employer cover photo
employer logo
employer logo

Proton, privacy by default

Is this your company?

Non-Agile work environment, arrogant management - Software Engineer Proton, privacy by default Employee Review

1.0
2 Apr 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- some nice colleges - nice office

Cons

- Non-agile environment, you can hear here that "We do not do Agile, we do deadlines, can't you see?" You work to meet some imaginary deadline, which is even not consulted with you as a developer or anyone from the development team. Deadlines are not respected by anyone anyway as they totally ridiculous and impossible to meet. They just create unnecessary tensions in the company. - Your opinion does not count. So, forget about improving anything in this company, including inefficient development process. If you do, you will be reminded by the management that "The team is not a democracy" - Strange disconnection between the teams, e.g. front-end developers do not work normally directly with the designers, because "they are busy with important stuff". They usually have to go through a PO, who interprets the comments they way he/she likes... Not mentioning that this kind of communication takes ages and is very inefficient. - A lot of tech debt and lack of process preventing it. It has been identified as a problem (e.g. mentioned in the proton main blog post) but as agile is not liked by the managers, the tech debt is not managed either. - A lot of frustrated people. Some of them post some angry comments on internal messaging platform that are being removed by the management. - Arrogant management, strongly believing that fact of working in the past for a physics research facility somehow makes them great managers and engineers. - Salary below market

avatar
Proton, privacy by default Response
4y
Thank you for these detailed insights into your experience at Proton. You touch on various improvements areas that we are continuously working on. There is still room for development but the current reality is much more nuanced: - we do our best to design our development and planning processes in an agile way, owned and adapted by each team, paving the way to a pro-active more than reactive mindset; - our decision-making model is not based on consensus (we don't consider this to be efficient) but rather on 360° information gathering and analysis for the accountable person to make a data-driven decision; - we always encourage feedback and look for new ways to give our people the voice. At the same time, we have moderation guidelines to ensure feedback is shared in respectful and inclusive manner. - our compensation framework has drastically evolved in the past years. We don't aim to be the top paying employer on the market because we are not in it for profit but regularly run market analysis to ensure we offer competitive compensation. - we have very bright people around driven by the mission to build a better internet and confidence to accomplish their goals. We do realize that we are not perfect, that we need failures to learn everyday. Failing forward is the way we chose to become better individuals and a better organization.

Explore other reviews about Proton, privacy by default

5.0
10 Sept 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I loved every minute of my time here, my team was so supportive, the work was interesting, and my managers recognized my hard work. Plus they had a great benefits package.

Cons

None that I can think of.

1
avatar
Proton, privacy by default Response
1y
Thank you for your feedback! We wish you all the best in your new adventures.
1.0
23 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good salary for the first carpe diem

Cons

Bad salary for the next carpe diem

See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All