Proton is re-interviewing its staff about AI. I read the whole email, and its own code repo.

Proton, the Swiss company behind Proton Mail, told some of its staff on Monday, October 26 that they will be "re-interviewed" between November 4 and 11 about how they use AI, by a leader from outside their team, and that the results "may lead to changes in roles, responsibilities, and continued employment." 404 Media broke the story from a leaked email. Within hours, Proton's official account posted the full email on Reddit and said it is "not doing layoffs and using AI as an excuse." The replies to that post are the most honest review of the plan you will find anywhere.

I read the full email, Proton's response, the forum threads, and then something nobody else seems to have looked at, which is Proton's own public code on GitHub. That last part changes the story.

What the email actually says

Most coverage quotes two lines. The full email is more interesting. It opens with "AI is fundamentally changing how we build products and how we work" and says Proton "must accelerate our transformation to remain competitive." Then it explains that CEO Andy Yen "interviewed more than 40 senior leaders across Engineering and Product" the week before, and that the company is "now extending re-interviews more broadly to assess how people are adapting to AI and whether they have the capabilities and approach needed for Proton's next phase."

So, a correction to a lot of the reporting. Andy Yen did not send this email. It talks about him in the third person and the signature is redacted. It went to "some of our staff," not everyone. And Yen personally ran the first round on the senior people, which tells you this came from the very top.

The rules of the interview are specific. Your interviewer is "outside your team and reporting line," picked from "a pool of leaders who demonstrate strong AI capability." You are told to "come prepared with concrete examples" and warned that "a list of tools alone will not demonstrate this." And then the part that matters: "These re-interviews are consequential. Interviewers will document their assessments, which will inform the broader review of our organization and talent. That review may lead to changes in roles, responsibilities, and continued employment."

The email also says, "We recognize that this process creates uncertainty." That is the one sentence in it I believe completely.

Proton's reply made it worse

Proton's response on Reddit was fast and, to its credit, open. It said the company has "a big shortage of talent" and is hiring, that it is "assessing how colleagues are adapting to these tools, what support they need, and who can help lead this work," and that it posted the full email "in the interest of transparency."

The privacy community, which is Proton's actual customer base, did not buy it. The top reply, with 39 upvotes, from u/heelociraptor: "Not 'doing layoffs and using AI as an excuse' just using it to discuss 'continued employment'." u/matefeedkill: "Yeah, man, you really, really fucking are." u/narcos1893: "You think pasting the email made it any better? Stop being dicks to your workers. Extremely disappointed." u/AsexualFrehley summed up the process: "You will be re-interviewed for the job you already do... by a special council of AI enthusiasts we have assembled." And u/Quiet-Biscotti6443, speaking for a lot of the thread: "yea gotta be honest, this made it worse if anything."

One honest data point before the quotes. Outside the privacy forums, almost nobody is talking about this. Google Trends shows close to zero search interest in the story, and the posts about it on X have been seen by tens or hundreds of people, not thousands. That is not because it does not matter. It is because Proton is small and the people who care about it are concentrated in a few places. Those places are furious.

Paying customers on Hacker News started talking about leaving. "And now my opinion has soured on Proton and I am a paying client," wrote JoeBOFH. "Time for me to go find a new home for my email," wrote MrDresden. One user who was about to move from Google to Proton said he was glad he learned this first.

There were defenders, and they make a fair point. siva7 on Hacker News: "I know you people here don't like to hear this. Proton makes this process very open." His argument is that other companies do the same thing quietly through return-to-office rules and buyouts, and at least Proton wrote it down. That is true. It is also not a defence of the plan, only of the honesty about it.

The question nobody asked Proton, and what its GitHub answers

Proton sells one thing above all else. Your data stays with Proton. Its AI assistant, Lumo, runs on open models on Proton's own European servers, and Proton has said clearly it is "not a partnership with OpenAI or other American or Chinese AI companies." That is the pitch to every customer.

So which AI tools are Proton employees being judged on? The email does not say. Proton's Reddit reply says its privacy commitment "guides how we evaluate and use AI, including the tools we use internally," and names nothing.

I went and looked at Proton's public WebClients repository on GitHub, the code for its web apps. The .gitignore file, which lists the files the company does not want committed, includes entries for CLAUDE.md and .claude (Claude Code, from Anthropic, an American company), .cursor/plans (Cursor, American), .taskmaster, .pi for a coding agent, and .lumo. In plain words, Proton's engineers are using American AI coding tools on Proton's code, alongside Lumo. That is not a scandal on its own. Every serious engineering team does it now. But it means the company that tells customers "no American AI companies" is about to grade its own staff on how well they use American AI companies' tools, and it has not told anyone which tools count.

That leads to a real question, not a rhetorical one. Can a Proton engineer fail this interview for refusing to paste company code into a US model? If yes, Proton's marketing and its HR policy are pointing in opposite directions. If no, the company should say so, because its own staff are reading the same threads I am.

