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Comment by alephnerd

2 years ago

Yandex is keeping their Russian business.

This is Yandex's European arm divesting itself from the Search+Mail business they have in Russia.

In the press release, this was even mentioned - that Yandex's Russian management (aka most of it's management) would be buying out their Russian operations.

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alephnerd

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alephnerd  2 years ago

Slight edit to this. I didn't realize the core founding team was pushed out and largely committed Aliyah for Israel after the 2022 War began.

Not surprised either, as the core team was fairly progressive and anti-war, as a lot of Russian techies are. Also, it was the core team that was working on forward facing bets - sort of like a more functional version of Larry Page and Sergey Brin - and they're keeping those forward facing bets.

Middle management appears to still be operating in Russia though.

Edit:

To people commenting below,

IT Professionals and most other white collar jobs are draft exempted in Russia [0]

To make up for the unfairness, mobilized Russian soldiers are being paid Russian/Eastern European white collar level salaries ($2,500/mo) [1]

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-excludes-some-it...

[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/31/opinion/russia-ukraine-wa...

  • krunck  2 years ago

    By "anti-war" do you mean in general or in regard to a particular war?

    • reisse  2 years ago

      Ex-CEO of Russian Yandex made a post in an internal network explaining she moved to Israel, and, among other things, saying "I don't want to live in a country waging wars with its neighbours (sic)". I wonder if she understood her own hypocrisy.

      24 replies →

    • alephnerd  2 years ago

      The Ukraine War.

      Most of the founding leadership's net worth was tied to Yandex's NYSE stock (YNDX) which was delisted due to the sanctions regime.

      Back in the day, Russian companies (just like Chinese companies pre-COVID) would cross list stock in both the Russian Market and the NYSE for an IPO.

      Basically, this is them cashing out and concentrating on their European operations, but the actual stuff Yandex is known for (search, mail, AI/ML) is still based in Russia and operated by Russian managers.

  • whimsicalism  2 years ago

    Given the move from Russia to Israel and the timing of when most Russian techies left, I suspect it is more out of fear of the draft than out of principle.

    Not that I blame them - I doubt I would leave the US even during an unjust war… but a draft?

    • cyberax  2 years ago

      > Given the move from Russia to Israel and the timing of when most Russian techies left, I suspect it is more out of fear of the draft than out of principle.

      Techies bring in $$$, so they are exempted from the mobilization.