Proton goes all in on using AI
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> > The geeks won.
> For a very brief period, and then when the really big money started rolling in, all the personalities that used to flock to wall street became programmers.
> The Silicon Valley of the 90s was completely different to the thing it is now here.
Damn, my check must've gotten lost in the mail.
For a very brief period, and then when the really big money started rolling in, all the personalities that used to flock to wall street became programmers.
The Silicon Valley of the 90s was completely different to the thing it is now here.
On one level it's a shame on another exactly what you'd expect to happen given the amounts of money involved.
We had it good there for a while.
Not living in SF (or the US) and been around HN for a long time is an interesting view into how an influential part of the tech landscape thinks.
What a jerk. I agree that security doesn't have to be given time—like all software, implementation takes the time it takes.
But he doesn't have to be such an asshole about it. In my book, there's nothing more representative of "loser thinking" than casting petulant aspersions like "loser thinking."
What a coincidence that all these fucking "thought leaders" have exactly the same thoughts.
edit: stating this based off of the linked post, but will read the article linked in the post as well.
edit edit: Okay, yeah. This seems like an awful place to work.
They're sheep being herded by tech billionaires, who've gotten them to think they're pets and that they definately won't slaughter the second they're hungry.
I also only read the initial post and not the entire 404 article. I suppose if I could edit my comment and have it maintain some posterity, I'd say something like "going all-in on AI doesn't make you evil", but I concede that these guys could certainly be assholes if there's more to it (I'll read the nested article).
I see a ton of examples of companies overusing AI and destroying their brand/image and products, but not many who abstained and are hurting. Using AI does not give you automatic wins, and using it solely because its available does not make you competent.
There's heaps of companies between small and conglomerate and the middle area is where the commodity asset companies lived. Generating low stakes copy, art, apps and websites for small companies.
https://www.404media.co/proton-to-re-interview-staff-about-a...
- Praising the Republican Party and endorsing a Trump appointee.
- Andy choosing a username with 88 in it (a common Nazi dogwhistle) but then claiming it had a different meaning.
- Sponsoring a far-right French YouTuber and claiming they had no idea.
Again, nothing hard and fast. But it meant I was not at all surprised to find out how fucked up the company is on the inside.
And don't they sponsor like a crap ton of youtubers?
the signs were there for a while but this ain't helping. not jumping ship today, but that's mostly logistical -- but will start looking for other options.
like i do security and use AI daily -- and i am fully aware of what its good for and not good for. there still need to be engineers in the loop, and if it's just AI then i'm not a Proton customer I'm a [Claude/ChatGPT/Gemini/etc] customer.
This is disgusting, full stop. Destroying any sense of trust in your company by allowing people to rat on others is going to bite them in the ass.
And all for AI, which ultimately is a tool that the largest portion of people already have adopted and those that haven’t often understand it’s the way forward anyway. Like instead of letting your people do this organically, maintaining trust in their org, you poison it instead. And for what? A few extra dollars in the bank? The greed is gross.
Not to mention the loss of customers/potential customers. I always thought proton was one of the good companies. That’s out the window with this news.
--- EDIT: Ohhhhhh apparently it's paid-only. Yeah, I would pay for a decent email service, but I'm poor, so I can't afford that... Thanks, anyway!
can you elaborate?
Any good alternatives?
The other option is self hosting.
Don't worry, they can vibe code the rest in no time. /s
Email more broadly? I can heartily recommend Fastmail.
I don't really send anything sensitive over email if I can help it. Signal is a much better choice.
If the company isn't going to hit revenue targets they might actually need to fire people and this can be a good way to provide cover that devs aren't meeting requirements so they can be fired with cause.
A past company CEO sounded very similar to this internally before they fired 30% of the staff because they didn't have enough money.
My current vibe reading on CEOs who think every job can be done with AI today is the athlete who starts celebrating before crossing the finish line, to be passed bysomeone who takes the win. My guys, it's not that good yet!
I'm not sure he's wrong. I'm speculating here but I can imagine the kind of developers Proton attracts--likely people who care a lot about the code and who care about the craft. That's fine, but when you're running a company in this environment, and that's what things look like internally, you do have to be a little brutal to shake people out of old ways. A manifesto titled "Your old job is gone" may actually be warranted.
It sounds a lot like there are people internally who are still fighting the shift, and they've taken to leaking things that hurt the company's security image. Part of the CEO's job, if he's going to push hard in the direction he's decided on, is to fire those people who will undermine it before they do. That this has all now backfired is entirely on him. Maybe he thought he was "motivating" people by calling them losers, or shaking them out of an outmoded way of thinking about what we do, but none of that matters when you have employees attacking your main selling point and the core image of the company in public.
He's not wrong that he needs to move fast, or that processes need to change, or that the job has changed, but his execution isn't so great.
He'll probably survive just fine though.
"This will be the last year that we hire engineers, and starting next year we hire what we used to call product managers, to build things with AI."
By the way, this is where the industry would like to go. Pay attention, people.
I think we all know the game has changed. The question would be whether the CEO is handling that effectively. On that score I don't think he is. It sounds like a slow-moving mutiny is going on, and to have it blow up in the press means you've already failed.
We do not all know anything of the sort. From my perspective, the game hasn't changed at all, and it's just a bunch of people hyping up a bubble who think it has.
The hard truth: the tech, and the economic system it's mixed with, do not care what your reasoned critique is, what your fine distinctions are, etc. Stated another way, if Capital finds in technology a new means for revolutionizing the mode of production, then it will push that forward, generalize it, expand it, and draw all of its consequences, even if that technology is not ideal!
In a sense, you're demoting your managers to implementors, and getting rid of their leadership role altogether. Simultaneously getting rid of your prior engineers and all the domain and tribal knowledge they had built up.
Well, yeah. They're the ones who are harmed by Andy's behavior, so obviously they're the ones speaking up. How does this disqualify anything they're saying?
« Workers describe an environment where employees have genuine concerns about security or being asked to develop security products with AI, but feel unable to voice them »
It's very hard to build reliable and secure products in a fearful environment. This sort of thing has come up in root cause analyses of disasters. We don't need to know whether Proton has defined "guardrails" for AI usage, or what the processes are like; there will be problems, gaps, and employees will be unable to raise those issues with management. That's all I need to know, really.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
Just like other advances in technology have replaced jobs, AI will replace jobs.
I'm sure the elevator opperators lamented push-button controls that anyone could just press too.
It sucks, but I imagine most programmers are smart enough to be able to pivot careers or how they do their jobs.
That will probably be true.
Since software is in some ways information + machine a near infinite amount can be created. I'm not sure I want to live in that world.