Ask HN: How to organize work during blackout in winter? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to organize work during blackout in winter?

12 pointsivan_gammel22 comments

I have a situation: one of my developers is now in Ukraine working remotely. She is in a relatively safe area near a nuclear power plant, which so far has not been targeted by Russian missile strikes and was producing electricity for her town. Today it was shut down, meaning also no water etc in her apartment. Local cellular network is still working, meaning that she has Internet connection.

For some personal reasons she is not ready to evacuate, I also do not want to terminate the contract if there’s a chance that she can work even in such difficult circumstances. We are getting used to the sound of air raid sirens during meetings, but this is new and we have to find a way to maintain the working process during the coming winter.

What would you do in this situation? What inexpensive technology can help here to survive this madness? Are there any advices that you would give?

View on HN

For some personal reasons she is not ready to evacuate

I do not expect anyone to agree with my logic and I know this does not answer your question but the only responsible answer in my opinion would be to do what you can to help her get past the personal reasons.

Any technological answer anyone here could give would just make her a target. Satellite phone or computer terminal? Target. Generator? Target. Portable solar generator and panels? Target. In my opinion she needs to grab anyone and anything that can not be replaced and relocate. I would even further add that nobody should expect to go back to Ukraine for at least a decade based on historical patterns. Perhaps your company could expense and write-off her travel and first few months rent somewhere?

Excellent comment. Expatriate the employee as soon as possible, don’t attempt to operate in a war zone.

This option is not on the table yet. We have to operate under assumption that no relocation will take place in next few months unless it’s getting really hot there, which is unlikely.

If you really care about this person as a human, just tell her to do what she can when she has power, and when she’s able to evacuate help her out however you can. I think it’s funny that you seem to be more focused on the work she can do but I’m assuming you do care about her well being first and foremost.

I agree… focussing on her output when she’s enduring a war situation is just heartless. Consider it sick leave. She’s incapacitated by circumstance, behave accordingly.

I think you are not fully understanding the situation, so making inappropriate judgement. War is not a sick leave and it is wrong to make such comparison. She is not incapacitated, neither she is looking for an escape route.

Currently there are many thousands of people in Ukraine looking for any type of the job. They have chosen to stay or were forced to stay because men cannot leave the country. Some of them are learning programming and coming to job market as engineers. If hiring someone is a way to help and a win-win situation (at lower budget you can offer same netto salary as in Germany), I use this opportunity. There’s only as much as we can do to help, so yes, now, given the circumstances, I focus on making them succeed on the job, because that is the best I can do both for them and for our business.

A person in a position of power over her perceives their options as being a dichotomy between ensuring she can continue to produce output or terminating her contract. This is the crux of the matter that I am not misunderstanding. My “inappropriate judgement” is that this is at the very least heartless and tone-deaf. Let’s take it a step further and hypothesis what might happen if her equipment is destroyed or network connectivity goes down and makes it impossible for her to be productive? She becomes unproductive so heavy heart he ends her contract? Meanwhile they struggle to keep her useful so they can keep her compensation flowing?

She needs to succeed at the job or she gets axed. Than’s the crux of it. Given the circumstances I repeat it’s totally heartless and tone deaf. If you’re OK with that that’s your problem, and I feel a bit sorry for you.

What is your suggestion exactly? I see you are in the mood for lecturing on morality, but what is the constructive solution that you offer?

I repeat, the contract was signed during the war with the person that does not want to leave the country. Do I need to just pay everyone I hire this way and not expect them to work, as you suggest?

I have some doubt on idea of keep working under blackout conditions. One is not easy, to code when your body and toes are suffering from cold temperature. Maybe reducing the number of meetings can help her to use her batteries for some more important tasks.

We have pair programming sessions for working on important tasks.

Ukrainian here staying in Ukraine the whole time. Not a developer, working in a senior management role, but still heavily relied on the internet and electricity. Totally understand the reasons why your employee doesn't want to move out of the country.

I assume that she lives not in Enerhodar (which is occupied). Then only 2 possible locations, and they are pretty safe. According to western and Ukrainian analysts, massive scale attack from Belarus is impossible right now. And the possibility of Russians moving to the right bank of Dnipro is very-very distant right now. The only 2 problems are: missile strikes and infrastructure failures. So the comments here that generators or satellite internet will make her a target is nonsense. Missiles are too expensive to target each household with a generator.

