Patrick Shyu, a YouTuber with nearly 1.5 million subscribers and a former tech lead for Google and Meta, delivered one of the holiday season’s most accurate Ebeneezer Scrooge impressions on Christmas day.

Shyu tweeted, “I find ‘Merry Christmas’ highly offensive,” and said that there are mentally ill and depressed people who feel pushed to be merry owing to the holiday greeting.

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Who is Patrick Shyu?

Patrick Shyu, with TechLead as his Twitter and YouTube handle,  is a social media influencer, businessman, and former Google and Facebook employee.

In addition to having a dry sense of humour, he is well-known for his postings on the software industry and his philosophy of success.

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Shyu spent almost four years working in the Google office in San Bruno, California. In May 2018, he then joined Facebook. On August 26, 2019, Shyu was let go by Facebook,  for reasons he attributes to his YouTube channel.

In the days following his firing, Shyu made a number of videos and posted them. At the time, he disparaged Facebook’s workplace culture, likening it to a popularity contest and criticising the focus that staff members place on Workplace, the company’s internal social network.

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Shyu started Tech Interview Pro, a business that offers computer-based training and specialises in coding interviews. His other training businesses include DeFi Pro, an online programme on decentralised finance, and YouTube Backstage, which teaches students on how to manage a YouTube channel as a business.

Twitter users condemned TechLead, in May 2022 for a string of remarks disparaging women in tech that he eventually removed. He said that when he worked at Google, he “rejected all women on the spot and trashed their resumes in front of them.”

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On Christmas 2022, Shyu made headlines when he tweeted about how the Christmas greeting is highly offensive to some people. “The holidays cause stress, depression, and mental health issues for 25-40% of people.  It’s like a ‘merriness contest’ on social media to force happiness, and a Western subversion of every other culture,” he explained.