I'm a Proton employee and I'm breaking my silence(www.reddit.com)
28 pointsby LLcolD4 hours ago10 comments
  • crmdan hour ago
    I cannot relate to being emotionally invested in my employer to the extent that “feeling the need to break my silence” crosses my mind. Siemens is a great company but am I weird for turning my phone off at 4 o’clock.
    • halJordan39 minutes ago
      Absolutely. And the bigger problem is that if you can't work for a dirty company, you can't work (replace work with whatever other activity). It's much more productive to take a "one dirty hand can wash another" perspective instead of this "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" mentality we see so much of.
    • georgemcbay40 minutes ago
      > I cannot relate to being emotionally invested in my employer to the extent that “feeling the need to break my silence” crosses my mind.

      It seems likely to me that this is also true for the Proton employees. (Though FWIW, I've had a few employers that I would absolutely proactively defend, but they are not surprisingly the same set of employers I don't think would ever need such a defense, and none of them were large companies).

      I haven't been paying attention to any of this drama because I don't use Proton mail and thus don't care, but one of the screenshots on the linked reddit post that they seem to believe is exonerating the company has what appears to be the CEO of the company (I assume "Andy" is Andy Yen based on the name and profile picture) telling an employee to get on reddit with their personal account and "set the record straight".

      After seeing that, I don't know how anyone is supposed to assume that anything any Proton employee says in public is anything other than PR spin originating directly from the CEO, so I don't know what kind of value any of us is supposed to get from reading any such testimony.

  • ivandenysov24 minutes ago
    Any alternatives folks can recommend? I myself am considering switching from protonmail to fastmail.

    I’m looking for something hassle-free and “not google”.

  • cromka2 hours ago
    As someone commented:

    > The only reason I'm with Proton is security. If I wanted new features, and AI in my email I'd just stay with Gmail. They objectively do it better.

    Same here and I'm looking to move at the end of my subscription.

  • hecturchian hour ago
    ProtonMail mangles emails in a way that they are impossible to download as they were delivered to their servers, meaning MIME signatures cannot be verified, because the emails are altered.

    Old issue, affects also web UI not only bridge:

    https://web.archive.org/web/20240221213617/https://github.co...

    Would you use a secure email service that breaks signature verification on received emails? There were a lot of smaller and bigger things along the years, but realizing I could not verify authenticity of signed emails for apparently no reason pushed me over threshold to leave them.

  • cowlevel3 hours ago
    Reddit is soon to be login walled, but the summary of this post is that Proton's not that bad because random people said it wasn't. No actual information is provided.
    • 12_throw_awayan hour ago
      This is a PR-style "refutation" that uses a lot of words to make it seem like it has addressed some issue. I'll just quote one of the reddit comments that is also exactly my reaction:

        if OP isn't some PR account (or andy's alt account) I will eat my hat. none of OP's responses deal with the actual complaints.
      PS: cliches like "breaking my silence" / "speaking my truth" etc should result in an automatic 20-point deduction to all bayesian priors for authenticity and trustworthiness
      • tadfisheran hour ago
        It looks like they are attacking the "leaker" instead of addressing the leaked issues? They clearly don't refute that Andy actually did tell employees to stop writing code and to ship faster with AI, and they don't refute the "loser" comment. It looks like damage control through shit-stirring and a poor attempt at a Gish gallop.
  • 3 hours ago
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  • bitbasher2 hours ago
    I'm sure this person was told to post on Reddit using their personal account (as the original 404 article showed).

    You can't trust anything ... anyone ... says at Proton. That leak shattered any faith anyone has in the company.

    It's clear the company places profit above customers. The CEO calls their own employees losers. The CEO thinks writing code by hand is like using a fax machine in 2026.

    Fuck Andy, and fuck Proton.

  • Havoc33 minutes ago
    >some of the criticism hurts me because it described a company I don't recognize

    Haven't really done much research, but this resonates - the vibes on these recent news reports felt very off.

    It felt engineered frankly, which makes me quite suspicious in a world where everyone seems to be pushing for encryption backdoors. The one email provider famous for strong encryption suddenly gets a broad PR across entire media landscape?

    ...zero evidence but the whole thing just feels off AF

  • npc994 hours ago
    if true, seems like a kiss-ass who can't be trusted
  • anramon2 hours ago
    I'd think there are a LOT of interest behind closed door wanting to shut down projects like proton.
    • cowlevelan hour ago
      Proton collaborates with spy agencies. They want it to have more of the users who aren't using Gmail.