Taras Kytsmey, co-founder of the largest Ukrainian IT service company SoftServe, said that currently many outsourcer specialists do not work outside the office.
Taras Kytsmey, co-founder of the largest Ukrainian IT service company SoftServe, said that currently many outsourcer specialists do not work outside the office.
«Now half of SoftServe’s employees have never worked in an office. They work great from home, from the kitchen. Everything is fine with that, they get the job done. However, it has become more difficult to develop the culture that we had before. And this is really a challenge,» he said in an interview with Channel 24.
The labor market is changing, Kitsmey stated. «Especially after Covid, when everyone switched to remote work. Before that, the office was a place of strength for us. We built a corporate culture there, created a community,» he noted.
Kitsmey added that in 2022 the number of employees of the company sharply decreased. «When the war began, there was a mass migration. «For example, in Kharkiv we had over a thousand people, and at the lowest point there were 50 left. Now there are about 150 again. At that time we managed the company actually through relocation. Many people went abroad. Plus, in 2022 we lost about 20% of the company — precisely because of the uncertainty and a sharp decrease in the opportunities to receive new orders in Ukraine. We always kept reserves, hired in advance. But then we had to optimize and reduce reserves,» he said.
According to the SoftServe co-founder, at the same time the company launched a large-scale diversification: they expanded hubs in Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, and entered Latin America — Mexico, Colombia, and Chile. «And it seemed that we had left Ukraine a lot. But in reality, this is not entirely true. People simply migrated. And another factor is taxes. In 2023, many of our people legally changed their tax residence. People cannot live abroad for a year or more and remain taxpayers in Ukraine. So part of the company has legally moved,» Kitsmey said.
