They had to suspend the R&D they did in Russia due to Ukraine, but I'm surprised they were able to keep it over there for so long given the other perils of having employees over there (that law which forced most American tech companies to close their R&D centers a decade or so ago).
> that law which forced most American tech companies to close their R&D centers a decade or so ago
Given that Intel and Nvidia had huge R&D centers in Russia until the middle of 2022, I highly doubt such law ever existed. Unrelated, but I also doubt US (as a country) won more than it lost from forcing them to withdraw from Russia, because Huawei literally hired whole divisions with all the expertise and inside knowledge.
> Russia can arrest local employees if they don’t like what their parent company is doing.
That is a real risk for maybe few very high-level expat managers, but certainly not a risk for average programmer Ivan. Besides, as if Google cared about countries arresting local employees - they have multiple offices in China, from all countries!
Make of it what you want, but the piece of anecdata I have from a person working at Russian Intel office in 2014 is that after Crimean referendum US government unofficially recommended big US companies to cease operations in Russia. Some of them agreed, like Google, because it was easy for them due to a small footprint, some of them, as Intel, deemed it unrealistic back then.
> That is a real risk for maybe few very high-level expat managers, but certainly not a risk for average programmer Ivan. Besides, as if Google cared about countries arresting local employees - they have multiple offices in China, from all countries!
Ah, I'm an expert on being expat working in China, and it really isn't much of a risk. China is dodgy, no real rule of law, just rule by law, but they aren't going to go after techies, there is no specific rule that they can go after employees, and the most you are going to get is tit-for-tat that honestly could affect any foreigner in China (e.g. tourists). But Russia made a law saying they could specifically go after employees, and that spooked Google out to moving everyone from St Petersberg to Zurich.