To me, Russian behaviour is identical to the Turkish invasion of 1974, the subsequent occupation of Northern Cyprus until this very day, and the installation of a puppet government.

I sympathise with Namecheap's CEO, and had I been anything more than a grad student, I'd have done similar.

Is definitely a personal move.

Go on their website, they operate in 4 countries.

US: 40 people

Portugal: 70 people

Ukraine: 1700 people

India: 70 people

Classic American company delocalizing everything and now crying because all the engineering is based in Ukraine.

You put all the eggs in one basket and now you complain that they broke? Ukraine is in a conflict with Russia not from yesterday, it has been years from the Crimea case.

The CEO of this company never had a thought about de-risking his over reliance on Ukrainian talent to run his company? Or was just too cheap to keep the location there and pocket the difference in added value created by these talents?

Why should NameCheap have done anything differently? The idea that they should have run their company differently so that they could keep doing business with a hostile country presumes that it's more desirable for them to do that than hire Ukrainians.

Yes that's how business works. Have you seen Microsoft being hit by this for example?

From a business and operational point of view is just a silly move to have your business in one country, especially when you claim to be a "US business"

To me look like that of US here you've only a pool of directors, is more a Ukrainian company to me. Many Ukrainian companies have been hit as well, but they're not multinational businesses and don't use HN to voice their concern.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not justifying the war or anything. But from a business point of view, if I were the CEO I would've opened another office somewhere else and transfer know how from the Ukraine branch given that the situation with Russia has been tense for a decade now.

I hope this explains it

Are US businesses even going to be able to keep doing business with Russia? Is it a mistake for any businesses to be based in the US when there's a risk of losing access to Russia? Is it a mistake for businesses to be based in the US when they've already lost access to North Korea and Iran?

It's not surprising that wars cause fractures in international dealings. That seems like the exact kind of thing they would bring. The problem is the war itself, not that every participant of the international economy isn't a perfectly-neutral profit generator.

I can see why someone might want to run their own business as a perfectly-neutral profit generator but I can't imagine others faulting someone else for not doing so.

Is risk management 101, I'm sorry if you don't understand but I don't have time to explain it to you.

If 100% of your business is based in a country that has been threatened to be invaded many times and also had been attacked 8 years ago and you still think is ok go have 100% of your engineering and core business there then is your problem.

You don't know what Risk management? Business continuity?

Is the same reason why you don't deploy your DB in one PC in your basement and hope that nothing happened. If you get flooded and you didn't have a plan to recover is your sole responsibility.

The same goes business wise

Are we talking about the risk of the company being entirely destroyed, or the risk of it being made inconvenient for them to serve Russian customers? I figure this thread is about the second one since those are the consequences that are happening now. If they don't particularly need Russian customers to survive, it doesn't seem like they made a mistake in not preparing against that risk more.

I'm talking about the first, doesn't seems to hard to understand isn't it?

To me the move is like: "well now I've no way to do by business because my engineering and the core team is under bomb shelter, so lets ban the Russian customers because I'm pissed"

They can do that if they're happy with it, I'm with you on this.

It's definitely personal. But it's people you care about being bombed kind of personal, not asset risk.