That’s my reading of their recent post.
Here are their “full context” screenshots:
Do they not see that you’re not supposed to talk in that tone to your employees, or anyone for that matter? There’s no hint at respect, no “please do this for me” type requests. Just bossing around like an a-hole or like a bad parent you don’t want in your life.
This Reddit post is so funny bc before this, I was about 80% more concerned about the techbro “move fast break things” mentality than the workplace culture. Security is why I’ve been a paying Proton user for 11 years, after all.
But after reading the post and OP’s comments, my concern for the workplace culture pretty much just shot up. This comment is crazy. Apparently they later edited it and changed “cowards” to “leakers” but still.
Not to mention the post has over 5000 upvotes, but every comment the OP made in it were heavily downvoted. Hmm, I wonder why! 🤔
It was 100% a PR move but it just made me more sure to cancel my Proton subscription lmao! Good job, I guess?
[Andy shoots at his foot]
“Ouch! Oh no, what did I do?! Must fix this.”
[Shoots at his other foot]Yeah, this guy is definitely part of the problem.
This reply (ADHenchD) was very to the point:
Appreciate you putting your name to this, but I’ve read the 404 article in full and most of this rebuts things it didn’t actually say.
Also, toxic, abusive leadership is what I expected working hospitality at 18, when I didn’t know any better than to put up with it. Seeing it at a company built on trust and privacy, and then blaming the leaker(s) for it, is quite a take.
Now on to the points…
Perception vs truth: 404 never claimed this was about code security. It gave the PQC/Tuta context, the same context you’ve posted. Your screenshot confirms the quote word for word, and it also confirms the part people actually object to: the CEO telling an employee to go on Reddit with their personal account to “set the record straight”. Whether Proton did PQC better than Tuta is beside the point. Telling staff to post undisclosed from personal accounts is astroturfing, and that’s what worries people about a company whose whole pitch is trust.
Pentesting: Nobody serious claimed Andy banned pentesting. The report says he called a request for a few days of testing before release “bullshit and loser thinking”. The “baseline” line you say was omitted makes the same point: testing is fine as long as it doesn’t slow anything down. Your own summary (“what he didn’t agree to was it slowing down the pipeline”) is basically 404’s story. Also, in your screenshot that line sits under the “use AI more” message, so it’s not obvious it refers to security testing at all. And another engineer in that same thread said security was low priority at the moment, which you don’t mention.
git-ai: Overall fair that some viral posts overstated this, they often can with a situation like this…but 404 itself said it tracks how much AI code the company generates, not individuals. But a “non-goal” in a design doc is a clear intention, not a technical limit. And the same week, Andy told staff leadership already knew “more or less who is behind” ahead of the re-interviews. Also, re interviews? Come on man. That’s some dystopian “double think” Orwell shit. We both know this.
Hiring: 404 printed the full quote, including the “what we used to call product managers” bit. The part that bothers me more is the same message predicting AI-written code that “humans will no longer be able to review”.
Proton’s own spokesperson didn’t dispute any of the reporting, and Andy has since cancelled the re-interviews and admitted a communication failure. That’s hard to square with “intentionally taken out of context”.
I’m sure plenty of people there care about the mission. But that’s a leadership problem, not a leaker problem. Don’t blame someone for showing the truth man. This just comes across as the techbro version of blaming wikileaks for the uncovering all the dodgy stuff the US government was doing behind the scenes, rather than realising the government maybe shouldn’t be doing those dodgy things.
Perhaps an extreme example but we are all passionate about proton, recommended proton and spend our time and money on Proton. We all want it to do well, which is why many people are voting with their wallets and being vocal about rather troubling things which have come to light.
testing is fine as long as it doesn’t slow anything down.
Insane position.
Absolutely. It’s typical of CEOs not to have any competence in what they manage… This is really over-incompetent though.
“The code failed the tests but we’re still not allowed to slow down the deployment”
the CEO telling an employee to go on Reddit with their personal account to “set the record straight”.
Note that in many contexts (i.e. publicly traded companies, companies owned by publicly traded companies) and jurisdictions, “setting the record straight” without disclosing one’s conflicts of interest would be fraud.
