The current situation in Israel and Palestine is tragic, ugly, and quite capable of touching all our lives in some form soon. For tech workers there, it’s already had a devastating effect.
Several years ago, Nvidia bought an Israeli-American networking company called Mellanox for $7 billion, using it as the basis for a center that employs 3,000 people. As reported Friday by CTech, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang wrote to Israeli employees to offer his condolences to Mellanox founder Eyal Waldman, whose daughter Danielle was among those slaughtered by Hamas militants at the Supernova music festival—her partner, former Nvidia employee Noam Shai, also was killed.
Nvidia employee Avinatan Or and his girlfriend Noa Argamani are hostages. And hundreds of Nvidia’s workers have been called up to return to military duty. “Our thoughts are constantly with you, and we hope for your safe return,” Huang wrote. “Nvidians worldwide will rise to cover for our colleagues in Israel and pick up and offload whatever work you need. We are here for you.”
Meanwhile, at least a tenth of workers at the workplace collaboration platform Spike have taken up co-founder Dvir Ben-Aroya’s offer of company support for those who want to temporarily move away from Israel with their families, according to CNBC—the article also notes several examples of companies where international colleagues are eagerly filling in for Israeli employees who have been called up, or who just need time off to cope with the national trauma.
“It’s very difficult to concentrate on work when you’re dealing with all these personal matters and on securing yourself and the country,” venture capitalist Yaniv Sadka told CNBC, also noting that many of the tech workers are being pulled into the Israeli Defense Forces’ intelligence units.
But while Israel’s tech focus is well known—the sector accounts for a tenth of the Israeli workforce—Palestine also has aspirations as a tech hub, with some Silicon Valley companies eagerly hiring talent there. TechCrunch’s Mike Butcher provides a grim account of what’s been happening in Gaza even before Israel’s planned ground offensive.
The building that housed the Gaza Sky Geeks accelerator—from which 5,000 developers graduated last year—has been blown out by Israeli shelling. “The offices are destroyed, the fiber lines are destroyed. The universities are destroyed,” Ryan Sturgill, who used to run the accelerator, told Butcher. “Three main universities in Gaza that produce all the computer science grads are leveled.”
“The tech sector is almost completely unable to function in Gaza right now,” added Iliana Montauk, CEO of Y-Combinator-backed social impact startup Manara. “Most people are in too much danger to be able to work; some have evacuated three times in the past 24 hours, moving from friend’s house to family house, because each neighborhood they end up in is the next one being bombed.”
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David Meyer
