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Comment by jmpman | Hacker News Reader

Why is Samsung employing people in Russia?

Strong math and programming school? OpenCV was largely developed by Intel Russia, for example.

And Intel fired all their Russian employees, like all ethical western companies should be doing.

From my experience, generally programmers in Russia are less conservative and more pro-West than the general population (especially those working for Western companies), I don't see anything ethical about firing them. In their statement, Intel said "We are working to support all of our employees through this difficult situation, including our 1,200 employees in Russia" because they understand those people have nothing to do with Putin. From what I gathered, most companies stop operations because, first, paying salary and selling has become difficult due to sanctions, and, second, it's bad PR for them if they keep working in Russia when everyone else left. So it doesn't look to me that it's about ethics, just a business decision.

They should leave Russia. They’re currently paying taxes to the regime.

Emigration isn't an easy process, it can't happen overnight. You need a visa (now harder to obtain for Russians), you need enough savings (not everyone has enough money), you should be able to speak a foreign language (not everyone is skilled enough to get a job from day 0), you will have to leave all your friends and most of your relatives behind, everything/everyone you loved and invested into, both financially and emotionally - due to a military conflict which may end soon (no one knows). I have elderly parents I take care of - I can't emigrate without them. It's easy to judge people when it doesn't affect you personally. If I remember correctly, 75% federal budget of Russia comes from oil/gas revenues, so in a sense, Europeans are more complicit in funding Putin's war crimes than Russian taxpayers. I wonder why Europeans aren't emigrating en masse. And it won't really help if everyone who opposes Putin's war emigrates, it will only worsen the situation because there will be no one left to change the country from within, the country will only get even more radicalized/conservative. It's not so simple.

https://www.russia-briefing.com/news/president-putin-spief-2...

From Putin’s most recent speech - “Many Russian AI and Big Data solutions are the best in the world.”

Putin is bragging about his AI and Big Data solutions. This is not a bunch of isolated engineers working alongside the west. Putin will be leveraging these engineers to drive massive disinformation campaigns worldwide.

We should not be celebrating this work.

It's not the employees' fault that the people running their country have decided to wage war.

But they are paying taxes to the regime. If they want to feel unimplicated, they should leave Russia.

Sir, this is not Twitter

Sir, this is not the time to overlook Samsung enabling the economy of Russia.

It was supposed to be a lighthearted joke but now I'd seriously suggest you to review your sources of information on what enables the economy of Russia

Half of which is their petroleum exports. There is another half. Sorry to be such a stickler, but Samsung is enabling Putin. They wouldn’t do the same for Kim Jong-un. It’s insulting they’re helping Putin.

They wouldn't do the same for NK for the sole reason they are not allowed to do it. They and many other companies that ostentatiously left the russian market, have absolutely no qualms about who they are helping. Just look at all the McDonalds in Saudi Arabia, I guess they are fine with Yemen genocide as long as the world's moral police is looking another way

Is this... a Wendy's?

I'll show myself out.

Maybe a group of people did a thing and Samsung wanted it

Why shouldn't they?

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