On October 29, Joseph Cox from 404 media publishes Manifestos, Fear, and ‘Loser Thinking’: Inside Proton’s AI Reckoning claiming that that CEO Andy Yen was aggressively pushing AI adoption. The article claims Yen called an employee’s request for a few days of penetration testing on new code “bullshit and loser thinking,” told staff to stop “lovingly handcrafting” code and use AI more, and said 2026 would be the last year the company hires traditional engineers. The article described software on employee machines tracking AI-generated code volume, and claims that AI wrote roughly 90% of October’s code.

Unfortunately the 404 article is gated behind a fiat paywall,
Reddit post by a long-time Proton staff engineer that provides additional internal context and argues several 404 Media points were taken out of context or distorted.

https://stasher.news/uploads/1081

https://stasher.news/uploads/1082

https://stasher.news/uploads/1083

Seth had some good comments on this original ↗. Under Proton's response original ↗ opinions are mixed. Some defending the situation as caused by nothing more than anger from an "AI doomer mob".

Personally, there are some actual concerning comments there, such as the "perception is more important than truth", and while that's true, maybe not the mantra you want to see a CEO live by.

But as for the AI coding controversy? This irrational fear happens with every new disruptive technology. People will learn to adapt or die. It is literally impossible to keep up anymore with a majority human-written code. Your product will be CEV'd faster than you can code a hello world script.