Proton Colleagues, Unionize Now
molecule.build
molecule.build
>According to the report, an employee in Proton's security Slack channel urged the company to take at least a few days to pentest newly written code before pushing it live. Yen replied, at the end of August: "That's bullshit and loser thinking. Of course it's possible to be fast and secure." He added: "Stop thinking always of how to be slower, and focus more on how to be faster." In a follow-up message he wrote "only losers think like that," and his message to the team was to "stop lovingly handcrafting all our code and use AI more."
I think he's terminally online in a way that fried his brain. And I used to think his 88 tattoo was just a coincidence but now I honestly would believe anything.
It’s a stark contrast to the posts we’ve been seeing on Patrick Stewart’s portrayal of Picard as to what it means to be a good leader.
Engineers are delicate.
I'm on both sides of that fence always.
Instead of 'don't pent test' it should be 'proportional measures' and definitely should be trying to leverage AI as much as is possible. Which is complicated of course for a company that has a certain kind of brand. They literally do not need to be banging out features.
If he can't even do that, he's ill-equipped to be leading a company.
Language barriers exist like 'loser move' - first - that may be a bit of a small translation problem - second - it's a cultural issue.
It 'sounds crude' to Western ears to hear 'loser move' ... but in the end it's not so bad.
It's just impolite.
A very small change in words would have made it sound different.
Adults can be adults and walk past dumb language: "over thinking delicate process instead of thinking of how to use tools to break through is what we must do" <- this it the obvious intent of the language.
I would not care if a CEO use the language he used - like - it would be dumb, and I would not use it, but I would not care.
This is very different than 'insulting a group' or something.
Aka 'women can't code as well as men, the science proves!' or some stuff like that - that would not be 'dumb language' that would be an assault on the legitimacy of people.
It also depends on how often and common this is, and if this is the only means of leadership.
If this is 'daily' - then its bad.
If this is not accompanied by structured communication aka if he wants 'change' then it has to be articulated in a meaningful way.
This is like Trumps invasion of Iran. DJT is an idiot, he did not plan, he acted impulsively, he says horrible and stupid things. But ironically - there is a rationalization that could have been made the whole way. Engaging with partners, building a coalition, having a strategy, recognizing the potential fallout, even 'bold moves' are allowable in that context. And even failure. A random blowhard tweet is tolerable, not a random blowhard culture.
I think that's rarely the case in orgs and I say that as someone whose issues have been in remission for a decade+ and is reasonably confident in his work abilities and capabilities.
Responsible leadership models good behavior as a cultural norm. If you normalize language that puts people down, the entire ecosystem changes. I've seen it happen in plenty of companies after outside consultants were hired in as leadership.
There is also no rationalization for the Iran War that would have made sense logistically or morally especially not when diplomacy was proven to have worked - it was an exercise in converting taxpayer money into lucrative contracts for arms suppliers who just happen to occasionally gift a connected family member with yachts and watches. It's a terrible example.
And I don't mean to say "young people need to learn to take abuse".
I'm saying - there's nothing actually wrong with saying what he said, just tone and a misplaced word.
If he said "Not using AI is a losing proposition" ... totally different,
or 'losing game' or even colloquially 'loserville' ... same thing but slight change of words gives it different inflection.
There's nothing wrong with his statement really - it's just crude.
There's no reason it should affect anyone, that's not an issue of mental health, rather just learning to externalize and internalize the right things.
If it's anger directed downward, consistently - then yes - you have a point.
And yes, you can use that kind of tone if it's not directed upwards though, and you're a veteran or whatever, and if the leader does not have thin skin.
You have to know them personally though.
A VP can clap back at a CEO, that happens a lot in some orgs
The post below discusses the user handle and its connotations (I'm less certain than this poster but nothing would surprise me at this point).
Andy Yen is simply a moron and proves it over and over.
It's a trope: my cousin can do it cheaper.
"possible" does not mean guaranteed. And security guarantees are Proton's USP.
His own engineers tell him they need more testing to be sure, and he calls them losers.
It's as if an AI locked Andy Yen in his basement and is now impersonating him to add more bugs faster.
It's taking a kind of semantic equivocation that's trivially true about any approach in any direction, and treating it like it's a specific advantage of a particular vision.