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 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.