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. 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.”
In a follow-up message, 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.”
This sounds like the most insecure loser statement I’ve ever heard. Andy Yen and the rest of the Proton Execs seem to have fully bought into the man-o-sphere in the same way that every basement incel has.
I was out as soon as this dropped but anyone still in may want to reconsider.
Holy shit this CEO is fully unhinged, I feel so much for the employees at Proton. What the fuck. I like Proton products T.T
I have never bought into the Proton hate seen on Lemmy, as most if not all of it came from a fundamental misunderstanding of how technology works. And if anything, this report confirms that the employees inside Proton really do seem to care about the product.
But ultimately, if the CEO is this hostile internally, those employees will leave and the product will just enshittify at an exponential rate. This is actually some very damning insight into the future of Proton.
Proton has a couple competitors that are viable to switch to, if not somewhat half baked next to Proton. But it’s important to understand for the people who have been berating Proton for handing over metadata to authorities and similar things, that Tutanota and other competitors will have all the same problems. Tuta is based in Germany which is a member of 14 eyes, and will if anything be more susceptible to the whims of the US government than Proton was.
You can help us by spreading this https://molecule.build/
we need collective worker power at proton
Some choice quotes:
“The CEO is in full AI psychosis and has been for a while now,” one of the sources told 404 Media.
I think it’s important to use the term “AI psychosis” until it becomes mainstream. There’s power in simplifying, in two words, the mental illness that has spread to nearly every major-company CEO and C-suite MBA hump. And until it becomes a meme, until they know the general public sees them and knows they are blindly confident in something they don’t understand, that we know they are conning themselves and us, they won’t spare a moment of introspection to reconsider.
“Perception is more important than truth, the truth doesn’t matter if you don’t win on perception.”
Let’s unpack this. The programmers are concerned about Proton’s push for security, and they push back on objectively unmaintainable AI code - to say nothing of Yen’s bullying to push to live before it’s even tested - and this is Yen’s response. In essence: Security does not matter more than the perception of speed.
This is demonstrably idiotic, because security issues are the “truth” being undermined here, and when someone hacks or compromises key parts of your service, that will be far more damaging some CEO-naval-gazing version of “look how fast we are.”
In all, the many quotes from engineers really do the job convincing that this guy is not just a bad CEO, but a bad person. I’m sure to Board members or billionaires, this type of psychopathy and lack of empathy looks like a feature and not a bug. This probably won’t change that, but every moment spent holding up a mirror helps.
What a sorry excuse of a human. Fuck that guy.
The same CEO who, a while ago, praised the Republicans? How can a company under someone like that ever be “privacy first”? If I remember correctly, there were a lot of people acting as if this wouldn’t affect the products in of itself, but how could it not?
My thoughts exactly! I was banned on a Reddit sub for critiquing him. Seems he really has his fanboys.
Do they think this is gonna play well with their security minded base?
Cancelling isn’t that hard.
Wow this is super shitty. I hope they can unionize. Dude seems to be cras h ing the ship on purpose.
This leadership mentality doesn’t look good for the future of Proton.
They want to appear that they are about security but seems they are more in boat with Microsoft, now and into the future, of AI does all the work.
I spent a year jumping between Proton, Mailbox, Tuta, MXroute etc, until a wise Lemmy user mentioned they had gotten on well with Fastmail. It fit like a glove and I haven’t looked back.
Damnit, another one I hadn’t heard of and it looks pretty great lol. I’m on mailbox.org and I like it, so I won’t jump ship anytime soon, but what were the major differences between the two (if you have time and opinions)?
Also, for anyone who cares Fastmail is Australian (which satisfies my personal “not under fascist/expansionalist” check).
I was on Mailbox for about 3 months, and I liked the fact their CEO is someone who knows everything there is to do with email protocols. I found their lack of updates to the backend system on their drive solution frustrating (Open Exchange), plus the smallish size of mail storage. I have family members I wanted to move off GMail and they have 30GB or some of mail storage. Also, not the greatest UI. But, as an email solution, solid as a rock.
I’d forgotten I was also on Infomaniak for about a year. This seemed the perfect fit, until I realised how convoluted their system was and would a no-go for bringing family members into it.
I tried Proton, but just couldn’t sell myself on their services. They are also expensive for a family solution with too many other products I don’t need (VPN, Password). No easy SMTP either. I have a mum who loves Thunderbird, so easy SMTP is a must. I don’t like the bridge solution they offer: just support SMTP FFS!!
Tuta? Just too basic a service and no SMTP
Soverin? Looked at them, didn’t try them.
MXroute? I liked that for the fact you can bring a lot of address across for not much money. But, still only custom domains.
Then I came across someone on here who said they had tried Fastmail and stuck with it, so I gave it a go. Loved it from the start!
You can create a basic @fastmail account, then bring across a custom domain to that account later and make it the defacto login. Loved this. Tick!
Lots of email storage. Tick!
Cheap for family plan. Tick!
3rd part SMTP client support. Tick!
Nice apps for macOS, Android etc. Tick!
Good signature support across different emails, masked emails… lots of basic things, just done well.
And I use DavX for calendar and contact support on my Graphene pixel phone, and Fastmail is supported with easy-setup, coming from Infomaniak with lots of app-passwords, this was a double tick!!
Phew, longer reply than I planned. Back to work…
EDIT: Oh, and I looked at Hey as well, but that’s off the charts bonkers as an email solution.
Cocaine is a helluva drug.
I think we forget it’s endemic to grindkultur AI douchenozzlery.
I have been inclined to give Proton the benefit of doubt with some of their stuff, but this is pretty rough.
I wish I could just throw out email and calendars as a service and still live in the modern world. I really don’t like my only options for them being having to host it myself with all the pitfalls that can come with or using services controlled by data brokers like Google, shit heads like this guy apparently is, or our way or the highway gatekeepers like Apple.
I just want to give someone money to let me point my domain at it for email services and host my calendar without any drama or BS. Why does that concept have to be so complicated these days?
I guess I’ll say it here, but I have always had weird feelings about proton. They are always marked as the top of privacy alternatives to Google. I was never sold on it though and figured that the shit would hit the fan eventually
This was enough for me to jump ship, after some research fastmail seems to meet my needs. Sure its not a perfect replacement but im willing to miss out on some features to avoid funding this kind of behaviour. Voted with my wallet
Crap, time to drop Proton and find an alternative.
