Proton CTO: Programming Is Dead; Engineers Should Help Models Write Code

ME AI has published an internal memo titled “AI @ Proton, Engineering Manifesto,” written approximately one month ago by Proton’s Chief Technology Officer, Bart Butler, regarding messages, privacy email, and VPN services. 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 believes the era of manually crafting high-quality code is over; 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 act as 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 workflows—and must move to the second phase: eliminating bottlenecks across 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 invested 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 alongside changing costs and capabilities. Butler writes, “Programming” is dead; engineering and professional competence have not vanished. Engineers’ new responsibility is to continuously optimize and maximize automation as builders. Proton will organize and allocate 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 recently offered 60,000 buyout packages last week. (Source: ChainCatcher)