You may know that whilst I am based in the UK, the Yacapaca office is in Kharkov, Ukraine; currently in the news because the statue of Lenin here was uniquely not demolished after the fall of the dictator Viktor Yanukovich.
Although there has been no serious fighting here, two colleagues from local software companies were killed in the uprising in Kiev. So for the Yacapaca team, it has become very personal.
I asked our CTO, Alex Koval, for his view. Here is what he said:
I am happy that we have achieved what we want: more transparent government, a change in thinking, attitude, judgement towards power people. I hope that this change in peoples’ psychology will make better life for us and our children. It is very sad that it required to pay in peoples’ lives; a lot of injured, a lot were killed.
Right now I feel my own responsibility in this way: those should not be useless victims: we should not allow any new government to impose another dictator us.
The ecosystem of unclear law, a parallel system of bribes, high bureaucracy, dishonest police and courts – this all should be gone, otherwise we will fall into same trap again, as it happen shortly after “Orange Revolution” in 2004, when all were on streets, but dirty politics has sold the people to mafia clans just a few years later.
I am happy to see that many people understand this: I see this change in mind has happen, and lets hope that this high price the people of Ukraine paid will lead us to real change in our life to better.
Please bear with us if we are a little slow to fix bugs, or if the flow of new features is somewhat reduced over the next few weeks. “Keep calm and carry on” is very much a part of the Ukrainian mentality, but some of the time the team will be prioritising non-work issues.
Yacapaca 