Proton CTO Claims 'Programming Is Dead' as AI Takes Over Code Writing

ChainCatcher report: Privacy email and VPN provider Proton has publicly shared an internal memo titled “AI @ Proton, Engineering Manifesto,” written approximately one month ago by Chief Technology Officer Bart Butler. The memo states that software engineering has undergone an irreversible transformation this year, as large language models and their tools are now capable of writing code. A senior Proton engineer noted that no one in his business unit manually writes code anymore. Butler argues that the era of manually writing high-quality code as a core skill has ended; time-consuming tasks such as documentation, testing, and boilerplate code can now be handled by models, which can also participate in architecture and system design discussions. Butler points out that although engineers widely use large language models, Proton’s productivity has not significantly improved, for three reasons. First, engineering culture must shift: engineers’ roles are no longer about writing code, but about helping models produce better code faster; every engineer should become a team lead for models and agents, driving their autonomous, continuous operation, and reducing repeated failures through repository-level context, shared skills, and prompts. Second, the company remains in the first phase—using models to accelerate existing processes—and must move to the second phase: eliminating bottlenecks across the entire workflow, including continuous integration, design, approval, specifications, and code reviews, with most manual code reviews expected to end. Third, there is a collective action problem between individual model usage and company-wide process transformation; the organization has not yet allocated sufficient resources. The memo emphasizes that this is not the end of expertise or sound engineering practices—maintainability, documentation, and testing remain critical—but best practices will evolve as costs and capabilities change. Butler writes, “Programming” is dead, but engineering and professional competence have not vanished; engineers’ new responsibility is to continuously optimize and maximize automation as builders. Proton will organize and invest resources to complete this transformation. Proton clarifies that this memo is not an in-depth engineering document addressing security, reliability, or infrastructure. The memo also notes that tech companies have laid off over one million people in recent years, and Microsoft last week offered 60,000 buyout packages.