Work despite everything: many Ukrainian IT specialists continue their activities by relying on Polish companies. The experience of an Italian recruiter living and working in Poland

One of the worst pages of current European history began on 24 February: with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Exactly four days later, here in Poland, we started receiving numerous contact requests from IT companies active in Ukraine and interested in expanding their team of developers. We work in IT recruitment and selection, and we found that 90 percent of our requests for cooperation came from one country. A unique case in our experience.

The conflict has disrupted the lives of these people in a drastic way, and the area of work has certainly been no exception. ‘Remote work’ and ‘IT‘ are often found in the same sentence, and the possibility of continuing to work without being in a specific place is helping part of the Ukrainian population to remain productively active, and also to take their minds off (at least for a moment) the sad reality that surrounds them. An interpretation of the concept of resilience, applied to work.

Ukrainian programmers to Poland: work, despite everything

Losing part of their team’s programmers, either because they were fighting to defend their country or for even worse reasons, prompted several IT companies to rethink their strategy. In terms of human resources, this has also resulted in seeking out neighbouring countries in terms of culture and IT skills, such as Poland.

Furthermore, according to UN data, Poland had already taken in 60 per cent of the total number of Ukrainian refugees, more than two and a half million people, by April. Initiating cooperation even in terms of partial relocation was an almost natural step.

According to a report by the Ukrainian IT Association, in 2021 the country estimated around 200,000 programmers out of a population of 45 million. Many of them worked at Ukrainian outsourcing companies, with even well-known international customers. Other programmers worked directly (with B2B or remote collaboration contracts) for foreign IT companies that chose Ukraine for the skill and availability of its specialists, at a competitive price compared to their domestic market.

What working in Ukraine looks like: overcrowded ‘offices’ and bomb sirens

The need to understand other markets stems from the desire to survive and continue to grow. For us, it turned into several intro calls where we found ourselves presenting the Polish IT job market and trying to understand whether we could help to our interlocutors.

These were Heads of Talent Acquisition or HR Managers, 90% of them women managers who had had to flee to Romania, Poland or the Czech Republic, or who had remained in Ukraine, perhaps moving to the western part of the country, to cities considered ‘relatively safer’ such as Lviv (a city only 80 km from the Polish border). Courageous women who tried to smile while explaining to us that they were forced to stay in eight in a shared three-room flat and that we would hear noises in the background because they were not alone in that temporary office. People who were working out of the office not by choice, but forced by a situation they could never have imagined.

During one of these calls, we happened to talk to a marketing manager when sirens had sounded and her HR colleagues had had to take refuge under bomb shelters. The new normal of a country that continues to work despite many difficulties.

Work as resistance and apps that warn of bombings

As hard as it is to imagine what it feels like in such a situation without living it, it is easy to feel immediate empathy for these ‘colleagues from another company’ living in a surreal situation. Expressing our solidarity and offering support, even without starting a collaboration, has always been part of our many conversations, and it has always been important for them to feel that the world is trying to understand them. It certainly makes them feel less alone.

From first interviews in some cases, we went on to start working together. Talking to each other almost every day, they explained some of the ways in which they try to maintain an apparent normality in a tragic context.

Just as we check the weather forecast on our smartphone app, they too have software that alerts them of bombings connected to messaging apps widely used in Ukraine, such as Viber and Telegram. In the same way, the same telephone operators, who here in Poland inform us when there is going to be a particularly violent thunderstorm, in Ukraine alert by text message when a bombing is in progress.

I have a lot of respect and feel deep empathy for all these people we have spoken to during this time. People who do not give up, who through their work convey the will to resist, to go on and perhaps soon return to the privilege of a ‘normal’ existence.

As the Ukrainian poet Oleksandr Ivanyts’kyj says, in translation from Ukrainian: ‘Help yourself, begin to
love life. Where there is peace, there is happiness. Never look for evil’.