The first thing I did was a regular walk with my dog
Day 1. Kyiv.
My life as almost the life of any Ukrainian has changed on the 24th of February 2022. I woke up around 7 am hearing the sounds of an air raid siren. I wasn’t really afraid or shocked. Not sure why but I was completely calm at that moment. I took my mobile phone and read that Russia attacked Ukraine early in the morning - so the war began.
The first thing I did was a regular walk with my dog. It was still the sound of a siren but at that moment I really didn’t care about it. Both I and my pregnant wife decided together that we should avoid panic leaving and stay at least a couple of days in Kyiv. My next step was notifying Springs (that is my company name) team about an urgent video meeting at 10 am.
About 80-90% of company members were present at the meeting. The main topics were:
- Safety the first. All guys from Ukraine should get to a safe place as fast as possible. Springs and I will help with it as much as we can.
- As soon as we are in a safe place — we should continue to work as much as we can: to continue delivering projects, earning money, donating to our army, and supporting Ukraine.
- All guys from other countries should work for 120% to support those who can’t in Ukraine.
- As we couldn’t predict what would happen even within the next days — I immediately arranged preterm full monthly payments to all staff regardless of their monthly performance.
- We are one heart and one core — so everyone should help each other as much as possible.
After the company meeting, I also arranged a couple of conversations with our top managers to make sure all clients are notified about the situation and that we would do everything possible to avoid stops in the development process.
We continued development with great performance.
Day 3. Kyiv.
Despite the fact that many of us suffered from the bombing of our cities and endless air raid sirens — we managed to stay calm and do our job well. All our clients were really surprised by this and could not believe how we normally continue to deliver. We are thankful to many of them for their support and especially to those who raised hourly rates for our projects due to the war crisis.
I was still in Kyiv with my family and our friends. We all work together at Springs so it was really great in terms of being connected together during the war. We talked with clients during the video meetings, we managed our development teams and other processes. We continued development with great performance. Meanwhile, we stayed in shelters during the air raid sirens.
I realized, how great our clients are.
Day 7-10. Kyiv-Vinnytsia-Lviv.
After a week of the war, we decided to move on a temporary basis to Lviv. The point is that you can’t move quickly through the country due to many military checkpoints. So, it took us about 3 days to get to Lviv by car. We stopped in Vinnytsia for one day and only on the third day we finally got to Lviv.
During the first week of the war, most of the guys from Springs managed to evacuate to safe places. The company performed at about 90% at that moment. Almost all developers, QA engineers, UI/UX designers, and projects managers did their job like great soldiers and delivered milestones.
We continued to get support messages from our clients from Poland, Germany, France, Canada, Australia, the USA, Katar, UAE, and other countries we had worked with.
I realized, how great our clients are. They asked about the ways to help, they collected money in their regions and donated to Ukraine, some of them even proposed to evacuate my family from the border to Poland and other countries. About 95% of our current clients helped a lot and many recent clients asked about ways to support us.
I am really thankful to all of them and proud that Springs is a reliable team people like to work with and help during tough times.
Springs continues to fight on all fronts.
Day 30. Lviv.
Ukriane stands strong. Springs continues to fight on all fronts. Our founders and our staff continue to donate to our army, help people who suffered a lot because of the war, volounteering both in Ukraine and abroad.
We keep calm, we code, we manage, we deliver. From the first day of war in Ukraine we have been doing unstoppable software development and we will continue to do it.
I would like to ask all people who have doubts about cooperation with Ukrainian business to support our companies and start new projects.
We need new leads, new contracts, new possibilities as never before. Ukraine needs business to be strong now — to pay taxes, to support army and to do everything to win as soon as possible and leave in peace.
Stay safe. Stand with Ukraine!
