YHK - yet another hacker news clone

damn, this guy crashing out live in front of his company and the (tech) world.

AI times are weird. Validates that truism I heard: money (and power and influence and now AI) is an amplifier. It amplifies what you always were.

makes me sad, I use Proton, time to move away.

Related:

"Manifestos, Fear, and 'Loser Thinking': Inside Proton's AI Reckoning" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50289692 67 comments

"Proton goes all in on using AI" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50296602 110 comments

"Proton to 'Re-Interview' Staff About AI to See Who Gets to Keep Their Job" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50251062 48 comments

I'm looking at alternative email provider options, and I'm struggling to find options that have banned GenAI, and have the features and reliability I need. I will gladly pay a premium for a provider that's not going to let AI creep in gradually, and take a bigger role over data and security

When this story goes behind their paywall you can read it (in full) at https://web.archive.org/web/20261030171028/https://www.404me...

Keywords: bypass paywall

Proton engineering culture always got a bad rep pre-AI era as well(per their glassdoor reviews[1]) . Poor engineering directly or indirectly makes them susceptible to data breach because good talent stays away. One reason why I hesitated moved to proton back when a lot of people did. My understanding is that the only reason they are in the game are because send email services are extremely difficult to run.

[1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/PROTON-Reviews-E13574.htm

It’s all fair and square for a Tech CEO to be thinking like that. Morally despicable but totally expected.

It is an entirely different ballgame of idiocy to write something like

> that’s looser thinking

In response to one of his employees in a company wide slack chat. How stupid and unaware of yourself and your surroundings do you have to be?

Put aside that this may even be a legal case in itself, what does this say about his leadership in general?

Damn. My proton plan just renewed a couple weeks ago.

I have not failed to notice that they’ve slowed focus on security oriented features and are now focused on a lot of things I don’t care about, but I didn’t realize the magnitude of the cultural problem there.

Without the security aspect, Proton is ridiculously overpriced. If they want to compete with GSuite or Zoho, they gotta come down.

I’m willing to pay premium for a niche security focused offering. I’m not willing to pay a premium for AI generated crapware.

Aw schucks. I moved to Proton half a year ago in an effort to de-Google (and de-US) myself. Now this. Time to write a message to customer service explaining my concerns.

If an employee is getting their work done, with or without AI, why does it matter? Is it just the idea that if an employee is keeping up, without using AI, how much work could they get done if they were?

Honestly losing the will over here; I Degoogled and moved to Proton a couple of years ago because they seemed to be a cool company aligned with my values. Is this coming from a “the business is failing and we need to ship faster to stay competitive” angle or is he just a massive ball bag? I mean either way he’s probably a massive ball bag but if he’s trying to save a sinking ship it’s at least somewhat understandable. Otoh if he’s just a massive greedy ball bag then I don’t even know where I go next.

Looking at the comments I seem to be the minority, but I appreciated the honesty to say, look we want to use AI and if you don't then this company is not a good fit anymore. Now they will let go these people anyway, but in a less transparent way.

Like I said earlier this week, this re-alignment of the people that built and maintained their products is also resulting in a re-alignment of their customer base.

Hopefully we’ll see those talented engineers leaving to build an alternative to Proton products now that we know corporate leadership at Proton can’t be trusted.

The board should really oust the “loser thinking” CEO and CTO if they want to minimize the damage to their brand.

The company not providing even a written statement in response to 404 reporting speaks volumes. They don’t see themselves accountable to their customers.

I expect Proton's existing employees may be a particularly bad audience for a "let the AI worry about security" message from the top, given that they are more likely to be a) security experts and b) people who care enough about security to actively seek out a job at Proton.

Looking for a different mail provider I passed on Proton because of their support for cryptocurrency and because the CEO politics.

I don’t care you are hosted in Zwitserland, your CEO makes me distrust the company dearly.

Just makes me think how we have encouraged a generation of tech leaders to be complete assholes with no consequences. That “loser thinking” line should never be accepted in any company discourse, even from leadership. If this person wasn’t an exec, they’d be shown the door for that language.

Have people completely lost their humanity? Is winning at whatever you’re doing that important we can’t be equally obligated to show each other decency?

> stop lovingly handcrafting all our code and use AI more

Shocking...

All of this has made me really appreciate that the people I work for, and with, aren't childish assholes. People need to realize this is not normal behavior from an executive or anyone in any sort of management position.

This to me doesn't solve the actual problem. I don't care if engineers at Proton use AI, and I don't care if management makes it a requirement to work there. What I care about is using it as a way to instill fear. Combined with the CEO constantly blowing up on Slack insulting employees, it cultivates a culture of "yes-men" which is not good for a security and privacy minded product.

I already cancelled my subscription. They've demonstrated far too reckless behavior for me to trust something this critical to them, especially as they present themselves as the private and secure alternative.

