[SXX]

Yeah we (IT crowd of Russia) had time to leave and wanted to leave and planned to leave. But even as programmer it's can be just hard to immigrate without losing 3-5 years of your life in the middle. Also losing all you friends and social circle isn't fun. I already lived abroad for 3-months / 6-months / 3-years and I know what how it feels to move countries.

I personally had amazing personal projects going on and finally started to work in game development industry. My dream was to play games and make games. I wanted to get current projects to completion and then look for relocation options.

All these terrible events just taken us by surprise. A lot of my friends are anti-regime, but no one including me expected Putin to go batshit crazy and start full scale war. Of course all we could do is to run.

[moonchrome]

What do you mean losing years ? It might be a bit tough depending on visa issues and so on but none of my friends that emigrated describe it as losing years. They are all working in their field, some are progressing insanely in their careers (especially compared to how they were doing back home). I mean I know it's anecdotal, and I've read some horror stories about employer visa abuse but assuming that's the default is kind of cynical IMO.

[zelphirkalt]

Depending on the country you immigrate in, there might be a language barrier, general mistrust and many other issues like finding a place to live (flat, house, etc.). Some qualifications differ, but of course in IT the definitions of roles is a bit vague, so it is less of an impact. Generally Russian IT people have the a stereotype going for them, to be very capable, at least where I am from. Losing friends and contacts is also something that will take time to build up again.

[SXX]

What I mean by losing years: when you forcefully immigrate your primary goal becomes to keep your work visa or getting residence permit. You cant afford to work on exact same projects you wish, change jobs as you wish. Until you get permenent residence or citizenship - this takes 3-9 years depend on country.

Also lets be honest here - not all of us are top-notch programmers and finding job and passing interviews is completely different skill that need to be trained. I for instance simply don't have any official degree and while this make no difference for freelancer it's handicap me greatly when it's come to getting work visa.

Also even if I am programmer my girlfriend is not automatically become one too. Finding a good job for her as English teacher (who is not a native speaker) would be much harder in EU / US. So this will put extra strain on my an her life.

Rebuilding social circle and finding new friends also takes a long time. Especially if you dont want to stick to communities of other immigrants.

PS: now this all doesn't matter because we turned into refugees. Yeah we're in much better situation compared to my friends in Ukraine who wake up to bomb shells, but our past life is still destroyed by Mr Putin and his regime.