There's already a number of comments trying to spin this in one racially loaded way or another discrimination loaded way or such. Please stop. I'll try to explain why your take is misguided with a parable which you can no doubt poke countless holes into.
Say you've lived in one place your whole life. You have a neighbour, and they've lived their whole life there as well. One day your neighbour comes to you and asks for a hundred bucks because they've fallen on hard times. Now compare this to a stranger on the street asking you for a hundred because they say they've fallen on hard times.
People go up and above for Ukraine because they're that neighbour. Many have friends, family and/or relatives there. Many have travelled there. This is not about race, or religion, or any kind of hate. We're helping our neighbour.
No, this looks at Europeans with Rose tinted glasses.
I think there is innate tribalism in all of us. We can all rationally fight it and we rationally know what is morally the right thing to do. But it is in our core psychology to look for similarities/differences and identify as close/distance to other people.
The Ukrainian government has also made an amazing job at galvanizing EU social media around this. The message is clear, it is us, your european brothers and sisters who are suffering right now, please help.
In many ways the Ukrainians have succeeded in an information war where the Georgians, Armenians, Sirians, Yemenis have been unfortunately less successful.
In the speeches and statements I have seen, there are a few differences. When addressing the European leaders, the Ukrainian leader speaks English without an interpreter. In addition there aren't any non-christian religious symbols in the image or speech, and when it comes to cultural symbols it is almost exclusively in terms of European union.
I have read/listen to a bit of research when it comes to diplomacy and tensions between nations, and a common theme is that its the small things that tend to have a large impact on kinship, trust and cooperation.
> In many ways the Ukrainians have succeeded in an information war where the Georgians, Armenians, Sirians, Yemenis have been unfortunately less successful.
Ukrainian government is killing it on the "media war" and certainly a case study for the future. It certainly helps that the President is a comedian by trade and backed by producers and screenwriters - they know exactly what people want to ear/see/read. Of course this has also a (huge) negative side but this is another story. Some stuff that makes sense in a movie, doesn't make sense on real life. Scenarios and deaths are real.
It seems unconditional compassion is not natural to human societies of 21st century. Not in Europe, not in North America, not in Russia, not in South-East Asia.
I guess we should appreciate any compassion that our societies are moved to. And work on expanding that.
Riffing on a biblical quote, who is my neighbour? To a medieval peasant, someone from their villate. To a 19th century citizen, people of their country (most of them). To us, apparently people from some other countries, but not all. It's progress, let's keep up the good work.
The argument from the other side is that the compassion isn't unconditional, because if they were Syrian or whatever they wouldn't have garnered the same compassion.
We all know how difficult is to find good devs (edited: with subpar compensation) nowadays. The same applies on different fields also. As an anecdote, Portuguese government is _actively_ asking Ukrainian refugees to come to Portugal and sending them directly to areas known for chronic worker shortage. Ukrainians, typically, are not social security abusers and as such well seen by natives here. However, Portugal is not being successful and the low wages are being appointed (by our journalists) as the main reason why. This also means that other countries are competing for them.
>We all know how difficult is to find good devs nowadays.
Difficult to find good devs willing to work for peanuts maybe. Companies with a great culture and paying top dollar/euro have no trouble getting an influx of quality people, even willing to grind through several stages of interview practices to get in.
By the same logic, I also have trouble finding quality Ferraris. Though I omit to say my budget of $5000 might be the main issue here, so I spread propaganda everywhere that good Ferraris are tough to find.
>Cynical view here: We're helping ourselves.
More like companies are helping themselves here.
I'm supporting all Ukrainian refugees, not just the devs, but it's funny to see Norwegian companies cooperate to attract foreign talent and spin this into some benevolent charity work when they're just looking after their interests, to suppress local market wages.
Maybe in this particular case of the job board, since SW developers have an easier time finding jobs and can in principle work in English.
But for everyone else I bet that the EU will fail to integrate them into the labour market, while still having to offer healthcare, accommodation and other kinds of support, financial or otherwise.
There is no way that this is a win for the EU, otherwise they would have done something similar years ago.
