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Programming The Military

Ukranian Programmers Continue Working While Being Bombed (cnbc.com) 160

Posted by EditorDavid from the race-conditions dept.
CNBC reminds us that Ukraine is also home "to a massive community of software developers who work remotely for companies all over the U.S. and Europe.

"There were 200,000 Ukrainian developers in the country in 2020, according to Amsterdam-based software development outsourcing company Daxx, which says that 20% of Fortune 500 companies have their remote development teams in Ukraine." As major cities across Ukraine endure devastating attacks that have seen buildings reduced to rubble, company leaders in the U.S. and Europe have expressed awe at their Ukraine-based staff. Those developers, along with other Ukrainian civilians in the country, are now being forced to defend their homes and cities while sheltering from Russian bombs. But many are still continuing to remotely work for their employers, supporting the local defense effort by day while sending in their deliverables by night.

"Yes our teams are sending deliverables from a f — ing parking garage in Kharkiv under heavy shelling and gunfire in the area. Amazing humans," Logan Bender, chief financial officer at a San Francisco-based software licensing company, said in a story posted to Instagram on Tuesday by venture capital meme account PrayingforExits. "We of course told them all deliverables are off the table. Nothing of you expected other than to let us know how we can help other than wiring money and getting their visa process going," he said. Bender has been working to get a defense service to extract his employees from the conflict zone under armed guards....

"Our lead front-end developer fled to Lviv to his parents' rural house 40km outside the city and is still submitting pull requests," Eric Hovagim, CEO and founder of Los Angeles-based betting platform Pogbet, told CNBC. "He's returning to Lviv tomorrow morning to continue his work while helping with the fight."

"These Ukrainians are built different," Hovagim said. "No armed guard extraction necessary. These people are their own armed guards...."

Ukrainians in IT-related fields are also deploying their skills for the fight at home. Employees at a local digital marketing agency in Kyiv are helping carry out cyberattacks against Russian entities in collaboration with Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation. A local Telegram channel dedicated to crowd-sourcing programmers to carry out cyberattacks against Russia has nearly a million subscribers...

Alexandru Asimionese, co-founder of Moldova-based software developer Labs42, described one of his freelance designers based in the northwestern Ukrainian city of Lutsk. "In the morning goes to buy high-protein snacks to deliver to the local army. Late night, sends logo ideas. Always paid in crypto (via) Binance," he said. Another start-up manager said that his Ukrainian girlfriend was returning to Ukraine from overseas to fight, and plans to continue working for her tech company while not fighting invaders.
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Ukranian Programmers Continue Working While Being Bombed More

Ukranian Programmers Continue Working While Being Bombed

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  • Wow, this is humbling. If you're a Slashdotter whose biggest complaint is about clueless clients, incompetent managers, lousy languages, and badly written code, check your privilege.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by RobinH ( 124750 )
      It's putting a lot of things in perspective for people all over the political spectrum. Convoy protesters in Ottawa and Washington "fighting their oppressive government" and comparing the government to nazis. Campuses providing "safe spaces" so students don't have to hear something that might make them upset. Right wingers who love Putin because he helped Trump get elected, and because Putin's trying to create a white ethno-state. There's even a few extremists on the far left who deny the notion of biol
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Ukranian Programmers Continue Working While Being Bombed

    I think most scrums would go better (and in my experience at my former company, faster) if they were conducted as though all the participants could get bombed at any moment.

    • "30 seconds only, go, go go!"

    • I remember a company where the manager had all our standup meetings sitting down, because they lasted 45 or 60 minutes so no one wanted to stand.

      I begged him to at least rename them as "sit-downs", so we could be logically consistent with our naming if nothing else.

  • "there are starving people in China" for developers who complain about their working conditions. "You want to work in a heated building? Look at the Ukrainians!"

    In all seriousness though, I have nothing but good things to say about them. The only positive offshore experience I ever had was with developers from the Ukraine, so I'm not really surprised.
  • No military experience?
    Perhaps not the most athletic of figures?
    Best thing you can do for the country then is to keep the money coming in.
  • A respectable company would continue to pay them while cutting their git access. Otherwise it's one of those situations where "you don't have to work but, you know, it's still encouraged, and we will remember the decision you make".

    Don't give them the choice. Let them focus on being safe in a warzone and not fucking pull requests.

  • - ...My broadband line got bombed.
    - (Manager) Alright, just make sure be on time tomorrow.

  • Good communist workers. They were trained well by their ex-Soviet leaders.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Come on, slashdotters, you can certainly do better.

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