Proton's CEO Cancels AI 'Re-Interviews'

Proton’s CEO Cancels AI ‘Re-Interviews’

On Friday, Andy Yen, the CEO of Proton, cancelled a series of nearly company-wide ‘re-interviews’ that would have forced employees to explain how they are using AI, with the clear intention that they may be fired if not using it enough in the eyes of Proton leadership, according to six current Proton employees and audio of an around two hour all-hands meeting obtained by 404 Media.

周五，Proton 首席执行官安迪·延（Andy Yen）取消了一系列几乎覆盖全公司的“重新面试”。据六名 Proton 现任员工透露，并根据 404 Media 获取的一段约两小时的全员会议录音显示，这些面试本意是强迫员工解释他们如何使用人工智能，且如果 Proton 领导层认为员工使用 AI 的程度不足，他们可能会被解雇。

The move came after 404 Media published an investigation on Thursday, which showed how Yen was aggressively pushing AI across Proton, in some cases despite security concerns from employees. In one exchange, an employee in the company’s security Slack channel urged Proton 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.” Yen added, “stop lovingly handcrafting all our code and use AI more.”

此举是在 404 Media 周四发布调查报告后做出的。该报告显示，延在 Proton 内部激进地推动人工智能应用，有时甚至无视员工提出的安全担忧。在一次交流中，公司安全 Slack 频道的一名员工建议 Proton 至少花几天时间对新编写的代码进行渗透测试后再上线。延在 8 月底于该频道写道：“那是胡扯，是失败者的思维。当然可以做到既快速又安全。别总想着怎么变慢，多关注怎么变快。”延还补充说：“别再精心手工编写所有代码了，多用 AI。”

The re-interview cancellations likely don’t address the concerns of many Proton users, who are more focused on Proton’s deprioritization of security; many Proton users have blasted the company’s leadership on social media over the last 24 hours and explicitly called for Yen to resign.

取消重新面试的做法可能无法解决许多 Proton 用户的担忧，他们更关注 Proton 对安全性的轻视；在过去 24 小时内，许多 Proton 用户在社交媒体上抨击了公司领导层，并明确要求延辞职。

The investigation was based on conversations with eight current and one former Proton employees, Slack chats, meeting audio, and an AI manifesto written by the company’s CTO Bart Butler. It painted a picture of Proton that is very different to the public’s perception of a company carefully protecting privacy. Instead, Proton is barreling ahead with AI in large part to achieve more annual revenue. The investigation also found a culture of fear across Proton, where employees have genuine concerns about security or being asked to develop security-focused products with AI, but feel unable to voice them because Yen mocks or insults employees in front of everyone else.

该调查基于与八名现任和一名离职 Proton 员工的谈话、Slack 聊天记录、会议录音以及公司首席技术官巴特·巴特勒（Bart Butler）撰写的 AI 宣言。它描绘了一个与公众心目中“精心保护隐私的公司”截然不同的 Proton。相反，Proton 为了实现更多年度收入，正在 AI 领域全速前进。调查还发现 Proton 内部存在一种恐惧文化，员工对安全问题或被要求使用 AI 开发安全产品有真正的担忧，但却感到无法表达，因为延会在众人面前嘲笑或侮辱员工。

“I don’t think he will change anything, and I think the only reason we had this meeting is because he has a rebellion on his hands,” one employee told 404 Media after the all-hands meeting on Friday.

“我不认为他会改变任何事情，我认为我们召开这次会议的唯一原因是他面临着员工的反抗，”一名员工在周五的全员会议后告诉 404 Media。

Near the start of the meeting, Yen said, “I want to acknowledge myself, personally, that there was a communication failure on my part and there are many things that probably could and should have been communicated differently, and this is something that I’ll have to reflect on and improve over time. So I will do that.”

在会议开始时，延表示：“我想亲自承认，我在沟通上存在失误，有很多事情本可以也应该以不同的方式进行沟通，这是我必须反思并随着时间推移加以改进的地方。所以我一定会这样做。”

“So what does that mean going forward? Going forward, I’m still going to push,” he added.

“那么这对于未来意味着什么呢？未来，我仍将继续推动（AI 应用），”他补充道。

Yen said leadership gathered in the last couple of days to talk about the re-interviews, and spoke to the Proton board too. “They’re closely monitoring the situation,” Yen said. (Proton is owned by the Proton Foundation, whose board of trustees includes Yen, Sir Tim Berners Lee, Prof. Carissa Veliz, Dingchao Lu, and Antonio Gambardella.)

