Alex here speaking from the Russian IT community (40k+ people). Please read our message.
Switching off Visa and Mastercard transactions abroad will lock thousands of IT specialists within the regime. These people are now trying to flee the country.
We wrote about the situation here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30552091
Over the past two days we had 300+ resumes submitted[0], connecting these people with more than 30 organizations from Europe, US, Canada, India, Turkey, UAE and other countries to help them urgently relocate. Many of those looking for reloc are Ukrainian people by nationality who happen to live in Russia.
Lot of these people rely on scarce savings which they still have on their bank cards, as many were fired from their jobs over the past week. Getting cash is practically impossible right now, even in Moscow.
These people won’t be able to purchase tickets to get out. Those who already flew away won’t be able to finance themselves, as many still rely on Russian sources of income and try to work remotely while looking for another job.
Me and other community admins practically beg you, from all of our IT communities, to reconsider the decision, or give us more time.
Signed,
oleg@hey.com (admin of 36k members IT community)
the.noble.activity@gmail.com (admin of 1k member IT community)
@zzzybkin (admin of 7k member IT community)
sasha.milenkin@yandex.ru (admin of 1.3k member IT community)
crimes@hey.com (admin of 3k member IT community)
0 - all resumes to date are published here https://t.me/joinchat/AAAAAE3nUawZ4YX6AtDCFg
You can help by posting in the comments type of help, or relaying above information and our contacts to your local recruiters and hiring managers.