>PROTON SAYS 2026 IS ITS LAST YEAR HIRING ENGINEERS>CEO Andy Yen wrote it to staff in Slack: "This will be the last year that we hire engineers." Starting next year, he said, Proton hires product managers to build things with AI.Any good alternatives to proton now that it's killing itself?
>mail and vpnthe fuck do they even need enginsaars for, read the logs?
>>110197187>read the logsThat's what they need AI for.
Do they really want to become so dependent on Anthropic that if Claude ever suffers downtime they become helpless to do anything?
>>110197228Do they really make anything critical? Nobody uses Proton Mail as a primary email.
I'm glad I never felt for the proton mail meme and only ever used it for burner mailboxes. I do have 1 proton email for my Steam account, so I guess I'll have to change it now. It sounds very much like they will soon go bankrupt. If you have something important connected to your proton mail change it now while you still can
I'm guessing the email service will end in the not too distant future for not being profitable enough.
>>110197115Should have focused only on email. No one wanted the terrible ecosystem that was created.
>>110197245I do, but "primary" means shit i may revisit. I also have a dozen mails for spam and registering on various sites, and 2 backups that forward to each other and proton.
>>110197479this touched a chordliterally me in 2015
>>110197115>and a staffer who asked for security testing was told it was "loser thinking.This has to be a joke, right?
>>110197798https://www.404media.co/manifestos-fear-and-loser-thinking-inside-protons-ai-reckoning/>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.”
>>110198140If true, and a big if because that seems like bullshit Inwould make up to win an argument in my head in the shower, time to leave.
>>110198140Linetrap honestly did have an extremely attractive face, too bad his dick looks weird
>>110197479the moment any company starts to become monolithic is the moment to leaveproton was always sus
>>110198140Damn, I do use proton, mostly because my gmail is full of trashfml
proton is my irl email
>>110198140What's it with Asians in tech always going off the deep end when left alone?
>>110198140>mfw switch to proton this yearI can't catch a break.
>>110198140>shipping an update a few days faster is worth risking a security incident that destroys the companyi dont understand. what the fuck is there to gain? how does updating a few days earlier makes them more money? their whole thing is privacy and security. what does exchanging security for 1% faster updates do for them?
Well time to cancel my yearly sub. Gonna start looking for alternatives for the proton suite 'bout time I selfhost bitwarden anyway
>>110197115They're not actually going full retard on AI... Right?AI is fine in my eyes as long as you don't use it as a crutch and inevitably sabotage yourself. This has to be tabloid shit. I'm pretty deep into their ecosystem by now...
>>110198925rtfmhttps://www.404media.co/manifestos-fear-and-loser-thinking-inside-protons-ai-reckoning/>“Due to insufficient velocity,” Proton is not on track to achieve its annual recurring revenue target by the end of the year, one internal document obtained by 404 Media reads. Proton’s year-over-year growth is also “far away from what the market today considers to be good,” and, “By all metrics that matter, we’re an underperforming company.”
>>110197115>An internal document says Proton is behind its revenue target and calls the company "Underperforming"At this point I'm convinced any company that says "We're laying off due to AI" or "We're not hiring due to AI" is a failing company trying to convince people it isn't failing.
>>110197115sounds jeet-coded.
>>110197115too long didn't read, here is gemini's take
it's pretty amazing how much these companies hate employees who can think straight enough to make things well. replacing them with an experimental method at the first opportunity seems quite odd. what even is a product manager? a guy (woman?) with a business degree who they can pay half as much?
>>110199444tldr>The text argues that privacy-focused tech companies must prioritize profitability over ideology to cover massive infrastructure and payroll costs. It critiques online commentators who expect these commercial platforms to operate like charities while demanding top-tier service.
>>110199494Privacy-focused tech companies must be profitable to survive. Critics unrealistically demand premium services while ignoring operating costs and expecting businesses to function as charities.
>>110199444TFLDFR:Privacy requires profit, not charity.
>>110197115product managers are more replaceable with ai, aren't they?is it just about the last names of people with manager titles?
>>110197115What the fuck are they thinking?Project managers never keep up with privacy/security aspects of things. There's no way they're using a local AI either.3 letter agencies are about to prompt inject the fuck out of their software till its less secure than communicating openly on social media
>>110197115>Any good alternatives to proton now that it's killing itself?Proton shit has been glowie compromised garbage for many years, I thought this was common knowledge. You haven't seriously been using their services have you?
Isn't this the same "privacy" company that made fun of Monero and refused to accept it as payment. Lol. Deserved.
>>110200041It's pretty good if you just don't want to have to associate your phone or another email with it.
>>110197115>security testing is loser thinkingSo their product is worthless basically?
>>110200435this has been hammered into your retard heads for 20 years - email is not secure by design. The only thing that's remotely "secure" about proton was that it didn't instantly fold to (((government))) agencies. Nobody gives a crap about security on email.If you use any of the other meme stack, it's on you for being retarded and not selfhosting.
