By mid-February, something had to be done. The American game company Ubisoft, which has more than a thousand employees in Kiev and Odessa, saw the situation in Ukraine escalate. The company helped workers and their families flee to Poland and Romania. Salaries were paid in advance, shelter arranged for them.
But most Ubisoft employees didn’t want to leave Ukraine at all. The majority stayed, says a person within Ubisoft. “To protect home and family. Or to fight. Leaving Ukraine can feel like abandoning their community for some employees.”
Among the companies in Ukraine that are currently working to secure personnel are a striking number of European and American technology companies. It is not uncommon for tech companies to recruit software developers in Ukraine to build apps and websites there.
Ukraine has many highly trained programmers. Jan Koum, founder of WhatsApp, was born in Kiev. Payment service PayPal, social network Snapchat, online bank Revolut and GitLab, a popular software service for programmers, were also devised by Ukrainians.
According to the Ministry of Economy in Ukraine, the country has about 4,000 IT companies, which account for 4 percent of GDP. With the help of an ambitious plan (‘Diia City’), which President Volodymyr Zelensky proudly presented at the beginning of last month, that was to grow to 10 percent in the coming years. Ukraine wanted, among other things, to lure tech companies with low taxes.
Due to this stimulating environment, international tech companies with headquarters in the Netherlands – such as Adyen, Booking and Uber – also have ties with Ukraine. Dozens of Ukrainians work for them in the Netherlands as highly skilled migrants, or they have local offices in Ukraine itself.
The war in the country means for all these companies that they will have to deal with personnel who are in mortal danger. Or that doesn’t want to work anymore, but wants to fight against the Russians. Personnel who “put down laptops and pick up weapons,” as a chief executive of an American tech company put it this week.
How are companies dealing with this new reality?
Dutch companies that export to Russia also have concerns: ‘It’s a drama. Merchandise is rotting away.”
Satellite phones and gas masks
The main priority, according to companies that NRC spoke: bring employees to safety on site. Step two: provide Ukrainians who work in an office in the Netherlands, for example, with the best possible mental support. Such as the payment service Adyen, which employs “about sixty” employees from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. “We give them space for things that happen outside of work,” a spokesperson said. “Whether you want to protest or help your family, you don’t have to work for a while.”
Uber has many employees on site: the company has been operating in Ukraine since 2016. Shortly after the attacks began, the taxi app halted taxi traffic in nine Ukrainian cities and closed its office in Kiev. This week, Uber also decided to sell its stake in Russian internet company Yandex.
To ensure the safety of its personnel in Ukraine, Uber set up a special team. The company sent satellite phones to Ukraine, among other things, to “keep in touch with our people on the ground,” Anabel Diaz, chief executive for Uber Europe, emailed staff last Friday afternoon.
Uber also provides “logistical and financial support” to workers “and their families” to flee the country. Staff from Ukraine who work at Uber’s international headquarters in Amsterdam, especially software developers, are also being encouraged to take time off. “We remain in solidarity with you during these difficult times,” Diaz wrote. Those who want therapy for “stress, grief and anxiety” will be reimbursed for the treatment.
emergency kits
Also accommodation website Booking.com, which is headquartered in Amsterdam, is helping staff from the Kiev office to move with their families to neighboring countries. Preparations for this started a few weeks ago, a spokesperson said. “Many employees wanted to leave, but not all.”
Booking provided, among other things, financial aid to employees and sent instructions and money with which the staff in Ukraine shelter kits could put together: emergency kits including a gas mask, food and medicines. Booking also donated $1 million to the Red Cross and pledged to double every donation from Booking employees.
The company has not yet decided whether Booking will stop doing business in Russia. The questions employees have been asking management about this in recent days have been “quite valid,” Bookings chief of security Spencer Mott emailed employees. “There will come a time when we will do that. But now I ask you to devote your energies to supporting colleagues with friends and family who are affected by the situation.”
On the run
In addition to large companies, there are also many smaller start-ups that have software developed by Ukrainians, who build apps and websites remotely. Many Ukrainians are technically educated, relatively cheap, usually speak good English and match well with the Netherlands in terms of culture. Given the shortage of IT specialists in the Netherlands, hiring low-cost, high-quality personnel in Ukraine is tempting for companies with little money.
Rogier Roukens, head of technology at the Amsterdam company VIVE, which develops an app for asset management, saw this week how the five Ukrainians who work for him suddenly no longer appeared at the daily Zoom meeting. “Everyone was on the run,” he says.
His chief software developer managed, with great difficulty, to get to the southwest of the country and get his wife and daughter across the border. The man himself decided to stay in Ukraine, Roukens says. “He has had no military training, but has signed up to defend his country.”
There is no question of working now, logically. But Roukens hopes that he may eventually be able to bring his Ukrainian staff to the Netherlands, so that they can finish their work. “If they want to, of course. They may want to help rebuild their country, or they may be too traumatized to work. We just don’t know.”
There has been no contact with his most important software developer today, says Roukens, who will try again later. “If he responds at all.”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of March 3, 2022