alt Hacker NewsThose of us who care. Those optimizing for economic returns or out of ideology are not. More carnage will be required for incentives to swing back I think.
"Security is for losers"
> 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.” In a follow-up message, Yen reiterated his point: “only losers think like that.” His ultimate message for the team was to “stop lovingly handcrafting all our code and use AI more.”
Proton CEO Andy Yen: "This will be the last year that we hire engineers." - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50295112 - October 2026
Manifestos, Fear, and 'Loser Thinking': Inside Proton's AI Reckoning - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50289692 - October 2026
Good luck.
Edit: There appears to be some consequences for acting like this and those actions being made public.
Proton's CEO Cancels AI 'Re-Interviews' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50307183 - October 2026
Replies
"His ultimate message for the team was to “stop lovingly handcrafting all our code and use AI more.”"
Mmmmm... I think I may have to score this particular point for the CEO. Lovingly handcrafted code has been many things over the past 30 years, but "secure" is not one of the adjectives I'd apply to it. Anyone who thinks that the lovingly handcrafted code has always just been wonderfully secure needs to check the tint on their glasses.
A proper AI setup probably can produce more secure code more quickly than conventional development processes... however one of the keys will be to understand that yes, that will still be slower than writing code that is not rather carefully analyzed for security and a company like Proton had better have a strong commitment to never, ever skipping that step because it's slowing them down or it got expensive. "Proper" in "proper AI setup" is the most important word.
But that's not to say that I'm endorsing everything else he said. Even if it is true that companies will be able to stop hiring engineers, which at the moment I seriously doubt [1], a company like Proton should expect to be one of the last companies who can do that, not be getting publicly excited about it first. Hey we dumped all our engineers because our managers can just prompt our AIs just as well here in October 2026 would definitely be a "instantly cancel any Proton services I had" signal for me.
[1]: One of the things I don't expect to change is that there are plenty of people I would describe my actual day-to-day work to and they would consider it a living hell if they had to do it. I still quite enjoy it overall. And there are plenty of jobs that other people love and I would consider a living hell. Even in 25 years that's going to be the case. There will be people willing to put up with the process of working with the system to create this stuff... but the people who are willing to be professional about this, do the QA, do the work beyond the first fun prompts, is going to be a minority, and an even smaller minority who take the time to get good at it. There will always be people who are better and people who are worse.
Wow. I'm literally reconsidering having any mails at proton anymore. This is beyond abysmal attitude.
God am I happy to not have switched to Proton right now!
Wow this makes me hesitate to renew with them
Just learned about his position on security today. Been a Protonmail user for a while now. Initially I switched to detach myself from the US corp monopolies. Its just a matter of time now before I shutdown my Protonmail account. CEOs should understand that company ethics and security are not just black pixels on a white background.
> "Security is for losers"
Lol, brave words in an age of $6B heists and major CVEs every week.
The irony here with Yen (and to be clear, fuck him) is that Proton has been _slow as molasses_ since the beginning. It took them literal years to launch a calendar. A calendar!
Either he's been like this the entire time, trying to crack the whip and failing, and thus a bad leader who has repeatedly failed to get results, or he's (as his employees have said) very deep in AI Psychosis and completely abandoned his principles.
It doesn't matter which it is, they're both extremely damning for the company and his leadership.
What is it with weirdo tech executives and calling people losers? First DHH, now this guy.
Eww. I have now lost all interest in their products.
I mean if a company doesn't care about protecting its users' data then any conversation about improving security is gonna be inapplicable to them.
I'd also suggest that companies being so blasé is a direct result of lacking regulation. If there was no laws about aviation safety I bet we'd have more airlines with lax safety standards and more accidents.
That's the sort of thing you really don't want to hear from your encrypted mail company.