There is no universal logical line. It is also very patronising to try and tell a cultral group of people who they should or shouldn't consider their neighbour. This isn't to say comparisons shouldn't be drawn between the different scenarios just that doing so while proposing that the solution is racism (or similar) will lead to nothing consutructive and only bitterness and resentment at the accusations.
Humans are tribal in hundreds of different dimensions.
For example, If two people riding Harley motorcycles and two other people driving converted camper vans all arrive at a rest stop at the same time, it is likely that they will be friendly with each other based on the type of vehicle they arrived in.
But religion,politics,race,gender,age,nationality all can be big ones as well. Syria hits a lot of those.
I feel like ucranians are fellow europeans. I guess it's the same for Norweigians.
If you look for a well-defined and rational response, I don't think there's one.
Anyway, I'd like to say that people is being too cynical about this. There has been, and there are right now, many efforts in Europe for supporting and integrating non-european refugees and inmigrants.
This "oh look, they care because they're white", well, there's a lot of selection bias right there, and I don't think we should be sorry to care about people we feel it's the same to us.
There has been hundreds of thousands of non-european people inmigrating to Europe for years, but somehow we're hypocrites now.
I call this term "minor privilege". West is affluent, and they are likely to donate if some is victim from their group. Syria is not in west, so they aren't born with that privilege and many west aren't emphatic to them due to various reasons like media coverage, leaders etc.
This is the wrong way to look at it. If Syrian refugees had the media coverage Ukrainian ones do there'd be job boards for them and much more besides. People are reacting to the magnitude of the perceived crisis. Peoples' compassion pretty much knows no borders.
If there is any finger-pointing to be done then it's at the mainstream media not at how individuals or groups are trying to help human beings in need.
>If Syrian refugees had the media coverage Ukrainian ones do there'd be job boards for them and much more besides
Your confidence in this statement is beyond me. We've been there, Germany 2015, Syria crisis.
There was no lack of media representation of the conflict, the victms, etc. Of course the whole "russia vs the world" thing makes the Ukraine-invasion a different ballgame, but no way in hell would you see job boards for Syrians all across Europe if only the media paid enough attention. The media sold and told the story over and over, to anyone that was willing to listen. People just aren't as open to completely foreign cultures and to Islam as they are to Eastern Europe - and frankly, I can't take a claim that diverges from this very basic groundline too serious. Talk to actual people in Europe and they will confirm what I'm saying here.
Everyone knows someone from Eastern Europe, we know their culture, they are - like the gp said - our neighbours. Syrians are not. I've met wonderful people amongst the syrian refugees, don't get me wrong. But to claim that there is no difference in sympathy whatsoever is simply ignorant to reality, and I think your audience here deserves better than that.
Sorry. Media coverage would have no perceivable difference in the nature of response to Syrians vs Ukrainians. Rightly or Wrongly it is about what people are comfortable with. Europeans are more comfortable with other Europeans settling near them. Unfortunately there is a religious aspect too in this which I don't need to spell out. Some of that is a fear of what you don't know, but (again) unfortunately it is also sometimes the justified fear of more radical elements of the religion.
Ukraine has sent their women and children to safety, the men, their leaders, and even many women are staying to fight against overwhelming odds. Literally nobody ever wants a flood of young men into their country.
The Russian invasion of Crimea was already basically ignored 8 years ago. I am 100% certain that if the war had gone something closer to how Putin had hoped, if Zelenskyy has fled to the west, if the military had backed down and the people given up, the response would be similar this time as well.
Also, Ukrainian software development industry is 200k developers strong. I don't know how big is this industry in Syria, but I suspect it is not even close, unfortunately.
Respectfully; this forum encourages discussion. It is not good enough to say Ukrainians are neighbours and would integrate better than refugees from other countries.
At the expense of devolving into whataboutism, Eastern and Western Europe do have their genuine cultural differences. Will the western world still be as accommodating of Eastern European refugees in ten or twenty years?
Let us not speak in parables and downvote legitimate conversation.
