Proton to 'Re-Interview' Staff About AI to See Who Gets to Keep Their Job

Posted by cdrnsf 2 days ago

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Comments

Comment by siva7 2 days ago

I know you people here don't like to hear this. Proton makes this process very open. Other companies are doing silent layoffs by calling employees back to office, granting generous buyout packages for leaving the company or offering retraining and removing them from their previous roles (while granting those few they want to keep every wish).

Comment by bigstrat2003 2 days ago

That may make it slightly better, but that does not make it acceptable. I'm not going to jump to conclusions based only on this one article, but if Proton is indeed culling the workforce of those who are not sufficiently hyped about AI, I'm taking my business elsewhere. I don't want to give my money to a company that thinks it's ok to mistreat their employees just to chase a fad.

Comment by elcritch 2 days ago

Right, much better to invest and add more features, fix more bugs, make it cheaper.

Comment by __m 1 day ago

I don't think it's a mistreatment. I think it's fair that companies and employees have both expectations and if those no longer align they should part ways.

Comment by tancop 1 day ago

Companies can have expectations about productivity, coming to work on time, not acting rude to customers, that kind of thing.

This is firing people based on how much they use AI tools the company is paying for, or even worse what their attitude to the tools is. It's toxic micro management done to validate their own beliefs.

If it was about efficiency they could offer everyone an agentic coding course and then fire the least productive employees who couldn't make use of it. Same headcount reduction and you're more likely to keep the people you really need instead of the most willing to lie on an interview.

Comment by halJordan 1 day ago

I really don't believe that you believe what you're saying. Organizations are allowed, fundamentally, to change themselves and then demand their component parts fall into line.

A great example that is lauded historically are the Lex Julia. If we take you at your point then Julius Caesar reforming Roman bureaucracy and demanding compliance while firing and executing those who don't fall into alone is a bad thing. Yet everyone agrees that this was a necessary step to curb, excessive corruption.

So a fundamental level is perfectly fine for an organization to chart a different course. You can disagree about charting a different course with regard to AI, but you shouldn't attack the fundamental principle that everyone already agrees is fine in any other circumstance.

Comment by greggoB 2 days ago

While the article is light on details and so at risk of getting ahead of things, what concerns me is the incentives this creates for said employees.

In addition to that, it possibly highlights a worry about where Proton's priorities are - as a paying customer of a secure email service, should I be concerned that that part of them business is increasingly paying second-fiddle?

Comment by eli_gottlieb 2 days ago

For those of us who aren't in management, if the companies want to lay people off, what actually stops them from just doing it?

Comment by __m 1 day ago

Depends on where you live, in switzerland it’s comparatively easier than in other European countries, so if they just wanted to lay off people they could

Comment by yieldcrv 2 days ago

Its not that transparent, what does a good answer look like

“do you love Microsoft Copilot and our internal company chat tool?”

even for users that aren’t lying, those would be the least AI proficient staff you have

Comment by vrganj 1 day ago

"I find it an excellent representation of company values and leadership priorities"

Comment by tabiv 1 day ago

The reddit thread on this topic has a response from Proton and it includes the text of the email. This seems like a very poor way to treat your employees.

https://old.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1xg8nq9/proton_...

Comment by greggoB 1 day ago

Thanks for sharing, I was hoping there was a way to hear from them about this directly (I'm also not impressed).

Comment by joshstrange 1 day ago

I don’t really understand the surprise in the comments. It’s been an oft-repeated line that you won’t lose your job to AI, but to someone who uses AI better than you do.

Look, I know it’s a huge shift but there is no way around it, 6-12mo ago LLM usage might have been optional or up to each employee but the models and harnesses have improved to a point that not using them is just cutting off your nose to spite your face.

I’ve reviewed plenty of code pre and post-LLM and while LLM code is not perfect, neither was the human-created code (mine included, obviously). Missing/no tests, issues that are minor but you don’t want to send it back _another round_, coworkers/employees that don’t make the changes you ask for or do it in a hacky/quick way, and generally accepting code at a level under what you wish because you can’t wait for the code to be perfect.

Now the ability to write solid code is available to all your employees and so the desired skills shifts. It makes sense to re-evaluate your workforce when that happens.

If an employee/coworker wasn’t using LLMs today I’d tell them to either start or consider finding another job because they’d be dragging down the company.

Writing code by hand is dead. It just is. In a couple years this won’t be controversial, just accepted fact.

Comment by hakfoo 1 day ago

I suspect there's a place for LLMs, but it would be one that gets developed on a per-organization or even per-team basis, rather than the tendency to airdrop some elaborate do-all solution.

This is probably why it's chafing on a lot of developers. We're hearing we have to use these tools and only these tools even when they aren't great fits for specific tasks or workflows.

The management loves the idea it closed an inbound ticket in 30 minutes... by converting it to a code change that fails to fix the actual problem, or by replacing it with a slightly different category of ticket that becomes a burden for someone else to finish off, which is for some reason not a metric anyone cares about.

Comment by tuesdaynight 1 day ago

>Writing code by hand is dead. It just is. In a couple years this won’t be controversial, just accepted fact.

Is it still a controversy nowadays? I'm not even sure what the world will be like in a couple years. I predict that coding by hand will not be my biggest worry by then, though

Comment by joshstrange 1 day ago

>> Writing code by hand is dead.

> Is it still a controversy nowadays?

