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…
Andy Yen is so desperate to become a tech bro oligarch like all of his role models. You lead a non-profit, dickhead, act like it.
He said it himself: it’s important to win on appearances before technical stuff, or something like that. He’s definitely going to push that again; or keep doing it even now, but in a more discreet manner.
I’ve been slow to transition away from Google products but I gotta say… to make an effort to ditch Google and then have THIS happen to you? I feel bad for those people. I really do… You do the right thing and get slapped in the face. Not fair.
Anyone trying to ditch Google for principled reasons, not just annoyance or fashion, skipped proton. Since their inception they stink of corporate BS. It was apparent from the beginning that the privacy push was just a coat of paint. They still belong to the oppressor class and will defend their own, despite of what the marketing says. Always look at actions, not pretty marketing and fancy manifestos.
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.
Absolutely, these people only care about the “image”, they’ll say anything without changing anything
Is this the same Guy that has already said some Trump aligned stuff? I forget the specifics.
ready to move my entire family once again to secria. hopefully it won’t implode right away after the switch
So what does that mean going forward? Going forward, I’m still going to push,” he added.
So going forward, I mean to be going forward.
If there was any job LLM AI were best suited to replace, it’s these tech CEOs
For years I’ve been convinced that most CEOs can be replaced by a “magic 8 ball” or a dice and it will be all the same or better.
So yeah, doing it with a slightly less random thing could be fine.
Oh god yes, I can’t tell you how many times i’ve seen execs in general come in and confidently peddle their motivational crap and ethos only to be proven wrong 2 weeks later and having to backtrack and reframe their messaging with absolutely no consequences. But they only do that from peer pressure not because they actually believe they’re wrong, often exactly as the proton ceo did, saying they still want to push forward just in a different way. These people are unembarrassable and you can only get away from them if you quit or wait for them to quit and be fired, there’s no reforming.
Protons CEO is a weapons grade assclown.
He seems like the waste byproduct of real tech bro oligarchs.
“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!”
This 100% actually stopped me from moving my mail hosting to Proton. I’m looking at Tuta now and alternatives. And it’s not even the AI stuff so much as his insane toxic behaviour towards his people…the AI psychosis is almost secondary…
What are the options out there for email?
That I know of? Runbox, Tuta and a handful of others…but those two I like.
I’ve been using PurelyMail
The only other free option that I know of is Tuta, and it doesn’t have VPN or cloud storage like Proton does. I’m holding my breath hoping the Tuta management team doesn’t turn out ot be assholes tooo…
Cloud storage is coming. I’m keeping an eye on Tuta to move across to
I use tuta for mail and private internet access for VPN. Since it is well priced with port forwarding included.
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.
Giving devs metrics and targets is just so dumb.
Their job is to learn the rules to manipulate systems to their benefit.
If you hand them some half-cooked system they’re going to work out how to (best case scenario) bend it out of their way.
Worst case scenario is that they bend it to their benefit, and find a way to do less work for the same “score”.
Everyone needs metrics and targets, otherwise it is just dicking around and nothing useful gets done.
The problem it that tech bros only half listened in social sciences class and choose the dumbest metrics and targets. Agile completely killed waterfall and specification development. In turn, using the equivalent of ignorance of the masses ticket systems on Jira. The worst of all worlds with commits, PRs and lines of code as metrics and a vacuous tick mark on user stories as goals. No wonder software development has been hell for decades.
Software developers need to stop designing in the code and go back to designing on paper against specifications and unit tests. Thinking has always been the main work of a software developer, not just writing code. As for the AI side of the problem, the purpose of code is not just to be written, but to be read and understood by humans. AI coding trashes the ontological purpose for the existence of code.
Yeah, getting metrics on software development has always been a problem from the first time people were writing code in the employ of a business.
Businesses love metrics. Put them on spreadsheet makes some graphs, that’s what some people do as their job.
The problem is you can’t actually measure the productivity of someone that’s doing something that’s never been done before. Software development is always about doing things that haven’t been done before. If you want the same software, you just copy it, you don’t need a developer. You only need a developer to make the software do something it doesn’t currently do, which means having someone do something they’ve never done before.
You just can’t measure the productivity on that. But businesses want to have some numbers, so they chuck whatever numbers they have into a spreadsheet.
You might be interested in this (it was super timely for me 6 months ago) : https://leehanchung.github.io/blogs/2026/04/05/the-ai-great-leap-forward/
That science adage: To measure, is to change.
When a metric becomes a goal, it’s no longer a good metric.
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.
same here, just cancelled today with him and his leadership style as the reason
I was actually going to move off Zoho to them, and actually pay for my email
Outstanding timing
I mean the best way to make them understand is to comply with their vision to the point where you make them eat their words. If i was a proton employee i would vibe code the shit out of everything until they’ve got a security breach every day. The only reason these kinds of execs only listen to one thing: profits. Just saying
The problem with that plan is that there very rarely is any accountability for the executives. At worst, they get a lucrative package, and find a new position in another company, with more “experience”. It’s usually the workers who get blamed and fired, even if they were following orders.
Well maybe that experience will teach them something. And as to the workers? Sounds like they were gonna get fired anyway. Damned if you do damned if you don’t
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 itI’m thinking the same. His whole “more prompting, faster, security is for losers” mentality is not going away with this. I’m glad I swapped to my own domain name at least when swapped to proton, so the next migration should hopefully be easier. Does anyone know any good guides or have any tips? Mainly worried that there will probably be a period I won’t have any emails coming in and would be a shame to get stuck in that position 😅 Specifically around changing the DNS records around
Change the DNS to your new one first. See you mail come in then pull your old emails across. Keep both accounts running until migration complete
Damage is already done, though. Get fucked, Andy.
