Technology

It will be impossible to trust this company again until Yen and the rest of the C-suite resign.

He has to go and the Proton workers have to form a union.

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. “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.”

Yikes, this Yen guy seems really charming

Near the start of the meeting, Yen said, “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.”

“So what does that mean going forward? Going forward, I'm still going to push,” he added.

Uh. This news makes everything about 0% better.

I like to think my plan cancellation last night helped. Now they gotta oust the CEO.

After those discussions with leadership and the board, “We’ve decided to actually cancel the re-interviews,” Yen said. “Why? Well, I think actually in a, let’s say, unintentional way, they have actually already served their purpose.” As in, employees are now talking and learning about AI.

These morons just don't know when to quit.

This guy sounds so fucking emotionally fragile and immature. Wahhh go faster, wahhh make me more money!

When you foment a toxic workplace like this, the good employees leave and you get fucked, especially in a security conscious space like this.

Can you use AI to improve security? Yes. It's objectively very good at finding holes, which is exactly what you want. But when you call your employees losers and tell them they need to be faster, and whatever the fuck an AI "re-interview is", well you can get bent.

"We're not making money fast enough so let's alienate our core userbase and create a toxic work environment! That will surely be a success!"

Cancelled my subscription too.

I swear that money nukes brain cells.

“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 obtained by 404 Media reads. Proton’s year-over-year growth is also “far away from what the market today considers to be good,” and, “By all metrics that matter, we’re an underperforming company.”

What a bunch of imbeciles. People that use Proton are in it because they value security and privacy. Any AI produced code that's not vetted is inherently insecure, and a huge "fuck you" to privacy as a whole.

"We're no tmaking enough money fast enough, let's go the slop-route". Fucking idiot, what do you think is going to happen the moment the security crowd and the privacy crowd hear about this?

I for one have been preparing to jump ship from my family plan subscription the moment it expires, precisely because of this bullshit Yen has been pushing in the last year or so, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.

I do believe that Yen started proton from a good place, but as is natural for these fuckers, the sight of money completely replaces whatever working segments of their brains were working with shit.

I canceled my sub today.

Zero interest in using a product voluntarily that's clearly not being tested adequately. I get enough of that having to use MS Teams at work, which has really just become whatever buggy crap MS' vibe coders feel like vomiting into production in a given day.

“Right now, everything seems consistent with it being damage control,” they said.

Oh dear.

What's the consensus on a replacement for Proton?

Protons CEO is a weapons grade assclown.

Way to get your people happy and productive dipshit. This cancellation is far too late. Now employees are going to keep their heads down, take zero risks and merely check whatever boxes required. He demotivated his entire workforce in one fell swoop. And for people like me who wasn't using their product or know much about them, now I have a foul taste in my mouth for the brand name.

Cool.

Not supporting your company anymore though.

Canceled.

The optics management attempt in response to the 404media story verifies that i made the right move.

Please remember something very important everyone: The company may have changed its policy, but the company that made the policy hasn't changed. The people that made the bad decisions are still in charge, and the priorities that made them make that decision are still the same. They haven't changed.

This is relevant not just for Proton, but about every time company pretends to step back from a bad decision.

Ahh, here's the largest part of the problem.

They said they felt not much could have happened due to Yen having the majority of Proton’s shares.

Proton has always giving me the ick, but at this point I think 99% of it is Yen.

Dear Proton Engineers,

He means they won't do it yet, because the backlash is causing problems. Either because they fear the loss of customers, or because they fear the engineers leaving before getting their replacements trained.

I suspect some folks would poison the training while looking for another job.

I just double checked (while canceling this years subscription) and I’ve been paying for proton for 10 years. I put in my cancellation notes that Andy is the reason I’m canceling and I won’t reconsider until he’s replaced.

So, funny story that might be related. Engineers directed by their management to tokenmaxx often will just prompt very complex, difficult tasks to drive up their token usage.

Using the metric as the goal is a great way to give perverse incentives. SEE ALSO the US Stock Exchange.

Anyone that unironically uses the word "loser" to try to motivate a policy by mocking the opposite, is not mature or responsible enough to be in a position of power.

Also, mocking instead of giving technical reasons only happens when you are not right but want to win the argument anyway.

So yeah, he just outed himself as not fit for any manager position, worst of all a CEO.

People saying they will go back if he steps down, I think this kind of is a wake up call on the company using privacy not seriously but as a marketing gimmick.

I would stay away from them. Surprise surprise, another YouTube advertised product that is shit....

This does very little to convice me to not migrate away.
My #1 issue was them sacrificing Security for Speed and this latest change does jack shit to address it