Any person in Russia mentioning the war in a way that the kgb dislikes is exposed to prison terms. You can't blame people who have to wake up in Russia for not actively pissing off their government via press release?
I'm not disputing the quality of the engineers or other employees at Yandex. So I'm not sure how that's relevant.
Regardless: Arkady issues a press release saying, "This war is fucking Yandex up, we have no idea what's going to happen, earning in ₽ but investments in $ ain't great, and this surely isn't going to increase uptake of Yandex products abroad."
What precisely is that going to do besides land his ass in YaG-14/10?
You know there's a modern proverb in Russian about doing business in Russia:
1. Do not establish any contracts with government.
2. Do not participate in any governmental organizations or organizations created with any support from the government as a member.
3. Do not have any assets in Russia, that can not be instantly moved out.
4. Do not have any business with any person who might be business partners, friends, clients, family of anyone controlling or participating or in any way related to Russian government. Especially the military or the internal security.
5. Do not have any business with any legal entity involving anyone from number 4. If you have to, always demand full prepayment and mind number 3.
6. Do not incorporate any businesses in Russia, whose activity might contradict goals of persons from number 4 or entities from number 5.
7. Do not create any high earning businesses in Russia. Exceptions are businesses based on intellectual property (that can be sheltered outside), or on personal skills/knowledge (that can't be taken away).
8. Never rely that the courts will take your side even in clear cut cases. Also never rely on any number of qualified lawyers telling you what you are doing is legal in Russia. No matter what the law says, the court can at any time decide otherwise.
9. Never let your business do anything unusual, if it is offered by any entity from numbers 4 and 5, even if (and especially when) certain preferential treatment is offered.
10. Never end up in situation where an immediate and irreversible need to leave Russia is impossible, or complicated, or would have high cost, or would threaten other people. Even if you are precisely following the rules 1-9.
Yandex definitely violates quite a few. Regardless, I can't imagine Yandex had a choice: between the data residency laws, and the Russian government's views on foreign investment, I don't think they could have kept their servers abroad.
Certainly after the theft of vk from Durov everyone knew what the deal is.
This is directed at western markets. Nobody needs to be told there’s a war on, The company would just expose itself to useless additional risk from the Russian government.
Now I’d wish they’d choose to go down in glory and spread the truth in every way they can, as long as they can. Because in four weeks they are gone no matter what. So far, it doesn’t look like it.
But this press release is just „not being stupid“.
If it were possible to target sanctions directly at the war's cheerleaders, that would be great. It's not, and so sanctions harm Russians in the aggregate in the hopes of bringing down support in the aggregate.
Yandex employees are among the tech elite in Russia—overwhelmingly well-educated, liberal, and cosmopolitan. They were opposed to the Crimea invasion in 2014.
This is such a poor argument. It is not like a Russian programmer working in Russia has tons of well paying job options. They can work there because they get to work on interesting problems. Clickhouse came from inside Yandex.
Just because they have to toe the line of a goverment where they operate, should they stop serving the hundreds of millions of Russian people.
Isn't Twitter toeing the line of EU while censoring RT? Not that RT was publishing truth anyway but my point is companies toe the line on the basis of where they operate.
You don't expect Baidu to put the image of Tank man on their home page.
Should Apple employees have quit when the iPhones they designed were being manufactured by labour working in inhumane conditions? At least that was something that Apple could have easily controlled instead of trying to maximize the margins on their products.
In ordinary times, I wouldn't expect Russian citizens living in a brutal autocracy to pursue unrealistic civil disobedience. But these are not ordinary times. While Ukrainian civilians are being shelled, Russian civilians should not expect to live in security and contentment.
Sometimes you have to take scummy jobs to keep a roof over your family’s head.
In fairness, they weren’t supporting a warring regime a month ago. I won’t say I would have worked at Yandex then but it wouldn’t have been the reflexive “no” that it is now.
Or they are a huge company that doesn't want to put their Russian employees in the crosshairs of a government that's quickly reverting to Soviet-style authoritarianism.
Whether this excuses anything is not my point.