延表示，领导层在过去几天里聚在一起讨论了重新面试的问题，并与 Proton 董事会进行了沟通。“他们正在密切关注局势，”延说。（Proton 由 Proton 基金会拥有，其董事会成员包括延、蒂姆·伯纳斯-李爵士、卡丽莎·维利兹教授、丁超·卢和安东尼奥·甘巴德拉。）

After those discussions with leadership and the board, “We’ve decided to actually cancel the re-interviews,” Yen said. “Why? Well, I think actually in a, let’s say, unintentional way, they have actually already served their purpose.” As in, employees are now talking and learning about AI.

在与领导层和董事会讨论后，“我们决定取消重新面试，”延说。“为什么？嗯，我认为实际上，以一种非预期的方式，它们已经达到了目的。”即员工现在正在讨论并学习 AI。

Yen also mentioned “org changes,” and said that part of this is “redistributing talent across teams.” He said that the reorganization will happen next month, “but there will be no loss of jobs from AI.”

延还提到了“组织架构调整”，并表示其中一部分是“在团队间重新分配人才”。他表示重组将于下个月进行，“但不会因为 AI 而裁员。”

Later in the call, Butler said Yen “needs to, and he has committed to, doing better” regarding how he communicates with his employees. “Using AI effectively and pragmatically does not mean that we’ve given up on security, or good architecture, or sound software engineering principles,” he added.

在通话后期，巴特勒表示，延在与员工沟通的方式上“需要，并且已经承诺，做得更好”。他补充说：“有效且务实地使用 AI 并不意味着我们放弃了安全性、良好的架构或健全的软件工程原则。”

“We fucked up, we know we fucked up,” Butler later said in response to an employee’s comments in the meeting.

“我们搞砸了，我们知道我们搞砸了，”巴特勒随后在回应会议上一名员工的评论时说道。

“Your old job is gone,” Butler’s AI manifesto, posted to Slack, told engineers, 404 Media reported on Thursday. He wrote that not embracing AI posed an “existential threat to the success of the mission itself.”

据 404 Media 周四报道，巴特勒发布在 Slack 上的 AI 宣言告诉工程师：“你们旧的工作已经不存在了。”他写道，不拥抱 AI 对“使命本身的成功构成了生存威胁”。

Reactions to the re-interview cancellations were split across the Proton employees 404 Media spoke to. One said, “Some are happy as it’s progress. Others believe that this won’t change anything because there isn’t any consequence for Andy [Yen].” The employee added they “would have preferred real accountability from the leadership team.” They said they felt not much could have happened due to Yen having the majority of Proton’s shares.

Proton 员工对取消重新面试的反应不一。一人表示：“有些人很高兴，因为这是一种进步。另一些人则认为这不会改变任何事情，因为安迪（延）不会承担任何后果。”该员工补充说，他们“更希望看到领导团队真正承担责任”。他们表示，由于延持有 Proton 的多数股份，他们觉得很难发生实质性的改变。

Another employee said, after Proton canceled the re-interviews, “They said in the next breath they want to continue pushing AI and that the things that were to be measured in the re-interviews would become a component of the performance reviews.”

另一名员工在 Proton 取消重新面试后表示：“他们紧接着又说想要继续推动 AI，并且重新面试中要考核的内容将成为绩效评估的一部分。”

“They have said clearly the direction had not changed. As a Proton user that doesn’t reassure me,” the employee said. “As an employee, the re-interviews weren’t cancelled until this became public despite concerns raised by many of us. I think it goes beyond communication issues and growing pains.”

“他们已经明确表示方向没有改变。作为一名 Proton 用户，这让我感到不安，”该员工说。“作为一名员工，尽管我们许多人提出了担忧，但直到事情公开后，重新面试才被取消。我认为这不仅仅是沟通问题或成长阵痛。”

“Right now, everything seems consistent with it being damage control,” they said.

“目前看来，一切都像是为了控制舆论损失，”他们说。

Another employee said they were “mostly happy with how this was addressed including by Andy [Yen].”

另一名员工表示，他们“对包括安迪（延）在内的处理方式感到基本满意”。

Proton did not respond to a request for comment.

Proton 未回应置评请求。

After 404 Media published the investigation on Thursday, Yen took to Reddit. Users downvoted his response more than 1,200 times. Many Proton users on social media said they were cancelling their paid Proton plans.

在 404 Media 周四发布调查报告后，延在 Reddit 上进行了回应。用户的点踩数超过了 1,200 次。许多 Proton 用户在社交媒体上表示，他们正在取消付费的 Proton 订阅计划。