But I’m sure Andy is a smart, and careful leader who would get the lawyers to give careful guidance to employees on how to astroturf while staying within the bounds of the law.
I find it strange that this particular engineer has suddenly been given permission to share the chats. Seems planned damage control to me.
Too late. Some things remain bad even when you add context to them.
Yeah, given Andy’s message in those very screenshots and how different he is in public compared to those Slack chats, they carefully craft their image on the internet and specifically on reddit.
Indeed. Quoting from the chats: “so go on there with your personal account and coment [sic] to set the record straight”.
The verbiage is so freaking weird too. It reeks of toxicity and retaliation for the people who dared speak up.
This one keeps coming up, so here’s the actual quote in context (unlike the leakers, I have permission to post this image)
Interestingly, some critical (but still civil) replies to that post got deleted, as discussed by some users here. That post is just a PR move by the CEO.
It seems most of these were likely just in a backlogged mod log.
There’s no hint at respect
To be fair, all the bosses and managers I ever had behaved like this.
It’s a toxic culture and we have to ask for better.
Don’t ask. Demand better.
Preach!
My manager and assistant manager are cool as hell and respectful, so it is possible.
You deserve better. This is not the norm.
Thanks for the kind words. This is sadly my experience for most of the jobs I ever had. I have mostly worked for small startups or big soulless companies which may explain their behavior.
The positive experiences with good bosses were: after 4 or 5 years, layoffs because the budget department says so.
A serious life tip is to apply for jobs when you already have one (so no pressure to take whatever you can get) and to interview the hiring manager while they are interviewing you.
I chose my current role because of the manager, and haven’t regretted it. I watched friends go through a bad experience and picking a good manager became top priority for me.
We all understand companies need be sustainable, but privacy focused customers are often looking as much at the company as the product. Values, principles, and trust are the reason we pay for these products year after year. Andy always seems clueless as to who Protons paying audience is, thinks he is pumping out widgets in a factory
Unlike Andys prior remarks which were enough for some like me to bail, this hits at a whole new level — trust in the product itself, what other slippery slopes is Andy willing to take a slide down? Not to mention denigrating your skilled employees, truly insane stuff
If Andy has any values left he would resign today for the better of Proton and their employees, customers. Going forward, he offers only toxicity
Proton is the US’ and Israel’s bitch. They take blacklists at face value with no appeals, as if. But they won’t tell you until you sign up for the account and waste your time, then it’s immediately suspended with no way to delete it or anything, let alone get it approved. Tuta is best, that I know of.
‘Richard’s’ post and comment replies really just cement that existence of a toxic culture all around at Proton. Likely the opposite of his intention.
I’ve worked with Andy for many years, and he has always been hard to work with for some people, this is not new, but it’s also not at the level 404 portrays it.
For any sane person, Andy’s comments and this attitude toward them confirm that management is out of touch with what a supportive work culture is.
This, combined with their drive for more and faster, when much of their userbase just wants secure and stable shows they are not the service provider for me, anymore.
I feel like their Uservoice forum might have been part of what led them to stray from this foundation of strong email. After the posts calling to oust Andy, there are a number of posts asking for features that are really quite out of scope of what you would expect from even a full productivity suite.
This topic isn’t about privacy it’s about workplace culture
What’s the selling point of Proton in your opinion?
The tech discussion is about these companies encrypting past mail I believe, so in that sense yes it is. But these comments don’t give me any confidence that Proton is going to do it correctly or robustly.
A discussion on encryption would be on the topic of digital privacy. Tone policing an employee of a company none of us even work for is not.
Tone policing? When you’re essentially abusing your employees by treating them like that, you’re going to get subpar results. People unhappy with their work have no incentive to do it exceptionally. And that’s not even getting into the how of Yen’s growth strategy also discussed in the recent 404 Media reports that my post and their reply directly tie into.
Setting aside Proton (or any specific company) for a moment, you don’t feel that an organizational culture of “move fast and break things with vibe coding” could have detrimental impacts to the security and, consequently, the privacy of that company’s products?
What you’ve described is not what this post is about.