Reading HN would leave one with the conclusion that yes, it is still very controversial. We still have plenty of people who swear they will never use AI, who say it's trash, it only produces slop, that a reckoning is coming, etc.

See this post from today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50256738

Comment by tuesdaynight 1 day ago

For me, that's just wishful thinking and cope. They used to say that only bad devs would use AI, but now we have people like Linus Torvalds using it, so they are losing arguments day by day.

I understand, though. It's fucking scary, and we don't know what will happen in the future. But I just got tired of the constant negativism that permeates the internet nowadays, and now I'm excited for the future

Comment by CoastalCoder 2 days ago

I had been considering Proton as a way to de-Google myself.

I'm glad to learn about this before pulling the trigger.

Comment by nextaccountic 2 days ago

I really recommend owning your own domain, and getting zohomail.

It offers a free account with custom domains (which means your account won't get deactived just for non payment), and it otherwise doesn't get in the way. And if it does, you can just switch to another provider.

Comment by crossroadsguy 2 days ago

I had moved to Zoho for one domain and it was nice. Doesn’t do e2ee theatre and makes me install bridges and tunnels to flyovers just to use imap. Once my current plan ends with my provider I will probably reconsider them once more. What’s the plan cost for hosting 3 domains?

Comment by sixtram 1 day ago

Zoho? Who cannot keep their own domain? I still remember that story from years ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18059792

Comment by nextaccountic 1 day ago

They kept their domain. This was reported in 13:39 and by 18:21 they recovered their domain, so this was a five hour outage. The issue was they used a registrar that had no enterprise-level support. They have since learned this lesson.

This didn't affect customers that opted for custom domains, either. You shouldn't have a @zoho.com email - register your own domain and have a @sixtram.com email instead (custom domains is offered in the free tier, something Gmail doesn't offer)

Comment by righthand 2 days ago

The C-suites are all nuts for LLMs. The craziest ones are trying to force their employees to adopt and be constantly sharing novel uses of Llms. What I have mostly seen as the usage by most coworkers usually involves using AI to take their notes and create a presentation or automate some tedious work. Essentially glue and pipe software program output together. One use case in particular had a coworker building find/replace macros by feeding slideshow slides to the agent describing how the macro should work. C-suite eats this shit up because they’re using “AI at work!”.

Comment by ee3aa 2 days ago

Im absolutely convinced the further you are way from the ground floor - the more delusional you are re. AI's capabilities and abilities w.r.t contribution.

Comment by ramgine 1 day ago

The C suite does not understand the technology they just listen to the hype. It’s like using AI as a subject matter expert and knowing when it’s wrong, to using it as a novice, the models are so confident when they’re wrong users will believe anything it says.

Comment by em-bee 2 days ago

it's always been like that. the more we know about the technology, the more sceptical we get. there are exceptions of course, on both sides. people who are critical and educate themselves, and on the other side those who make money off it, or believe they can make money off it.

fortunately recently i also have seen a bunch of articles arguing that AI hasn't helped any company yet save money.

Comment by ro_sharp 2 days ago

> These re-interviews are consequential

An open process with a clear rationale is better than a secret process, e.g. company wide surveys that are later used to determine whether you keep your job…

Whether this actually leads to improved productivity and better products is TBD, of course.

Comment by commandersaki 1 day ago

Can't see the article because of paywall.

Why are jobs on the line in the first place, is this some kind of layoff?

Comment by freehorse 1 day ago

There is not really a *pay*wall, just an registration-wall.

Their rational: https://www.404media.co/why-404-media-needs-your-email-addre...

For the question, they say that the interview will determine stuff like roles and continued employment.

Comment by mitchbob 1 day ago

https://archive.ph/6pywD

Comment by MrDresden 2 days ago

Yeah ok. Time for me to go find a new home for my email.

Comment by imzadi 1 day ago

I've been a user of Proton for a long time, over a decade, and this is seriously concerning to me. I already have a Tuta account and might just make the full switch.

Comment by iAMkenough 2 days ago

It’ll sort itself out. Whether they intend to or not, they’re “re-aligning” their customer base too with this decision.

The talented people that built their products will continue to build products for customers that no longer align with Proton’s c-suite philosophy/politics.

It’s a free market!

Comment by xeonmc 2 days ago

it's all a part of a grander "re-education" effort.

Comment by whoanoway 2 days ago

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Comment by BiraIgnacio 2 days ago

sooo... performance reviews?

Comment by JoeBOFH 2 days ago

And now my opinion has soured on Proton and I am a paying client.

Comment by lazzurs 2 days ago

This seems like a shitty way to approach this. Would love to hear from Proton on this.

Comment by ee3aa 2 days ago

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Comment by freehorse 1 day ago

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Comment by dude250711 2 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by jdlshore 2 days ago

This isn't reddit. Please don't post cynical fantasies.

Comment by kdkcndicndjc 2 days ago

They’re in all likelihood right though.

Comment by Atotalnoob 2 days ago

At my company we explicitly tell candidates what parts they can do with and without AI.

It’s not hypocritical like you seem to be implying. It’s seeing you still have a brain and can do the job with or without the tools. Otherwise we would just prompt AI ourselves…

Comment by ro_sharp 2 days ago

So what? There’s only so much interview time, and you need the fundamentals before you can safely use LLMs to speed up.

IMO if you’re going to run an interview that uses coding agents etc it belongs at the end of an interview pipeline.