Hi! We just launched a job board for Ukrainian tech workers that might be looking for jobs in Norway. The Norwegian government recently passed laws giving special rights to Ukrainian refugees.
kode24.no is Norways only news site for developers, and we already run a job board. We surveyed everyone on the board if they will accept applications from Ukrainian workers. So far there are 9 jobs available, hopefully more will come!
Would it be legal to not accept job applications from Ukrainian refugees? That is, if they have the right to work in Norway, how's the discrimination acceptable?
This is a great idea and a good way to help people hit the ground running. One small nit pick, when I have adblock on, the page shows "0 available tech jobs", and your target audience are people who are more likely than average to use adblock.
Fair point! Trying to fix :) In case anyone wants to turn of ad block for the page. we do not run any banner ads on this page or the job board though. so for anyone willing to turn it of, you shouldn't se any wild banner ads.
I find kode24 practically unreadable without uBlock origin. Loading the frontpage, there are 45 items being hidden, and this is just by the cosmetic filters. In addition there are the third party analytics/ad scripts.
Btw, as far as I can tell, you're neither GDPR compliant, nor compliant with ekomloven[0], as you're not mentioning "Cookies" or "Informasjonskapsler" anywhere readily available.
I'm sorry to go off on a tangent, but the modern americanisms and other figuratives of english perpetually amuse me. First because people get so used to internet-powered mannerisms that even professional writers feel compelled to use contorted turns of phrase even when it would be easier to just employ an old (tired?) verb, adverb or something. The poor verbs suffer from ageism too and are going jobless! Honestly I feel a cheapening of english language but possibly just me.
In this case I should think "war refugee" with "hit the ground running" is a bit of unfortunate phrasing, nothing personal :)
That's a fair point, I think as a non-native speaker I don't always notice these separate-yet-linked connotations, and pointing them out definitely helps in that regard. What would be a better way to get the same idea across?
In my opinion, a lot of people are patting themselves on the back for doing the same thing as before at no additional cost to them. Hiring Ukrainian refugees in Germany is no harder than hiring any other immigrant. In fact it's slightly easier.
But recruiters and job boards still take their commission, whether or not they drape their website in blue and yellow.
Is there a similar board open to Russian refugees? Asking seriously, for myself and some friends. I wouldn't mind if priority is given to war refugees from Ukraine, of course.
Edit: refugee (n.) - a person who has been forced to leave their country to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.
The word refugee has legal meaning. You cannot be called refugee unless your country is deemed unsafe and you risk your life being in that country. Thus Russians are not refugees but economic migrants.
They would be technically Asylum Seekers but you're wrong that Russia is safe. Plenty of LGBT people or anti-war activists will be granted refuge for instance by European governments.
I work as a dev consultant in Oslo and I've crossed a handful of russian devs over the last few years. So it is possible for sure - in normal times atleast.
A lot of comments here about racism against Muslim refugees and the lack of racism against Ukrainian refugees.
We are only three weeks into this war and refugee crisis. The far-right here in Western Europe have not yet had time to come up with reasons to hate Ukrainian refugees. The far-right is actually busy defending Putin's invasion and spreading pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian propaganda. It is only a question of time before this anti-Ukrainian propaganda targets Ukrainian refugees.
Another thing is that there were plenty of similar job boards for Syrian refugees in Denmark and Germany. Syrian refugees with dev skills were welcomed with open arms by our IT industry.
That's not entirely true. Polish Far Right has been fired up against the Ukrainians for some time (I mean, it's always just a matter of time and foreignness), just aren't getting any traction.
The key sticking point, and at peacetime possibly quite serious, is the Volhynia massacre [1]. I won't go into details, and context is very important as it wasn't unprovoked, but it was a terrible massacre of Poles by Ukrainians in 1940s, and its key perpetrators are revered as national heroes in Ukraine.
And yet, any attempts to bring this up in recent debate are immediately shot down by the wider public. It's just not catching on. It's not even a new subject, I think most people in Poland who watch the news know at least the headline facts about it.