So next I share what I did and what works for me: 1. Moved with my family to a distant small village in central Ukraine (Vinnytsia region), where we don’t rely on central heating and water supply. The only network we are connected to is eletricity. Life here is very cheap. We bought a house for $3000 and paid around $10k to make it convenient for us (shower / toilet, water, heating). Today there were 5 strikes heard - the attack was on Ladyzhyn electricity station 30 minutes drive from us. Living in even small city makes people dependent on central heating systems and water supply. Living in private house makes you more independent. If your employee doesn’t want to move somewhere to Europe or western Ukraine maybe she can rent a house in a village near her city like 20—40 minutes drive. It will give her flexibility not to rely on central systems, visit friends and family in the city, and no sirens heard here, never! And event in such a village we have access to quite good healthcare / dentists / and buying local food. 2. We use our own heating 3. Ordered starlink. For Ukrainians it’s very long to wait it, so my relatives from Belgium helped ordered to their address and sent it here. Maybe you can help your employee with logistics delivering satellite kit to her. Again starlink in remote village works better than in the city because sky is clear. In the city if she lives in apartments it will be hard to install it. 4. I bought a portable power station. It’s enough for me to work for a couple of days and to power refrigerator. But during the war there was never more than 4 hours without electricity here. I bought it before massive strikes on infrastructure. Nowadays they are in deficit. So again you can help her with logistics buying somewhere in Europe and delivering to Ukraine. My friend from Sweden helped me to buy power station for my parents and sent it in Ukraine. 5. What I need right now is a generator. They are in deficit here. But my relatives in Belgium are helping with it delivering it here. Moreover Ukrainian government cancelled all taxes / customs on generators and power stations, so it became even more accessible in terms of price. The only problem is logistics. Sorry for bad English.

Edit: Even today after massive strike we didn’t had electricity for like 4 hours. My parents live in Kyiv and it’s much worse there - no electricity and water and even cell connection for the whole day. So my point is basically to stay away from large cities, because they are more vilnerable

Thank you! This is really helpful. Are there any logistics issues we need to consider if we send her some hardware from Germany?

Basically there several options in EU zone: 1. There are drivers (mostly Ukrainians) on small shuttles that regularly carry passengers and packages from Belgium through Germany and Romania to Western Ukraine. When they come to Ukraine drivers send packages through local post services (Nova Poshta or Meest Express) to people around Ukraine. There are lots of such shuttles. The problem is to find someone reliable. My relatives in Belgium claim to know reliable driver. Not sure which cities he goes through in Germany when going to Ukraine. 2. There is Meest Express, which has warehouses in Germany and Poland. You can order something from say Amazon to their warehouse and they will deliver it to any place in Ukraine. It’s a more expensive options. 3. Lot’s of people going between EU and Ukraine, but it’s not an option for you, because you have to know people. You can ask your employee - most probably some of her relatives and friends went to EU as refugees. Some people return, some are volunteers that go back and forth carrying humanitarian and military air.

Just pack the hardware very carefully.

Petrol generator or batteries bank. The former is not an option in a flat, though, but is the best option to withstand long electricity cuts. Neither are prohibitively expensive (at least in normal circumstances) but might be harder and harder to find.

Keep in mind having a generator could make them an obvious target depending on how bad things get do to the fact that it will be obvious they are running one from the noise. I also assume fuel to run it could be a problem.

If things get so bad then there is no point discussing how to maintain work conditions and those involved need to make a decision about leaving the area or wishing the dev good luck.

Currently, my understanding is that the main issue in most of Ukraine is blackouts, not a breakdown of order or active fighting. Hopefully it will not worsen.

Certainly not in that area. If active fighting will be even remotely close to that town we well try evacuation.

I'd imagine that's somewhere near Khmelnytskyi? Ukraine would have folded well before any fighting got there, Russians would need to either run a massive attack from Belarus or totally overrun Dnipro.

It’s not far from South-Ukrainian Nuclear Plant, north of Odessa. That region is not an active war zone and there’s no meaningful targets in that specific town. It’s just the first blackout in the last 9 months.

That generator noise is very common in Ukrainian towns nowadays and fuel is not a problem any more. Getting a generator is a problem.

Try to convince her to move. Cancel her workload and deadlines and tell her you’ll keep paying her regardless of her output. That’s the compassionate thing to do. Anything else is tantamount to trying to squeeze blood out of a stone.

Alternative power sources

Reply on news.ycombinator.com