Remote, hybrid or office? How Ukrainian IT companies choose the format of work in conditions of alarms and shelling

There are no mandatory office days.»

How many days a week should a person spend in the office? Zero. At Ciklum, it is formally called a hybrid format, but in practice, a specialist is free to go full remote, and the office remains open more as an option than a requirement. At Levi9, the approach sounds almost literally the same — «not hybrid, but flexibility and trust» — with one important nuance: the decision when the team should get together is given to the teams themselves, and not prescribed from above as a single rule for the entire company. At EPAM Ukraine, the story is even older — the office policy has not changed since the pandemic, when the company transferred everyone to remote work in a few days and since then simply saw no reason to change it.

And there are companies for which remote work is not a «form of flexibility» at all, but the basic structure of the business. At ZONE3000, there is no mandatory requirement to work from the office in principle, with the exception of narrow technical roles — for example, those who support the network infrastructure or service equipment. And even there, the team agrees on the presence schedule itself. At Railsware, they go even further: 80–90% of people do not visit the office at all or visit there sporadically, and the company has been working remotely almost since its founding — long before remote became mainstream. «All our main processes are designed primarily for effective remote work,» explains Olya Ududyak, Chief of Staff at Railsware. Offices and coworking spaces there exist not as a default workplace, but as a hub — a point where people come to see each other, and not from where they work every day.

At SoftServe, the format also remains a matter of personal agreement: a person agrees with their manager whether to work from home or from the office, or a combination. «This allows them to maintain productivity even in difficult conditions when external circumstances affect their daily routine,» says Olena Lebedeva, Regional Head of People Ukraine. Certain teams, she says, may have their own internal agreements about joint days in the office, but this is more of a local initiative than a policy from above.

Not HR fashion, but security

If you dig deeper, the phrase «flexible format» almost always hides the same reason — and it’s not about productivity or corporate culture. Levi9 says it bluntly: after the start of a full-scale invasion, employee safety became the main principle that still defines the company’s approach to the office. And it’s not just about the obvious risk of being in the premises during an alarm. The way to work in Kyiv is often a test in itself: after nightly shelling, traffic jams occur, and during an air raid, the ground part of the metro between the left and right banks simply does not work. But even if you manage to get to the office, this is not the end of the story — after a hard night, the office day itself can become an additional physical and emotional burden. Therefore, the hybrid format here is not a bonus, but a way to give a person the opportunity to reassess their own condition every day and decide from where it is better for them to work today.

But this does not mean that the office has become unnecessary — it has simply changed its role. From a place where you have to come every day, it has turned into a support in case everything else fails. At Ciklum, all Ukrainian locations are equipped with shelters with a sufficient number of workplaces, Internet, a supply of water and batteries for long-term air alarms, as well as backup power sources — the Kyiv office, according to the company, is able to work autonomously for at least seven days in a row. SoftServe speaks of a similar logic in a simpler way: the office is a place where you can always come to work and «recharge during blackouts.»

ZONE3000 went a step further and instead of one large office, they built a network of 15 small coworking hubs in major cities of Ukraine in addition to two permanent offices in Lviv and Kharkiv. The idea is the same — to give people an alternative place to work when working from home has become impossible: whether due to a blackout or for any other reason.

Salary does not depend on the format

When asked whether the chosen work format affects the salary or compensation package, all companies answered the same way — no. Levi9 adds an important clarification: flexibility does not mean that the team exists purely online, so the company regularly organizes joint events and informal meetings — precisely to maintain the opportunity to see each other in person, even when daily work does not require it.

At Railsware, says Olya Ududyak, Chief of Staff, compensation depends on the role, expertise, and impact on the business, not whether the person works from the couch or from a desk. The only exceptions are rare positions that require physical presence by nature, such as office manager, but there are few such roles in the company.

Losing candidates due to work format is not about IT

dev.ua also asked if there were any cases when a person left the company because of the requirement to appear in the office more often, or vice versa — when the company lost a candidate because it could not offer remote work. The answer was unequivocal everywhere we received it: there were no such cases. SoftServe formulated it as directly as possible, ZONE3000 — even simpler: the situation could not have happened in principle, because they do not have a mandatory requirement to come to the office at all.

Railsware explains this by logic, not coincidence: if there is no mandatory presence, there is no reason for such a dismissal scenario. And the loss of a candidate due to the lack of remote work is considered impossible there at all — because remote work for the company is not an option that can be offered or not offered, but a basic work format that is honestly told about at the hiring stage. «For a significant number of candidates, this is another advantage of Railsware as an employer,» adds Olya Ududyak.

What will happen to offices in 2026–2027?

The surveyed companies do not plan to reduce the number of locations and office space at the moment. EPAM is currently focusing not on square footage, but on sustainability: the company is investing in ensuring that offices operate smoothly and remain productive environments, rather than expanding or reducing them. SoftServe and ZONE3000 also do not plan significant changes — the latter reminding that their 15 hubs across the country already cover the need for a local presence almost anywhere.

Railsware, in turn, is guided by the principle of «Do what makes sense»: decisions about an office are made not because of the market trend for a mass return or, conversely, a complete rejection of it, but because of the actual attendance of a particular space. An illustrative story happened with the company’s coworking space in Warsaw — over time, people started visiting there less and less often, because part of the team moved, and part settled outside the city, and it simply didn’t make sense to travel to the center every day. The company closed the space and redirected the budget to a more flexible format — a travel-to-the-office budget, which can now be used by much more people from different countries.

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