[cisforce]

We started in 2018 and most of our freelancers are in Eastern Europe, including Russia but now many of those who were in Russia (and equally Ukraine and Belarus) relocated to other countries for known reasons). Now we even have some freelancers from the US and LatAm, as well as Armenia, Georgia, Poland, Serbia etc etc

Initially it refers to both CIS countries labour market and CIS in a sense of a known IT abbreviation

[anovikov]

But that looks like a way to put people off? Some will see it as "cis" in the sense of 'cisgender' which is just funny, no one will think of IT abbreviation (i am in the industry for 20+ years and heard it for the first time today), and if someone remembers what CIS is (few outside of Russia know), they will see it as "Putin and his puppet regimes" and see negatively. Anything that has to do with Russia is toxic now, you need to look for a way to hide or obscure it rather that bring forward.

I am doing a lot of sales in development and i read a convo on one forum where clients gather and the convo went like "...their company is is Croatia but i suspect they are Russians. where do i report?".