JetBrains suspends R&D activities in Russia and sales in Russia and Belarus (opens in new tab)

Thanks for the link. Indeed, looking at the their buildings in SpB [1], 1500 looks more reasonable.

2 towers, 8 floors, max 100 people at each floor = 1600. And they clearly built the towers with extra capacity in mind.

Still... knowing how difficult it was for 10x smaller PandaDoc to evacuate from Belarus in similar circumstances in 2020, I wish them all the luck.

[1] https://www.jetbrains.com/company/contacts/st-petersburg/

I guess JetBrains will help those willing to move abroad. Others will be fired with severance paid from funds remaining in Russian banks.

Buildings will remain unoccupied.

My understanding is, that there really is no issue paying. There are only 7 banks hit by full sanctions IIRC.

The Chinese government sometimes imprisons family members of people living abroad to force those abroad to do things. Why would a monster like putin shy away from that? JetBrains can’t really stop it, 1500/1900 of their staff are Russian (according to the other posts here). The founders are Russian. Many will have vulnerable family in Russia

Never based out of Moscow, never a Russian company. The founders are Russian but the company has always been based in Prague, although a lot of the employees work from Russia.

Being in a rough neighborhood, "founded in Prague, Czech Republic, 22 years ago" their position about Russia's "special military operation" is more than the usual vapid posturing by entities with little or no skin in the game, but you would think they would have thought about their vulnerable employees still in Russia before publicizing that position. Makes me wonder what else they might do purely for "political" reasons; another reason I'll be sticking with my FOSS development tools.

There are political risks to staying as well. They are quite a high profile company within Russia, the government could walk in and demand access to servers or cut them off from the internet in retaliation to the sanctions.

Might not be a choice. I had coworkers in Crimea when that annexation happened working remote for a US company, and they not only were immediately let go - but were not given the rest of their paycheck. Not because we wanted to, but because it was suddenly illegal to employ them and illegal to send money to them due to sanctions.

Jb is in Czech officially, but these sanctions are also far more inclusive this time.