A Dangerous Situation

Emotionally I feel like I am falling off the top floor of a very tall building. This crazy war in Ukraine is such a tragic situation, that words can not describe all the feelings I have. This war is a great tragedy, one crazy man’s obsession with power and greed is resulting in so much death and destruction. Our hearts go out to the Ukrainian people, and we pray everyday to end this war and for the freedom of the Ukrainian people.

I first posted this as my CEO message on our company blog, but wanted to make it a personal post as well.

Even though we are an American company, we have developers from places throughout Europe and South America. We have had a long partnership with our Ukrainian development partner and developers in Ukraine; even though they only represent a?small part of our business, we consider them to be like family and are truly heart broken by the news they are relaying to us about what is happening in Ukraine.

We are providing whatever assistance we can from our staff and developers in Eastern Europe, including transporting some of our Ukrainian partners' staff from the Ukrainian border and providing temporary housing.

MANY THOUGHTS

The thoughts of how many innocent Ukrainians are going to be hurt or killed, is so upsetting to me and everyone?I talk to. It is so sad and depressing, and besides trying to help in any way I can (please see the links below); the only thing I can do is focus on my work and family.

Instead of trying to not constantly think about the human suffering and cost of life this crazy war is going to cause,?I thought about what effect it is going to have on our industry, and the effects and response of the global developer pool as a community.

According to the IDC, "The overall [global] developer population in 2020 was 26.2 million and features 13.5 million full-time developers, 7.8 million part-time developers, and 4.9 million non-compensated developers.” This is about .3% (? of a percent) of the global human population.

About 66% of the people on Earth have had a high school or greater education, which is kind of the minimum needed to be a software developer. 26.2 million developers out of all the educated people on Earth is about .5% (? of a percent) of that sub-set. Of all the people with the minimum qualification, .5% have chosen to be a software developer of some kind.

According to one survey, there are over 200,000 Software developers in Ukraine. With a pre-war population of 44 million, this represents the global average for educated people of .5% of all Ukrainians are Software developers.

GLOBAL SCALE

Now, even though Ukrainians only represent ? a percent of all developers globally, it is astounding to see so many developers from around the world supporting and trying to help their fellow Ukrainian developers.

The global developer community is going to be impacted by the war in Ukraine in several different ways. The fact that 200,000 developers are going to have a difficult time doing their development work is going to impact thousands of businesses large and small around the world who rely on Ukrainian developers to move their products and businesses forward.

Due to the Covid Pandemic (which is still?killing people), the Global Developer Community has been fortunate to have too much work as everyone realized that their on-line presence and assets needed to be strengthened.?

Developers around the world have seen very high work loads and rising pay rates over the last?2 years. On one hand this is good for developers; on the other hand, at some point the rates will be too high and businesses will start looking at other business models with lower costs and more available resources. This senseless war is going to speed this process up.

STATE OF CHANGE

In life and business, the normal state is one of change. Nothing stays the same forever. If you get lucky, things may be stable for a period of time, but at some point that will change. Companies are now scrambling to find developers to replace the Ukrainian developers who can’t work right now, but the reality is that all the good and experienced developers are already too busy.

The global developer community is really going to have to start thinking and acting like a community. Remote work and the new reality that everyone is connected in the work they do, has brought about the larger realization that we are one community. War, famine, natural disasters, alien invasion, etc. that affect one country or area will affect everyone at some point.

It is really great how the global developer community is coming together to help Ukrainian developers, but the future-pointing question is, “How can the global developer community help prevent these things from happening?”

In the short term, the questions are, how can we help Ukrainian developers shift their workload so they can fight and save their country, and later how can we ensure they will be able to get back to work quickly and earn enough money to rebuild their lives and their country?

Even though Software Developer unions don’t seem to be popular among developers, it might be worth starting or forming some kind of International Software Developer Collective, in which developers can make their voices heard, and then the collective can speak and lobby the majority views to business and political groups globally. #ScreamingBox would certainly support such a collective. Maybe if business and governments knew how the global developer community felt about the war, it might make some kind of positive impact.

In this situation it is hard to feel anything but helpless. I ask all of you to look at the links below, and take action by donating or opening your home. Thank you.

#ukrainestrong #endwar #Development #DeveloperCommunity

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