>>110197115Well now the ceo will have to fire a bunch of engineers because of the cancelled subscriptions. happy redditards?
>>110197115I soft migrated to proton last Black Friday and now you're telling me cracks are showing already? Fuck this is like cycling through browsers. I got invited to Thundermail but it is so overpriced and unfinished.
>>110198140So I think when my Proton VPN subscription runs out, I'm going to switch to Mullvad.
To be expected, glowies can't let an actually privacy focused company to continue existing.There are alternatives to ProtonPass and ProtonVPN for now but what about email?
>>110198140Here's your security first tech company bro
>>110199444>jettison the core feature to save the businessdamn this thing is like a real MBA
>>110198586Same. Proton for irl and Tuta for random online stuff is a perfect setup. Both free accounts and not handing all the data to one company.
>>110197115generating code was never the bottleneck in any company I ever worked onthese motherfuckers cultivated an entire culture of processes and rituals and general time wasting for years and now they're suddenly saying we gotta go fast we were going fast. we could get the same speed with small human teams if you got rid of all the processes around them like we're doing with AI now
>>110201576>entire culture of processes and ritualslet's touch back on this on our next retro after today's daily okay
>>110197115>>110198140>>110199312JFC, you can't make this shit up. Now I'm glad I never used the email for much.>>110197479The free VPN had uses. Though not as much after they stopped letting free users pick the country. You had to reroll through increasing cooldowns to get what you wanted.
>>110199312How is revenue=code shippedWhat a fucking retard, none buys their shit because none wants it because there are better free alternatives and the schizos that dont want big tech dont bother with this honeypot
>>110197115ahahahahahahhahaa thats so retarded. who the fuck needs managers? just hire enigneers to do the job
>>110199566No need they already have a man made backdoor there
>>110198629Did you also create a lot of aliases for all the sites and now you will have to walk it all back?
>"swiss company">chink ceoMake it make sense
>>110197479shit, I remember this basic view. Now I miss it>>110197245>Proton Mail as a primary email.I do... I don't think its possible to switch now that I'm locked in as an adult. That would be almost impossible
>>110199448>the ai cat lost his stripes and his gains
>>110202159Because somebody has to take the blame and the retards coming up with unsellable products nobody wants certainly aren't gonna get axed.
>>110201988don't fall for the white woman trap
>>110197115>Product ManagerWoman>Build things with AIOh. So they are looking for MTFs. How progressive.
>>110197115sounds 100% like they sell data to the CIA to maintain profits
>>110197115based.
>>110197115Is it really bad? I do mainly use Proton and I am really thinking about what to do now... although I thought their software was libre? Even if they use AI, it is still visible to others? What are the real risks if I keep using Proton? I do not want to leave it yet just to throw an "anti-AI" tantrum
>>110203164Don't fall for the trap
>>110203233I use proton too. Their software is not libre. The risk is they continue to vibe a half-broken software suite, the user experience becomes shitty and bloated for what you actually wanted it for (the mail), they hemorrhage money to cloud llms and failed products and fold, and/or push their vibeslopping so hard they get pwned or pwn themselves.I guess just wait and see. I'll keep using them for now because they keep giving me free storage.
>>110197479This. I had one since the domain was called protonmail.com before proton.me and its gorillion services. I made a tuta account recently but it's just a massive hassle switching everything over. I'll get to it eventually or just keep the proton account as my junk email and leave all the important shit in tuta.
>>110198140yeah thats what i need, my email app to "grow faster", the email app
>>110203324>push their vibeslopping so hard they get pwned or pwn themselvesThis is what would primarily worry me. The reason I bought into their stuff was "privacy first", especially the part where they operate in a jurisdiction that (at the time—things are changing in Switzerland recently) actually legally allows for privacy as opposed to mandating a bunch of privacy violations.I can easily see scenarios where vibe coding pushes a change that violates privacy. Even just something stupid like adding some debugging code that dumps a VPN customer's IP address into an error log. I'd estimate that the vast majority of code that large language models are trained on is going to be the privacy-violating kind, because very few vendors or developers are actually committed to privacy.I'm not even anti-AI in principle. I'm just pragmatic about the alignment issues using AI for applications that require absolute fidelity to a certain principles. AI is great for applications where 99% probability of success is good enough, but it's awful for applications where even a 0.1% chance of failure is catastrophic. There are no meaningful consequences for pushing a shitty patch for a videogame, go fucking wild with your vibe coding. But there are meaningful consequences for important cybersecurity infrastructure.The comment rejecting pentesting >>110198140 as part of their devops cycle is just "holy fucking shit" red flag to me. So much so that I'm tempted to write an angry email as a customer about it.
>>110203324Thank you, I am aware that only their frontend software is libre but not their backend. For the moment, I think it would be wise to not give Proton any money, not because of protesting but because there could be legitimate privacy risks of doing that in the future :)
>>110203445>—why are bots posting on /g/?
>>110203529(you) can pull my ALT+0151 from my cold, dead hands, zoomfag
