The head of the Ukrainian office of the IT company EPAM, Stepan Mitish, spoke about the plans for the coming year. First of all, it is to hold on and for opportunities to grow even despite the war and against the background of the fact that the volume of IT exports in 2023 fell by 8.5%.
Mitish told about this and not only in an interview for MC.today. They discussed, in particular, how the company went through the wartime, accepts and overcomes the challenges of wartime, as well as the rules of anti-crisis management.
So, about the plans. According to Stepan, EPAM's mission is to help clients no matter what.
“In order for clients to understand why they should order services in Ukraine when there is a war going on, Ukrainian teams must have competitive advantages. It seems to us that the key to this is to master the technology of artificial intelligence better than others,” Mitish shared.
He wants customers to be ready to work with EPAM because of the high quality and efficiency it demonstrates. To do this, the company will offer solutions in which customers will pay for the result, not for the team.
According to Mitish, in this way it is possible to “move” military risks to the background, because the client will not need to pay if he does not see a specific result.
“For both purposes, the emotional and moral state of our people is very important. The full-scale war is now in its third year and many are exhausted from the stress. EPAM pays a lot of attention to this direction: it holds specialized events, provides an opportunity to use the services of a psychologist and a coach,” Stepan explained.
Even despite the war, the company has plans to invest in the development of young specialists. To that end, for example, the list of free career guidance opportunities for high school students and basic courses for students has been expanded, as well as training programs for veterans returning to civilian life and those who are about to join the world.
“This year, we plan to increase the number of students by 2-3 times. Because the war will end sooner or later, and if we do not encourage the development of talented people, then in 3-5 years we may be left with a significant shortage of specialists,” Mitish concluded.