<< “I want to acknowledge myself, personally, that there was a communication failure on my part and there are many things that probably could and should have been communicated differently, and this is something that I’ll have to reflect on and improve over time. So I will do that.”

Note how he says that he wants to 'acknowledge' things. Not apologize. Not that he is wrong about the re-interviews. He says he didn't use nice enough language to soften the blow. Basically, in simple terms, he didn't Lisa it up as temporary refund adjustment.

edit: and the passive voice is a cherry on top

edit2: I gotta say -- all those CEOs are getting a little uppity for people who likely use copilot for summarizing emails.

I've been torn on Proton for a while, but looks like I won't be renewing my subscription...

This guys sounds like a giant prick.

I'll be angling hard towards abandoning Proton (and no longer recommending it to others) so long as Yen remains CEO. Hopefully, the larger company realizes the threat someone like him poses to their image AND quality of service.

Is this Proton as in ProtonMail?

His words.... He is bulshitting his way out of this situation

Wow. Clearly this isn’t a company I should be trusting to keep my email secure.

Too little too late. Violated security trust == canceled.

ugh when will these execs stop focusing on tokenmaxxing?

that comment about "loser thinking" sounds like he's not the best at communication

Kind of amazing how completely Yen misunderstands Protons customer base. It’s pretty much entirely security conscious people who want to divest from big tech right?

Why would he throw all that away?

> In one exchange, an employee in the company’s security Slack channel urged Proton to at least take a few days to pentest newly written code before pushing it live. “That’s bullshit and loser thinking. Of course it’s possible to be fast and secure,” Yen wrote in the channel at the end of August.

There was a moment a while back when 1Password made some decision (I think abandoning delphi?) that made me take a step back and ask if they were a security company or not. In moments like this, I wonder if Proton's pitch is security or not. Even if this is a true take, I think someone saying that they need to be cautious and pentest something before launch is a valid concern, for a security company. Not all companies are security companies, but Proton specifically advertises itself as being security and privacy conscious. It is a bad look for a security company to do something that indicates a lack of security prowess.

I think the writing on the wall for manually writing every line of code is obvious, but that does not obviate the need to secure things. However, pushing for speed at the expense of security, AI or not, is a bad look for a security company.

As one of the first customers of ProtonMail, this makes me really disappointed. Yen has clearly gone off the rails. This is a complete betrayal of the core principles he founded Proton on.

Holy shit.

> “That’s bullshit and loser thinking. Of course it’s possible to be fast and secure,” Yen wrote in the channel at the end of August. “Stop thinking always of how to be slower, and focus more on how to be faster.” Yen added, “stop lovingly handcrafting all our code and use AI more.”

This is the leader behind Proton? I think I need to be more on social media and pay attention to this. This single sentence, if true, has now made me decide to never pay Proton again. That's it. Done. I had email services, VPN, and was considering storage too. Nope.

I am so sick an tired of AIBrained CEO's. All this does is validate how much these people do not need to exist. They just don't. Their thinking is useless. Their in-grouping and in-breeding of mentality is psychosis at large. And now that feel, once again, they can take their masks off, it's time to start looking them in the face and saying, "No."

As a privacy and security focused company, this would seem like reputational suicide. Which in the privacy and security space you would figure is basically corporate suicide.

This person is so gross why do people like, or more importantly, _trust_ this company?

It’s honestly hilarious that the Proton CEO just admitted security isn't their priority. So what's their selling point then?

what a weaker "leader" this guy is.

i thought this was supposed to be the company that WASN'T full of delusionally self-satisfied business chuds.

The child in me always enjoys it when disgruntled people use a company's projected openness against them - https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/945460-general-ideas...

Whelp, it was good while it lasted. Proton subscription is cancelled. Glad I never migrated to their password store.

One could easily argue that the CEO's comments about employees being "losers" are quite abusive. He's not acting as a responsible leader. Sounds like a terrible place to work. Glad I never moved any services to Proton.

> “Stop thinking always of how to be slower, and focus more on how to be faster.” Yen added, “stop lovingly handcrafting all our code and use AI more.”

It's insane that rational thought, even in engineering orgs, is out the window in favor of AI hype.

AI changes the Quality/Time tradeoff. As anyone with a even a little engineering background knows, that means you can,

  * Cut time to get the same shitty software quality
    with unlimited bugs that we're accustomed to

  * In the same time, increase quality and make
    actually secure software.

How much time does it now take, using AI, to make 'High Assurance' software? Provably correct components? Other quality measures that were once out of reach? etc.

And the capability of AI-resourced attackers makes higher-quality software necessary.

I noticed that according to the article the re-interviews were cancelled after a meeting of the board (which includes some pretty notable people).

I gather that the current CEO holds a majority of the shares. Is he susceptible at all to wiser counsel?