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Say you've lived in one place your whole life. You have a neighbour, and they've lived their whole life there as well. One day your neighbour comes to you and asks for a hundred bucks because they've fallen on hard times. Now compare this to a stranger on the street asking you for a hundred because they say they've fallen on hard times.
People go up and above for Ukraine because they're that neighbour. Many have friends, family and/or relatives there. Many have travelled there. This is not about race, or religion, or any kind of hate. We're helping our neighbour.
I think there is innate tribalism in all of us. We can all rationally fight it and we rationally know what is morally the right thing to do. But it is in our core psychology to look for similarities/differences and identify as close/distance to other people.
The Ukrainian government has also made an amazing job at galvanizing EU social media around this. The message is clear, it is us, your european brothers and sisters who are suffering right now, please help.
In many ways the Ukrainians have succeeded in an information war where the Georgians, Armenians, Sirians, Yemenis have been unfortunately less successful.
I have read/listen to a bit of research when it comes to diplomacy and tensions between nations, and a common theme is that its the small things that tend to have a large impact on kinship, trust and cooperation.
Ukrainian government is killing it on the "media war" and certainly a case study for the future. It certainly helps that the President is a comedian by trade and backed by producers and screenwriters - they know exactly what people want to ear/see/read. Of course this has also a (huge) negative side but this is another story. Some stuff that makes sense in a movie, doesn't make sense on real life. Scenarios and deaths are real.
Dead Comment
I guess we should appreciate any compassion that our societies are moved to. And work on expanding that.
Riffing on a biblical quote, who is my neighbour? To a medieval peasant, someone from their villate. To a 19th century citizen, people of their country (most of them). To us, apparently people from some other countries, but not all. It's progress, let's keep up the good work.
The argument from the other side is that the compassion isn't unconditional, because if they were Syrian or whatever they wouldn't have garnered the same compassion.
Cynical view here: We're helping ourselves.
We all know how difficult is to find good devs (edited: with subpar compensation) nowadays. The same applies on different fields also. As an anecdote, Portuguese government is _actively_ asking Ukrainian refugees to come to Portugal and sending them directly to areas known for chronic worker shortage. Ukrainians, typically, are not social security abusers and as such well seen by natives here. However, Portugal is not being successful and the low wages are being appointed (by our journalists) as the main reason why. This also means that other countries are competing for them.
Difficult to find good devs willing to work for peanuts maybe. Companies with a great culture and paying top dollar/euro have no trouble getting an influx of quality people, even willing to grind through several stages of interview practices to get in.
By the same logic, I also have trouble finding quality Ferraris. Though I omit to say my budget of $5000 might be the main issue here, so I spread propaganda everywhere that good Ferraris are tough to find.
>Cynical view here: We're helping ourselves.
More like companies are helping themselves here.
I'm supporting all Ukrainian refugees, not just the devs, but it's funny to see Norwegian companies cooperate to attract foreign talent and spin this into some benevolent charity work when they're just looking after their interests, to suppress local market wages.
But for everyone else I bet that the EU will fail to integrate them into the labour market, while still having to offer healthcare, accommodation and other kinds of support, financial or otherwise.
There is no way that this is a win for the EU, otherwise they would have done something similar years ago.
Where do you draw the line on "neighbor"? Why Ukraine but not Syria?
There is no universal logical line. It is also very patronising to try and tell a cultral group of people who they should or shouldn't consider their neighbour. This isn't to say comparisons shouldn't be drawn between the different scenarios just that doing so while proposing that the solution is racism (or similar) will lead to nothing consutructive and only bitterness and resentment at the accusations.
For example, If two people riding Harley motorcycles and two other people driving converted camper vans all arrive at a rest stop at the same time, it is likely that they will be friendly with each other based on the type of vehicle they arrived in.
But religion,politics,race,gender,age,nationality all can be big ones as well. Syria hits a lot of those.
If you look for a well-defined and rational response, I don't think there's one.
Anyway, I'd like to say that people is being too cynical about this. There has been, and there are right now, many efforts in Europe for supporting and integrating non-european refugees and inmigrants.
This "oh look, they care because they're white", well, there's a lot of selection bias right there, and I don't think we should be sorry to care about people we feel it's the same to us.
