or felt another coworker wasn't entirely pulling their weight. And as such, this is an incredibly hard issue to address, especially for a small team, as there are countless factors at play. In this case, the different job roles we're discussing were different. Jake was hired primarily as a news editor, with a focus on more frequent, but shorter and less complicated videos, whereas the other staff members were more focused on longer-form features to varying degrees, which naturally take a lot longer to produce.
In response to the concern, I immediately performed an audit over a two-month period to assess the workload and output balance, and while Jake did end up producing more videos as expected, it wasn't by such a large margin that it seemed out of balance with the longer features the other staff member produced.
For all of its benefits, it sometimes sucks having to work remotely. Not only is it difficult not being able to see and interact with coworkers face-to-face without scheduling a meeting or making it feel like an intrusion, but we also don't have the natural transparency into what each other is doing on a day-to-day basis that we would in an office setting. And Jake, not having the same birds-eye view that I had, clearly wasn't aware of the true amount of time and effort the team member in question was putting in, as effort isn't a metric that can be measured only by tabulating the number of videos produced in the end.
A few weeks ago, during the last discussion I had with Jake about this issue, I tried to explain that what matters most at the end of the day is his own work, instead of constantly comparing himself to a perceived level of a colleague's output, and to focus on what we can do to ensure he isn't feeling overworked or burned out. Unfortunately, this was perhaps what he perceived to be me addressing him "like a child," which was not at all my intent.
I took steps to try and head off potential troublesome areas, such as when we were working together on the plans for our semi-regular news show. Jake initially wanted it to be every day, before I suggested we keep it to 3-days a week to start in order to give him time to breathe, assess, and prepare between each episode. I tried to work with him on the general workflow after each episode to ensure it was manageable (and eventually resulted in several segments getting cut), which was apparently perceived as me "scrutinizing" his work or "interrogating" him, when I was just trying to understand his workflow so I could offer suggestions on how we could improve it. I tried to work with Jake to increase "efficiency," not to increase output, and to ensure he wasn't putting in more time and effort than needed. And that projects, such as the news show, could be comfortably executed within a typical shift on the schedule we settled on.
In cases where Jake's shift may have run late due to events happening that day, his schedule was not only adjusted to begin later in the day to ensure hours worked didn't exceed the usual amount, but those shifts were usually shortened too, sometimes significantly. On several occasions, the staff were often provided days off either in advance, or right after, a big gaming event out of appreciation for their efforts, and to give them time to rest.
I also tried to give Jake the creative opportunities he expressed a desire for during said meetings. At one point, he expressed interest in pursuing more real-life gaming event opportunities (preview events, etc), despite this not quite being the role he was hired for. But I made sure to include him in more of these opportunities, even at times being against the company's best interest, and sending two coworkers to an event to ensure neither would feel left out.
As for weekends: despite it being made clear during the interview process that sporadic weekend work may be needed, weekend work was almost never expected. The few times when I mentioned it may be necessary (such as for post-Direct coverage), to my memory, rarely came to fruition. Whenever someone did end up working over a weekend, whether clearly planned in advance or I was made aware of it by a team member later, they were provided with an equal number of hours or days off to compensate, if not more.
If there was weekend work happening outside of the planned events, I didn't know about it, unless it applied to the roughly 10 or so games Jake helped us review on the channel. Most, if not all, were games that Jake was either enthusiastic for or even took initiative to cover. And most reviews on the channel are handled on a volunteer basis, based on interest. I've since learned that Jake had reached out about other review copies for games to cover that I hadn't even sanctioned or suggested we cover in any capacity, and I don't quite understand why someone would voluntarily attempt to cover even more when they felt that they already had a full schedule.
To address one final point: Did I "brag" about channel performance? Yes, once. Because I was proud of what my team accomplished on the channel during a period that was incredibly challenging and uncertain for us.
Running a YouTube channel isn't easy. Especially when you have a full-time staff. The financials barely make sense, the economics don't scale, and a lot of my responsibilities to keep the channel running are invisible. Despite this, I've tried to maintain a level of flexibility for the staff, both out of respect for their personal interests, and also their availability, and have tried to accommodate them whenever life has gotten in the day, sometimes resulting in permanent schedule changes.
Youtube, and gaming media in general, on some level, is largely a never-ending grind. The news and game releases never stop coming. Sure, it's often fun and games, but it's also often just as tiring, which I know only too well from working at some of the largest gaming outlets out there. I'm sure many of us are wearing masks that make things seem better or more enjoyable than they are, which can make it difficult to address issues, especially when so many seem to be intrinsic to YouTube and the gaming industry.
It hurts that Jake ended up feeling the way he did, despite my best efforts to try and make sure it wouldn't end up that way. I'll continue to learn and grow as well as making a continued effort to check-in with my staffs' wellbeing. And needless to say, I'll be doing a lot of introspection and soul searching over the coming days and weeks ahead, in addition to deep contemplation of what the future of GameXplain holds.
For now, I wish nothing but the best for Jake and his future endeavors.
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