And a second one. Lumo is a smaller model than the frontier tools. Proton itself admits as much by using the other tools. If an employee has been loyally using only Proton's own product for their work, they will have weaker "concrete examples" than a colleague who used Claude Code. Does that count against them? Nobody at Proton has answered.

This is not new, it is just the harshest version yet

Proton is late to this, which makes the harshness odd. Shopify's CEO wrote in April 2025 that "reflexive AI usage is now a baseline expectation" and that teams "must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI" before asking for more people. Microsoft told managers in mid 2025 that "using AI is no longer optional." Google and Meta put AI use into performance reviews, with Meta's 2026 review cycle scoring "AI-driven impact" and paying bonus multipliers for it.

Some went further. Coinbase's CEO gave engineers a week to onboard to Cursor, held a Saturday call with the ones who had not, and said of the holdouts, "they got fired." He later called his own approach "heavy-handed." IgniteTech cut around 80 percent of its staff for resisting AI and its CEO says he would do it again. Fiverr's CEO told 700 staff "AI is coming for your jobs," then five months later laid off 30 percent of them to become "AI-first."

And some went backwards. Duolingo announced it would "gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle," lost hundreds of thousands of social media followers in a week, deleted its posts, and the CEO admitted, "I didn't do that well." Klarna cut headcount 38 percent leaning on AI support, then its CEO said the result was "lower quality" and started hiring humans back.

What is new with Proton is the format. Every company above added AI to reviews or hiring. Proton is the first well-known company to call existing employees back in for an interview, with a judge from outside their chain, with employment on the table. It is a performance review with the safety rails taken off and a scarier name. A Hacker News user put it in two words: "sooo... performance reviews?" Yes, except a performance review is run by someone who knows your work.

The Swiss part, which matters more than people think

Proton is based in Geneva, and Swiss employment law is loose. An employer can end a contract with notice and no reason, as long as the reason is not "abusive," which mostly means discrimination or retaliation. "Did not adapt to AI" is a legal reason to fire someone in Switzerland. The payout for an abusive dismissal is capped at six months' salary and there is no reinstatement. Swiss workers also have fewer protections around new workplace technology than EU workers; employers do not have to consult staff about new tools unless health and safety is involved.

There is one line that matters. If a Swiss company with more than 300 staff lets go of 30 or more people within 30 days, it has to formally consult employees and notify the cantonal labour office, and if it has more than 250 staff it has to negotiate a social plan. Proton has somewhere between 600 and 900 employees. So the number to watch after November 11 is thirty. Stay under it, spread the exits over a few months, and none of those rules apply. I am not saying that is the plan. I am saying it is the number.

What I think, without the filter

Proton is a company owned by a non-profit foundation whose stated purpose is protecting people. It just told its own people that their adaptability to AI will be scored by strangers and could cost them their jobs. The email even says those who do well "may have opportunities to take on greater responsibility." That is a carrot and a stick in the same paragraph, and the stick is bigger.

The transparency was real and I respect it. But posting the email proved the critics right, because the email says what the critics said it says. "Not layoffs" and "continued employment" cannot both be the headline. One of them is the truth and the other is the press line, and Proton's own customers have already decided which.

The deeper problem is trust, and it is specific to Proton. Nobody expects Coinbase to be gentle. People chose Proton because it was supposed to be different from the companies that treat humans as data points. u/tehjoz on Reddit asked the question that should worry Proton's leadership more than any headline: "If Proton is gonna go down the 'AI, Or Else' bandwagon too, how confident can I be?" That is a customer talking, not an employee.

My prediction. Proton will not announce layoffs. Between November and February, at least 30 people will quietly leave, some pushed and some who read the email and started looking, which is exactly what u/Numar19 predicted: "If I was a talented employee, I would probably start looking for other jobs after receiving an e-mail like this." And within six months Proton will publish a blog post about its internal AI tools that names Lumo and nothing else.

If you work somewhere that has not done this yet, assume it is coming and do the boring thing now. Pick one real task you do every week, use an AI tool on it, write down what changed and what did not work. That is exactly what Proton's email asks for, and it is a fair thing to have ready whether or not your company ever sends the email.

Questions people are asking

Is Proton firing people who don't use AI? Proton says it is not doing layoffs and is hiring. The email says outcomes "may lead to changes in roles, responsibilities, and continued employment." Decisions will be communicated individually after the November 4 to 11 interviews.

Did Andy Yen send the email? No. He ran the first round of interviews with over 40 senior leaders. The broader email came from an unnamed leader and went to some staff.

Which AI tools does Proton expect staff to use? Proton has not said. Its public GitHub repository shows engineers use Claude Code, Cursor and other US coding agents alongside Proton's own Lumo.

Can Swiss companies fire employees for not adapting to AI? Yes, with notice, as long as the dismissal is not discriminatory or retaliatory. Formal consultation rules only apply at 30 or more terminations within 30 days.

Has any company reversed an AI-first staffing policy? Duolingo walked back its memo after public backlash in 2025. Klarna reversed its AI-driven headcount cuts and rehired human support staff.