Israel’s vaunted tech sector is going to war – The Washington post

CEOs and venture capitalists are among the 360,000 reservists being called up to fight

By Gerrit De Vynck

Updated October 11, 2023 at 12:14 p.m. EDT|Published October 11, 2023 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

Workers who are called to reserve duty still get compensated from their employer for the time they spend in the army, said Ofir Angel, chairman of Auren Israel, the Tel Aviv branch of an international consulting company. Angel estimates that the majority of the companies in Israel are having 10 to 25 percent of their personnel recruited.

Most of the workers being called to reserve duty are ages 21 to 35, Angel says, which is also the prime age of tech workers in Israel. Angel predicts that Israel’s tech sector will have higher percentages of workers absent from their day jobs than other sectors like agriculture.

Within his firm’s 30 employees, five — mostly young men — have been called to reserve duty, a number that could grow if the war drags on. Meanwhile, some of his remaining female workers are having to cut back on their hours because they’re now doing more at home as their spouses are being called to reserve duty.

“The real challenge is that usually we like to do general calculations that each employee is generating three times their salary for the company,” Angel says. If the employee is going to serve, Angel adds, that’s less productivity and activity for the company. He predicts that the conflict’s damage to Israel’s GDP will be “significant.”

Israeli companies are accustomed to young workers leaving their jobs for reserve duty; workers under 35 generally have a week or two of scheduled reserve duty per year, Angel says. But those stints are planned well ahead of time, and companies have more time to adjust to changes to their workforce. Now, Angel’s employees are getting notices to report to a base and leaving within hours.