Some IT companies ask Ukrainian developers to communicate in "international" Russian — that's what is known about this

Ukrainian Manual QA Engineer Anna Breus told on LinkedIn about how she received an invitation to an interview at AppCake (formerly called Bat it) with an office in Kiev. The recruiter warned her that communication during working hours in the company is conducted in Russian. In confirmation, Anna Breus added the corresponding correspondence screenshots.

Similar cases occur in other companies, in particular in the Ukrainian MOJAM.

DOU was figuring out the details.

Refusal to work because of the Ukrainian language?

We spoke to Anna Breus to find out more details. She said she sent her resume in September to AppCake. And at the same time I corresponded with a representative of the company:

"A recruiter wrote to me. She asked me if I was considering remote work, and I said yes. The next question was about the language, " says Anna Breus.

On condition of anonymity, another specialist told us about the interview in AppCake. She applied for a job as a recruiter in June of this year. According to her, the language of communication in the company is Russian:

"I corresponded in Ukrainian, I was unsubscribed in Russian. I conducted the interview in Russian — I didn't attach any importance to it. Actually, I received an offer in Russian. But during the correspondence and my questions about the offer, I was clarified that communication in the company is conducted in Russian. I asked a few clarifying questions, and I was directly told that the company hires people in Russia."

In support of her words, the specialist provided a screenshot of communication with the HR department of the company.

Cooperation with Russians

In its DOU profile, Bat it, currently called AppCake, positions itself as a mobile app developer. Its official website has only English and Russian versions. The site does not specify where the company is based.

Developer Andrey Lagovsky, who, according to him, was interviewed there, writes about the renaming. This information was not denied by the company itself. In addition, on one of the Russian job search sites, AppCake is listed as an employer, but the description refers to Bat it.

The AppCake website offers a list of current vacancies. Among the guarantees from the company, Corporate English is indicated, in particular. However, it is obvious that the language of communication in AppCake, according to those who were interviewed in the company, is Russian.

At the same time, the Appcake LinkedIn profile indicates that a number of the company's employees are from Russia. More than fifty specialists work here from Ukraine.

The company can't adapt to its employees

To find out the company's position, we contacted AppCake. In a comment for DOU, its representatives said that they are an international company registered in Hong Kong, but top management hails from Moldova, Latvia, Georgia and Kazakhstan, and all of them are united by the Russian language. Therefore, this language is defined as the language of communication in the company, and English is used for candidates from other regions.

AppCake emphasizes that they cannot adapt to employees from each country, because a team of 15 people from the CIS will not understand Ukrainian.

The company confirmed that they employ specialists from the Russian Federation, who are also combined in teams with Ukrainians. And it seems that there are no problems due to communication in Russian.

When asked why team members can't communicate in English, AppCake noted:

"For some positions, including QA, there is no requirement to know English at the B2-C1 level, because only a high level of English proficiency allows you to teach and conduct communication effectively. Therefore, the company uses both Russian and English for communication, so that there is no misunderstanding."

At the same time, this practice is not an isolated case. In the Ukrainian company MOJAM with an office in Kharkiv, the candidate also did not get a job, because he refused to communicate in Russian.

Case study with the Ukrainian company MOJAM

MOJAM specializes in developing its own products for gamers. The head of the company is Kirill Romantsov. Although the official MOJAM website seems to be available in four languages — English, Russian, Ukrainian and German — the main one is Russian. In other languages, the site is either partially translated or not translated at all.

In the MOJAM profile on DOU, Roman Sobko wrote a review on July 5 that the company does not consider candidates who communicate in Ukrainian. Roman Lepetyukhin, the company's HR manager, responded to this review and noted that historically, communication in the company has been conducted in Russian for more than five years.

We talked to dog to find out the details. According to him, he contacted a representative of MOJAM through the Djinni portal:

"I am not applying for any positions in a company from Russia right now for obvious reasons. However, this vacancy is in a Ukrainian company with an office in Kharkiv. HR contacted me, saying that they were interested in my candidacy. I started communicating in Ukrainian. HR addressed me in Russian."

During an online meeting between Sobko and HR, he said that the company's policy defines Russian as the main language of working communication.:

"There were excuses, saying that we support the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but the company employs people of different nationalities and chose Russian for the convenience of communication. I explained to him that this is a principled position for me, and I want to communicate in Ukrainian. I was ready to listen in Russian, but speak Ukrainian. I was told that the company's policy is that they communicate in Russian. There was no mention of English. I am ready to communicate in companies in English. But the company representative is not interested in this."

This, according to Roman Sobko, ended communication with MOJAM.

Judging by the company's LinkedIn page, MOJAM employs specialists from the Russian Federation. In particular, the company'S service station Sergey Malyutkin, as indicated in his LinkedIn, is located in Kazan, Russia.

Mojam team leader Anatoly Zolotov, given his account on Habra, is also in Russia, in Tyumen. And the DevOps team of Nikita Spitsky, judging by his LinkedIn profile, is in Moscow.

We contacted a company representative who works as an HR specialist at MOJAM. He explained his position on the Russian language by saying that many people do not know Ukrainian. So, in a comment for DOU, he noted that the company employs employees who were born in Russia, but are now in European countries.

"There are those who live in Cyprus, Portugal, Spain and other countries. The refusal was not due to the fact that the person communicates in Ukrainian. We communicate with each other in Ukrainian without any problems. There are just situations when a person does not speak Ukrainian. Therefore, the question was whether it would be convenient to communicate in Russian."

He noted that many employees moved from the Russian Federation after the beginning of a full-scale aggression:

"They fully support Ukraine, and our projects have stopped working in the markets of Russia and Belarus. There is only one employee who has not yet moved due to personal reasons. But now he is in another country on vacation. We recommend that he stay there."

According to HR, this employee has also moved.

At the same time, according to him, the company has many specialists from Ukraine who do not know English:

"One part of the employees does not know Ukrainian, and the other — English. We have considered the possibility of Ukrainian courses, but it takes time. We will never refuse a person if they speak Ukrainian. This is pointless, because we are in Ukraine. It's more a matter of comfort. There is a big risk that the specialist will be uncomfortable working where communication is in Russian, he will not like it, and he will quit. And the loss of employees is quite painful."

In addition, the representative of the company notes that he has not met in Ukraine those specialists who do not know Russian.

When we approved the comment from HR MOJAM, he asked us to wait for the official position of the company's PR service. But no one contacted us for a week. Therefore, the DOU editorial staff is ready to supplement the article with comments from the company, if it provides them.

The Author Is Elena Chernyshova.