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Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

Slight edit to this. I didn't realize the core founding team was pushed out and largely committed Aliyah for Israel after the 2022 War began.

Not surprised either, as the core team was fairly progressive and anti-war, as a lot of Russian techies are. Also, it was the core team that was working on forward facing bets - sort of like a more functional version of Larry Page and Sergey Brin - and they're keeping those forward facing bets.

Middle management appears to still be operating in Russia though.

Edit:

To people commenting below,

IT Professionals and most other white collar jobs are draft exempted in Russia [0]

To make up for the unfairness, mobilized Russian soldiers are being paid Russian/Eastern European white collar level salaries ($2,500/mo) [1]

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-excludes-some-it...

[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/31/opinion/russia-ukraine-wa...

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By "anti-war" do you mean in general or in regard to a particular war?

Ex-CEO of Russian Yandex made a post in an internal network explaining she moved to Israel, and, among other things, saying "I don't want to live in a country waging wars with its neighbours (sic)". I wonder if she understood her own hypocrisy.

“Neighbours” isn’t misspelt there, that’s the British spelling.

That was in March 2022, before the recent stuff kicked off.

"Recent stuff" has little to do with the hypocrisy of this statement.

The statement was present tense. I don't think there were wars being waged at the time. Also when coalition of dictators A say they want to wipe small democratic country B off the map and attack it then I'm not sure A and B are equivalent and moving from an A to a B is hypocrisy.

making up facts, denying one’s behavior and measuring on the greater evil scale, is not the behavior of the good

The Ukraine War.

Most of the founding leadership's net worth was tied to Yandex's NYSE stock (YNDX) which was delisted due to the sanctions regime.

Back in the day, Russian companies (just like Chinese companies pre-COVID) would cross list stock in both the Russian Market and the NYSE for an IPO.

Basically, this is them cashing out and concentrating on their European operations, but the actual stuff Yandex is known for (search, mail, AI/ML) is still based in Russia and operated by Russian managers.

Given the move from Russia to Israel and the timing of when most Russian techies left, I suspect it is more out of fear of the draft than out of principle.

Not that I blame them - I doubt I would leave the US even during an unjust war… but a draft?

> most Russian techies left

This was about them getting paid fat paychecks from western clients/employers not out of draft fears.

Not a new phenom, whereas the draft is.

IT Professionals and most other white collar jobs are draft exempted in Russia [0]

To make up for the unfairness, mobilized Russian soldiers are being paid Russian/Eastern European white collar level salaries ($2,500/mo) [1]

The issue is if you're a Russian contractor working for a western company, how is the western company supposed to pay you? Russia's banking system has been decoupled from the west, and even Asian banks in China and India (major trading partners of Russia) are hesitant to fill the gap out of fears of secondary sanctions.

If you want to earn dollars, best to move to a Russian speaking country that isn't sanctioned like Kazakhstan, Georgia, or Bulgaria or to an easy to move country for Russians like Turkiye, Serbia, UAE, etc.

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-excludes-some-it...

[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/31/opinion/russia-ukraine-wa...

> To make up for the unfairness, mobilized Russian soldiers are being paid Russian/Eastern European white collar level salaries ($2,500/mo) [1]

$2500/mo is way higher than I would have thought they were paying these soldiers.

They're only paying the surviving ones. Also they're conveniently delaying payments and benefits to the families of the deceased.

https://youtu.be/t-VUAeRMGQU?si=0wNOnWtIiTBYh2XR&t=287

Interesting - although I think this is clearly intended as somewhat of a propaganda video.

Yes, sadly for many of their families, whole companies are left in the lurch for extended periods of time, often stuck on the front and meant to stay there. There are some heartbreaking pleas from companies like that, who know they are screwed. I've seen russian POWs claim they are more afraid of their superiors than the AFU. Huge numbers of foreign fighters are there for the $2500 too. So much tragedy.

The journalist seems honest and tries to show negative sides as well - even calls it a war. I’ve had a few chats with him on Patreon. His economic and refugee ones in particular were interesting.

Not all IT professionals are exempt, you have to have an university degree. Most do, but a sizeable minority doesn't.

>>> most Russian techies left

>> This was about them getting paid fat paychecks from western clients/employers not out of draft fears.

> Not a new phenom, whereas the draft is.

Russian techies started to leave immediately following the invasion that started in Feb 2022, because Western firms put in policies forbidding anyone in Russia from having access to their systems due to security concerns. If they were working for or contracting with those firms and stayed in Russia, they'd lose their jobs.

It looks like Putin first announced the draft in Sept. 21, 2022, but by then the techies working for or contracting with Western firms had already left or quit.

> Given the move from Russia to Israel and the timing of when most Russian techies left, I suspect it is more out of fear of the draft than out of principle.

Techies bring in $$$, so they are exempted from the mobilization.

100%. It's much easier than naturalizing in Germany, the UK, or US.

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