Proton CEO cancels the AI re-interviews after staff pushback, 404 Media reports

Proton CEO Andy Yen cancelled a planned series of nearly company-wide AI re-interviews on Friday, 404 Media reports. The re-interviews would have made employees explain how they are using AI. Several staff understood that not using it enough could cost them their jobs. The outlet cites six current Proton employees and audio from a roughly two-hour all-hands meeting.

Joseph Cox at 404 Media reports the walk-back came two days after his own investigation on Thursday. That earlier piece described Yen pushing AI across Proton. It also quoted him dismissing an engineer's request for a few days of security testing as "bullshit and loser thinking".

What Yen said in the meeting

The outlet quotes Yen at the start of the meeting. He said: "I want to acknowledge myself, personally, that there was a communication failure on my part." He added: "Going forward, I'm still going to push."

Yen said leadership and the Proton board had discussed the re-interviews over two days. The decision was to cancel them. Yen said the re-interviews had "already served their purpose" in an "unintentional way". The reason, he said, was that staff were now talking about AI.

Yen also mentioned "org changes" and said part of this was "redistributing talent across teams". He said the reorganisation would happen next month, "but there will be no loss of jobs from AI". Proton CTO Bart Butler spoke in the same meeting. Butler said Yen "needs to, and he has committed to, doing better" on how he communicates with staff. Butler also said: "We fucked up, we know we fucked up."

What staff told the outlet after

Reactions were split. One employee told 404 Media: "Some are happy as it's progress. Others believe that this won't change anything because there isn't any consequence for Andy."

The same employee said staff "would have preferred real accountability from the leadership team". They added that little could happen in practice, because Yen holds the majority of Proton's shares.

A different employee said: "They have said clearly the direction had not changed."

The same employee said leadership told the meeting that the re-interview measurements "would become a component of the performance reviews". The person added: "As a Proton user that doesn't reassure me." And: "I think it goes beyond communication issues and growing pains."

Another employee was "mostly happy with how this was addressed including by Andy", 404 Media reports. One person told Cox the whole exercise looked like "damage control".

What is outside Proton's own account

Proton did not respond to the outlet's request for comment. Yen posted a reply on Reddit after the investigation on Thursday. 404 Media reports users downvoted that reply more than 1,200 times. The outlet also reports many Proton users on social media said they were cancelling their paid Proton plans.

The news for a team watching from the outside is narrow and worth keeping narrow. A privacy-focused company's CEO wrote down an HR process that would have measured every employee's AI use. The process was cancelled within 48 hours of becoming public. The company is now saying the same measurement will move into performance reviews. Any employer thinking about the same policy has to decide whether the walk-back is the end. If the measurement just moved to a less visible place, the walk-back is a label change.

Source

• Proton's CEO Cancels AI 'Re-Interviews', by Joseph Cox, 404 Media.
• Manifestos, Fear, and 'Loser Thinking': Inside Proton's AI Reckoning, by Joseph Cox, 404 Media.