Open Letter to Visa and Mastercard from IT Specialists Fleeing Russia
Switching off Visa and Mastercard transactions abroad will lock thousands of IT specialists within the regime. These people are now trying to flee the country.
We wrote about the situation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30552091
Over the past two days we had 300+ resumes submitted[0], connecting these people with more than 30 organizations from Europe, US, Canada, India, Turkey, UAE and other countries to help them urgently relocate. Many of those looking for reloc are Ukrainian people by nationality who happen to live in Russia.
Lot of these people rely on scarce savings which they still have on their bank cards, as many were fired from their jobs over the past week. Getting cash is practically impossible right now, even in Moscow.
These people won’t be able to purchase tickets to get out. Those who already flew away won’t be able to finance themselves, as many still rely on Russian sources of income and try to work remotely while looking for another job.
Me and other community admins practically beg you, from all of our IT communities, to reconsider the decision, or give us more time.
Signed,
oleg@hey.com (admin of 36k members IT community) the.noble.activity@gmail.com (admin of 1k member IT community) @zzzybkin (admin of 7k member IT community) sasha.milenkin@yandex.ru (admin of 1.3k member IT community) crimes@hey.com (admin of 3k member IT community)
0 - all resumes to date are published here https://t.me/joinchat/AAAAAE3nUawZ4YX6AtDCFg
You can help by posting in the comments type of help, or relaying above information and our contacts to your local recruiters and hiring managers.
144 comments
[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 206 ms ] threadNow it's even more difficult to find a job, even in the open world, and in conditions of urgent relocation (without relocation from the company) I can only count on casual earnings with payment to my Russian cards.
Please, let's find a way out!
Fully support!
'In war people who don't know each other kill each other on orders of people who know each other but don't kill each other.'
I can't quote my SO enough with this saying.
While I am also still trying to understand why this war makes sense to Putin and Russian leadership in their heads.
Hit the civilians so that they go to the streets against Putin.
That's probably the idea. I just know of no case where this had worked (but I might just miss all the successful examples in history).
Sadly it is the normal people who suffer most.
https://youtu.be/YlVkGERhHkg
So, if civilian could stop tank with bare hands just because he is civilian, not a soldier, not trying to kill russian soldiers or throw molotov bottle to tank - may be (just may be, I am not sure) this part of propaganda is true or at least truthy
And in our time in Ukraine in 2014 we didn't let Police to drag people out of crowd. We hold the line. But your people for some reason allow police to drag individual protestors.
That's sadly.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Empathy for one doesn't negate empathy for others, including others who may be in lesser straits but are still suffering. Those of us sitting in comfort and safety right now are particularly in no position to demean anyone who is not. I'm not saying that about you (I don't know your situation, of course), but there are a lot of internet commenters doing exactly that right now, and it's not ok here. It's also deeply counterproductive to what they presumably want to achieve.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I am sorry for everyone in this mess, but the faster Putin is forced to stop in Ukraine the sooner it can return to normalcy.
First, this move by Visa and Mastercard did nothing internally, all the Visa and Mastercard issued cards will work due to local processing center. Absolutely zero impact for poor people who shop in Pyaterochka and then go home to watch TV propaganda for a leisure. Only educated people abroad (foreign students and runaway workers) will suffer.
Second, gov media spins these measures and gains more support internally. Their approval ratings now skyrocket because they have invested years into building vision of enemies who want to hurt through sanctions. Common people now run to them in fear and agree to trade even more of their freedoms for “protection”. Just open up the list of laws introduced over the past week, and see for yourself.
Choices have consequences. Always.
I have less than 3000$ of savings and no ability to work remotely from other countries because I can't get my wage outside of Russia now. I can not leave without severe financial and logistical issues to even meet her again and I don't really have many places to go to. She can not return here, nor should she because it is dangerous, and she can not withdraw cash from her Russian bank accounts where most of her money is to support herself in France.
These sanctions, including VISA and MasterCard block, endangered and condemned thousands if not tens and hundreds of thousands of people who have nothing to do with Putin's decision to invade Ukraine. Hell, it endangered 145 millions of people in Russia. Because these sanctions don't hurt Putin or his oligarch supporters but they hurt regular people, who are now facing simply the danger of default.
I urgently left Russia with almost no cash; this morning, after reading the news from Mastercard, I miraculously managed to withdraw about 3k, but I don't know how to adjust my life in the future yet
To get a job, I need more documents than I managed to take with me, so for now the only source of income remains in Russia, but how to use it is a huge problem (not to mention the exchange rate due to which my salary decreases every day)
If you are qualified, at least.
We have asked people in our telegram channels and communities to share their experience in the comments. I know this breaks the rules. I hope at war time this would be acceptable, given the cause.
Posting all this is a huge risk for us.
All these stories which people post here are real. We are not Putin to bullshit people with lies or manipulate people to vote for things they don’t believe in — much less than 1% of people in Russia know that hacker news exists.
We gain $0 from this activity. I fact, me and a couple of close friends worked 24/7 over the last two days to help as many people as we can to connect with 30+ recruiters and hiring managers.
I suggest that the new users that still can edit their comments to write a longer and more personal version. If they can not edit, just self-reply to their own comment and add three or four paragraphs. (Front end or back end? Emacs or Vi? Preferred language? City??? Age range???)
I understand that some may not like to share too many personal details, so I added a few question marks. But if the idea is to show that there are real persons suffering on both side, some personal stories are better than "It seems to be true". I also understand that many may not write English too well, I'm a native Spanish speaker and I make a lot of orthographical and gramatical mistakes here.
Also, avoid cut and pasting the same "personal" story many times, it will cause an even worse effect.
The idea is not foolproof:
* It is possible that dang does not like this longer versions neither and still decide to ban all the new accounts.
* It is possible that someone will acuse you of being a gpt-3 bot, and adding orthographical errors on purpose, or even nastier things.
* I don't expect the community to be super happy with the green account after the expanded comments, just less unhappy.
If half of our lives were not criminalized over the past few days by new laws, if 12+ free speech media orgs were not shut down in just three days, if my friends were not hiding from the bombs in Kiev, if our chances to flee the regime were not cut down drastically by political decisions, I would follow these by the book.
Regarding bots and copy paste — feel free to join our Telegram and conduct select Turing tests on people who post their resumes. Maybe that will prove you we are not a bunch of bots, but people in extreme danger who fear for their lives and their families.
Also poisoning the well with your "if you say yes, I would think it's a lie, or that you're stupid"
I hope writing that does at least help you feel better because it won't help the people of Ukraine.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. Yes, the rules still apply during a war—the violence and aggression going on right now does not imply that this place should destroy itself as well.
That includes not using the site primarily for political, ideological, or nationalistic battle. We ban accounts that do that regardless of what they're battling for, because it destroys everything this site is supposed to exist for.
Any possibilities of protest in Russia are suppressed. Putin has been doing this for decades. We don't have that much support. Visa/MS blocking affects ~1% of the population who want to flee.