There has been hundreds of thousands of non-european people inmigrating to Europe for years, but somehow we're hypocrites now.
If there is any finger-pointing to be done then it's at the mainstream media not at how individuals or groups are trying to help human beings in need.
Your confidence in this statement is beyond me. We've been there, Germany 2015, Syria crisis.
There was no lack of media representation of the conflict, the victms, etc. Of course the whole "russia vs the world" thing makes the Ukraine-invasion a different ballgame, but no way in hell would you see job boards for Syrians all across Europe if only the media paid enough attention. The media sold and told the story over and over, to anyone that was willing to listen. People just aren't as open to completely foreign cultures and to Islam as they are to Eastern Europe - and frankly, I can't take a claim that diverges from this very basic groundline too serious. Talk to actual people in Europe and they will confirm what I'm saying here.
Everyone knows someone from Eastern Europe, we know their culture, they are - like the gp said - our neighbours. Syrians are not. I've met wonderful people amongst the syrian refugees, don't get me wrong. But to claim that there is no difference in sympathy whatsoever is simply ignorant to reality, and I think your audience here deserves better than that.
The neighbor analogy summs it up perfectly. Don't dismiss it. Learn to understand it.
https://www.refugeeforce.nl/apply
https://www.hackyourfuture.net/
Ukraine has sent their women and children to safety, the men, their leaders, and even many women are staying to fight against overwhelming odds. Literally nobody ever wants a flood of young men into their country.
The Russian invasion of Crimea was already basically ignored 8 years ago. I am 100% certain that if the war had gone something closer to how Putin had hoped, if Zelenskyy has fled to the west, if the military had backed down and the people given up, the response would be similar this time as well.
Deleted Comment
And it's probably a good idea if we collectively work towards eventually eliminating those biases.
Let us not speak in parables and downvote legitimate conversation.
Dead Comment
kode24.no is Norways only news site for developers, and we already run a job board. We surveyed everyone on the board if they will accept applications from Ukrainian workers. So far there are 9 jobs available, hopefully more will come!
Btw, as far as I can tell, you're neither GDPR compliant, nor compliant with ekomloven[0], as you're not mentioning "Cookies" or "Informasjonskapsler" anywhere readily available.
All that being said - great initiative :)
[0]: https://www.nkom.no/internett/informasjonskapsler-cookies#hv...
In this case I should think "war refugee" with "hit the ground running" is a bit of unfortunate phrasing, nothing personal :)
In my opinion, a lot of people are patting themselves on the back for doing the same thing as before at no additional cost to them. Hiring Ukrainian refugees in Germany is no harder than hiring any other immigrant. In fact it's slightly easier.
But recruiters and job boards still take their commission, whether or not they drape their website in blue and yellow.
Edit: refugee (n.) - a person who has been forced to leave their country to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.
https://www.udi.no/en/want-to-apply/work-immigration/russian...
I work as a dev consultant in Oslo and I've crossed a handful of russian devs over the last few years. So it is possible for sure - in normal times atleast.
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We are only three weeks into this war and refugee crisis. The far-right here in Western Europe have not yet had time to come up with reasons to hate Ukrainian refugees. The far-right is actually busy defending Putin's invasion and spreading pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian propaganda. It is only a question of time before this anti-Ukrainian propaganda targets Ukrainian refugees.
Another thing is that there were plenty of similar job boards for Syrian refugees in Denmark and Germany. Syrian refugees with dev skills were welcomed with open arms by our IT industry.
The key sticking point, and at peacetime possibly quite serious, is the Volhynia massacre [1]. I won't go into details, and context is very important as it wasn't unprovoked, but it was a terrible massacre of Poles by Ukrainians in 1940s, and its key perpetrators are revered as national heroes in Ukraine.
And yet, any attempts to bring this up in recent debate are immediately shot down by the wider public. It's just not catching on. It's not even a new subject, I think most people in Poland who watch the news know at least the headline facts about it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres_of_Poles_in_Volhynia...
No matter how provoked ethnic cleansing is never a good response.
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