Today is an official company holiday at DreamProIT. We are celebrating Ukrainian Independence Day, and I hope no one is working. Though I know Uliana is probably going to tweak this blog post before it goes out, Andrii may debug a development pipeline, Halyna will improve our app designs, and Alex will come up with new ideas for our ML projects – even if not officially working. Working ten hours behind Kyiv’s time zone, I have become accustomed to waking up to new designs, Pull Requests, docker pipeline builds, and a flurry of other activity, day in and day out.
Over a winter plagued by missile strikes and power outages, our teams have reliably communicated and delivered. Much of this is the culture and mentality of Ukrainians: a deep pride in the quality and reliability of their work. Motivation at work is intrinsic. This work ethic has only been intensified because of the war: work is a way to channel positive, life-giving energies; an act of defiance against russian terror, and in many cases a practical way to support the economy and the army. Many Ukrainians consider work during this time a privilege and donate much of what they earn to charities or to the Ukrainian defense effort.
From the start of the war, and even now, some international companies have been developing policies against working in Ukraine because they want to avoid risk and ensure continuity. My experience has been the opposite: most Ukrainian IT workers and companies find a way to get work done on good days and bad. We all have been stressed over the last couple of years – COVID-19, fires, smoke, and the recent tropical storm in California; we have childcare challenges or a family member who gets sick. We all need to be able to tend to those challenges in our lives, and sometimes that means doing less at work. However, person for person, I have found our team members in Ukraine more reliable overall and more communicative when there are issues than other colleagues around the world. It’s in their nature, and now it’s an act of defiance.
So rather than turn away or give in to conventional ideas of risk, this is a terrific time to look closer and to invest in Ukraine and Ukrainians – both in the public and private sector. USAID has done this in a number of ways, including its support for Ukraine’s Parliamentary processes and its government technology platform, DIIA. And many private companies have done so as well, investing in Ukrainian startups, and hiring Ukrainian companies and entrepreneurs.
We all celebrate independence in different ways. At DreamProIT, we do it by putting our best efforts into work for our customers and providing a flexible remote-first work environment for our team members. I wish my colleagues in Ukraine a restful, safe and joyous Independence Day today. We hope to inspire others around the world to invest in Ukraine’s ingenuity and independence so that next year we can join them to celebrate independence, victory and a lasting peace.