Proton CEO Andy Yen: "This will be the last year that we hire engineers."

bitfilped

Sigh, I'd just started the migration to proton.

CqtGLRGcukpy

Instead of just reading a tweet that includes quote from an article, read the full article at https://www.404media.co/manifestos-fear-and-loser-thinking-i... Full archived / paywall free copy is at https://web.archive.org/web/20261029143048/https://www.404me...

stefanos82

So many thread replies are saying they are cancelling both their email and VPN accounts lol! Self-destructive tendencies all these hallucinated CEOs!

throwa356262

Andy Yen, the CEO of Proton, had a message for an employee in the company’s security Slack channel who urged the company to at least take a few days to pentest newly written code before pushing it live. “That’s bullshit and loser thinking...” Ah, that explains the recent enshitification. Add some AI slop to this mess and you will soon be the centerpiece of haveibeenpwned

rvz

> CEO Andy Yen wrote it to staff in Slack: "This will be the last year that we hire engineers." Starting next year, he said, Proton hires product managers to build things with AI. That won't age well in the long term, especially and for a company that deals with security. Here's what Proton just did: Rather than equipping more of your technical staff with AI to compete against the competition, they are dismissing them over it and not hiring anymore engineers on technical defense. Not only the competition has AI agents as well, the malicious attackers also do and will overwhelm Proton with swarms of them, non-stop with less staff. This will be the beginning of the end of Proton as there will be no-one ready to defend the company when millions of abliterated frontier-level AI agents attack them at 25,000 tokens per second. That isn't a secure future for Proton.

bitbasher

> “Due to insufficient velocity,” Proton is not on track to achieve its annual recurring revenue target by the end of the year, one internal document... Ummm, maybe I am crazy but I don't want the main metric for my privacy-first email provider to be ARR. How about security and privacy guarantees? How about bugs fixed? How about lowering the supply chain risk for the company? I care about a lot more than your ARR. > That’s bullshit and loser thinking. Of course it’s possible to be fast and secure > Yen reiterated his point: “only losers think like that.” His ultimate message for the team was to “stop lovingly handcrafting all our code and use AI more.” I'm on the Proton "visionary" plan ($280/year) for my family. I'm more than happy to switch. Anyone have a suggestion as to where to re-home our email? I'm using custom domains for ~3 domains and control 3 people's email.

npc99

Guess I will be finding a new email provider... Can anyone recommend good alternatives?

MiroslavPokorny

Cutting costs to save a bit here and there is never a winning move because it doesnt create value. Engineers at a tech company create value.

drewbitt

If they can vibe code the project without engineering then surely their users can too, right? I currently pay for Proton Pass but when mine renews next year I'd rather just give the money to Opus 6.5.

sligor

I’m also cutting cost with my proton subscription

verdverm

This will be the last year I have confidence in Proton as a product I should be using...

ChrisArchitect

[dupe] Discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50289692

mfro

Thanks for the heads up, Andy! I’ll find a new email and vpn provider. It was a good 7 years, admittedly.

scottydelta

I just helped a product manager friend host and run their app on a VPS. It was a single file app.py flask app with over 10,000 lines of code. It had html and css defined as variables in that single file! I am sure this is gonna end well.

ee3aa

What an utter moron lmao.

MrMorden

This statement may end up true, but not for the reason he thinks.

latentsea

Fucking yikes. As someone that relies on Proton, I'm devastated to hear this. They have just completely destroyed their brand.

__m

Unfortunately that’s the reality we live in. How do you compete if your competition is willing to move fast and break things? I guess the only option is to move to a provider that doesn’t disclose it’s ai use. Am i too pessimistic?

lioeters

"That's bullshit and loser thinking."