70,000 Russian IT professionals have left the country | Hacker News Reader

70,000 Russian IT professionals have left the country

datacenterdynamics.com

57 pointsbelter23 comments

I am one of those 70,000, moved out of Russia, currently in Georgia. I'm no infiltration force, and I'm not any kind of force really. Outside Russian borders, I'm able to work with my clients all over the world again. Here are my feelings and thoughts if you're interested: https://www.facebook.com/vladstudio/posts/10157916079336377

Just to say my part and my opinion, to give my perception from a country of the "west"

I don't think you're an infiltration force or any others are.

I don't think Russian people are to blame, eg. definitely rural areas seem to be very indoctrinated. They are victims, wether they know it or not.

I've seen Russians, where i live, to be one of the most active for gathering support for Ukranians. I think a lot of Russians abroad feel embarrassed about Putin ( and his enablers), you're definitely not alone and i can't describe/know how that feels.

I hope most people are smart enough to know the difference stated, but i don't think all people are. For that, i apologize.

I wish you the best of luck.

thank you so much!

Every IT professional that emigrates from Russia is one valuable asset less for Russian regime. The West should welcome them not just because they are our fellow humans, but also because it helps us win the war.

They're also each, one more person for the West to victimize with bigotry that's extremely in vogue right now. Sadly quite a bit of HN's commenters are gleefully going along with this abuse of mistreatment of anyone who comes from a Russian background.

Just like World War 2 resulted in victimization of Germans?

Certainly. And Italians. And especially of Japanese.

> The state is considering seizing the equipment of companies that have departed the country, as well as buying out all the space in local data centers.

Sounds like a great idea to encourage IT companies to stay. The future is clearly stable.

On a more serious note, the Russian government is clearly desperate. And it doesn't help that they have little regard for private and personal property or private businesses.

We had a brilliant DevOps in Russia who seems pretty scared of the situation there. We'd like to relocate him but we fear he won't be able to open a bank account in Europe with him being Russian. Does anyone have any information?

c'mon, i don't think he's going to have any problems with that. there is a lot of russian citizens in europe and we would know if they had any troubles with that. i think there may be some issues with some angry people, but it's not systemic.

I've heard quite a few stories of them being denied bank accounts already. Not even sure how you could fly in with flights essentially banned both ways

https://jobbatical.com/resources/relocating-international-em...

I think with relocation for jobs, you won't encounter much issues.

Should not be a problem, but you can also consider relocation to Armenia. It’s super-friendly to Russians at the moment and government is counting on the opportunity to double their GNP by relocating enough engineers.

He will have a problem if he had a bigger position in the government, the military or secret services. Or if you are figurehead if the state like prominent sports or artists, and didn't speak out against Putin.

But certainly not as normal civilian. even if the mood in the civil society is a bit heated now.

For folks who are leaving the neighborhood and looking for work, check out this telegram group “IT Evacuation” [1]

[1] https://t.me/joinchat/AAAAAE3nUawZ4YX6AtDCFg

The article wasn't explicit over the time frame in which the 70k left. Since the start of the invasion?

> The mass exodus comes as the Russian economy collapses amid heavy sanctions for its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

I can't help looking at a story like that and wondering: "What if the 70,000 who have left and the 100,000 projected to leave are a digital infiltration force?"

It wouldn't surprise me if some of them are, but we're talking about a couple dozen at most.

Sure, but insider attacks have pre-dated 2022 so if your only defense to them is not to hire people with Russian citizenship I don't think your Org is actually taking it seriously.

170,000 is more than 1 of every 1000 Russians -- hence far more than 1 in 1000 Russian workers. And among the top-paid workers. Hard to imagine the Russian government would want that.

This is so strange, you have some imagination but also lack of it. If you were in charge of an action-movie-esque force of 170000 hackers, would you ship them all out at once, after the start of a war that's upset a lot of people and might turn them against Russians (yeah it's not the ordinary citizens' fault but some people can't see the difference) as well as after a flight ban, or would you send them out to infiltrate everywhere slowly throughout the years, and when you send the signal, your force of 170K would easily hand over the keys to all the networks you want?

Even a plan with a few people would usually leak or catch intelligence agencies' attention, if there's a conspiracy involving 170K people, it would be headline news before it'd even get moving.

I don't think so, Russia has (or at least had) quite a vibrant tech scene with startups, tech agencies and all that with customers worldwide. Like in every other metropole. And of course the people are leaving, what should they do there now... Things like this make me really wonder if Putin ever went outside of the Kremlin, going for such a destructive action

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