“In Russia, I felt alone, like I couldn’t do anything to influence the situation. In Israel, I feel useful”
“In Russia, I felt alone, like I couldn’t do anything to influence the situation. In Israel, I feel useful”
CTech spoke with members of Reboot Startup Nation, an online community that assists new immigrants mainly from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus find jobs in Israel’s tech sector in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and mass immigration from the region. Co-founder Daniil Chernov discussed how his own immigration impacted his desire to build this 14,000-strong community and navigating Israel’s current war with Hamas.
“I had the perfect aliyah; I knew the company, knew the people, understood everything, it was all in English. Outside of the job, everything else was chaotic,” says Daniil Chernov, who immigrated to Israel from Moscow in 2018. He already worked for the Israeli company Gett in Russia, which made his experience relatively simple. “But then after a couple of years, I understood something that all olim understand at some point: I didn’t know anyone except the people that I worked with, because I wasn’t in the army or university here.”
Upon joining the Nevo Network Fellowship for new immigrants in tech, Daniil met Ukrainian immigrant Katerina Greenstein and the two were inspired to create a similar community for Russian and Ukrainian immigrants alongside co-founder Sophia Tupolev. They initially conceived of a supportive professional community for Russian-speaking olim seeking jobs in tech, to network and job search. But in 2022, it took on an unexpected level of urgency when Russia invaded Ukraine. By coincidence, Reboot Startup Nation was launched on February 23, 2022 - just one day before. “We thought that we needed to close the group, that it wasn’t relevant anymore because the war shocked us. But then our friends started texting us, saying that they were urgently leaving for Israel and asking for help to find a job. So, we decided we could use this platform to help people onboard,” says Chernov.
The group, based mainly on LinkedIn and Telegram, connects mostly Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian job-seekers with sub-groups channels specific to professions. The group offers mentorship, CV assistance, reviewing LinkedIn profiles, practicing interview skills, connections to training programs, events, Hebrew courses, and more. One of the key goals of the community is to help tech professionals displaced from Russia’s war in Ukraine find jobs in Israel’s tech space.
Today, the group has an estimated 14,000 members, the majority of whom immigrated since the start of the war. The organization also works with employers, serving as a bridge between companies looking to hire and talented and experienced job-seekers. Once the war broke out, helping to connect displaced professionals with employers became a main focus. “We announced on LinkedIn that we were looking to help new olim in tech, and, at the time, so many companies were hiring. We had about 100 companies sign up in two days. Many companies also really wanted to help people escaping the war.”
A highly-skilled community
In 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine resulted in a near tripling of the total number of immigrants to Israel that year. In the nearly two years since, over 110,000 Jews have immigrated to Israel under the Law of Return, approximately 86% of whom are from former Soviet states mainly Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics.
Russia’s war in Ukraine initially led to a massive influx of Ukrainian Jews, who were soon outpaced by Russian Jews, who fled Russia due to the large-scale military draft, economic collapse, and opposition to the war. Many say that immigration from Ukraine would be much higher but for the fact that most men are required to stay due to the draft, and thus some families choose to remain together rather than separate.
Members of the Reboot note that Ukrainian and Russian immigrants are highly skilled and highly educated but lack social capital in Israel to help find jobs. The vast majority hold academic degrees, technical and engineering skills, and from 2022-2023, this wave of immigration included about 5,500 engineers, 2,000 medical professionals, 300 mathematicians, 50 veterinarians and more, according to Reboot. Many of these younger immigrants have gravitated towards Israel’s tech sector, for many reasons including the high salaries but also that Hebrew is often not needed whereas English is highly valued.
For decades, immigrants from the former Soviet Union have constituted the majority of immigrants to Israel. Despite the fact that there is a large community of immigrants from the former USSR dating back to the 1990s, there was very little in terms of a professional network for this community before Reboot. Chernov says that while there were a few groups for Russian-speaking olim, they were in Hebrew which wasn’t helpful for new immigrants and on Facebook, a platform used less by younger generations.
“I couldn't find a Russian-speaking oleh in tech to mentor me, also because the goal during the 1990s was to integrate as much as possible, to speak Hebrew, and to forget that they were from the USSR. The older generation would avoid speaking Russian in the workplace,” says Chernov.
A way to contribute
Chernov says that after October 7th, the Reboot community immediately mobilized to organize volunteering efforts. “This war is an opportunity for people to volunteer, and participate, and be closer to Israeli society. When the war started I thought about how I could involve my community,” he says. “Then I saw the need for food and gear delivery - there was a ton coming in from abroad, but there was an issue of delivery [to army bases and displaced communities], so we organized carpools to deliver the aid. Around 100 people signed up on the first day, and we’ve made close to 1000 deliveries to military bases since.”
Denis Shorin is a Moscow-born immigrant who moved to Israel in October, 2022 and is a member of Reboot. He says that he thought about making aliyah for years and the war against Ukraine “was the last straw,” causing him to submit his documents to the Israeli embassy the day after the war began, and moved shortly before the mass mobilization of Russian men started.
A product manager and business analyst at a local tech company, he volunteered as a driver with Reboot in the months following October 7th, delivering donations across the country to army bases and displaced communities. “I would make deliveries early in the morning before work, usually twice a week,” says Shorin, who drove all over the country. “I still don’t really speak Hebrew so I was limited in my ability to volunteer. This way, I could be useful even without knowing Hebrew.”
“It was very scary in the beginning. Every road was blocked and we had to figure out how to navigate the south, when many roads were still unsafe. We started on October 9th. We built a team, we had drivers, people doing administration shifts connecting drivers. It was very important for olim in this war - no matter when they came - to participate and do something,” says Chernov.
Shorin says that he’s thankful for Reboot, which he says gave him a community and a way to contribute. “The worst feeling during war is to freeze and do nothing. In Russia, I felt alone, like I couldn’t do anything to influence the situation. Through this organization I felt like I could do something useful and it really made me feel better and helped to overcome the stress.”
He says that the war in Ukraine was much harder for him to witness than the current war. “It was very depressing and emotionally difficult. But [Israel’s war with Hamas] was less impactful because I had just experienced a war. In Russia I felt like I was on the wrong side, and here I don’t feel like that.”
“For Russians it's a different war; the war in Ukraine is an aggressive war, started by Russia. The majority of [Russians] who moved to Israel are upset that their country is doing this, they want the war to end, they’re against the government. People who fled in the first six months did it as a moral stance - because they didn’t want their taxes to go to a war to kill Ukrainians. Then, a second wave left due to the mobilization, because they didn’t want to be drafted to kill Ukrainians,” says Chernov, who spent much of his childhood visiting relatives in Ukraine and where he still feels a deep connection. “This is completely different from what’s happening in Israel, which is a defensive war.”
