Photo: Alexander Butenko and Oksana Kolesnyk enjoy fishing — and catching their own bait — from a dock near their apartment in Panama City.
By Steve Bornhoft
Alexander Butenko and Oksana Kolesnyk love to immerse themselves in stupendous natural surroundings, relax their minds and walk long distances.
They agree that their favorite hike was one in Turkey from Kemer to Adrasan, a route along a portion of the Lycian Way that took them seven days to complete. Views of the Mediterranean Sea from mountainous coastlines were spectacular — and so was the orange juice squeezed from the fruit of groves found at elevation.
“It was the best ever. The higher you go, the sweeter it gets,” Butenko said.
Along their way, the couple ate mostly at the homes of welcoming families, enjoying dishes that they found to be far superior to the fare served by restaurants in the region. Let it be said: Butenko and Kolesnyk are foodies.
On the job, they are techies.
Both work for Teknika, a software developer that is resident at the TechFarms business incubator. Butenko is a technical program manager, and Kolesnyk is a project manager. They have brought to their jobs impressive amounts of experience and lists of credentials compiled in Ukraine, which they departed at the last opportunity before the latest war with Russia began.
In Ukraine, Kolesnyk studied information technology project management at the IT STEP University and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in architecture from Lviv Polytechnic National University. Butenko studied information technologies at IT STEP; earned a bachelor’s degree in information management systems at Donetsk National Technical University and completed a DevOps course at Lviv Polytechnic.
Upon leaving Ukraine, Kolesnyk and Butenko moved first to Spain, where employment opportunities were few, before moving to the United States via the Unity for Ukraine program administered by U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services.
Because they have friends there, the couple chose to give California a try. They lived in Silicon Valley, which was “crazy expensive.” Savings evaporated quickly.
Kolesnyk worked in conjunction with a European vendor who supplied software development services to an American business. She started her workday at midnight; Butenko, meanwhile, was not working. The situation became untenable.
Kolesnyk resigned her position, and the couple undertook job searches that were confined to a small radius initially, but soon widened.
“In Ukraine, it’s a maximum two weeks for us to find a job,” Butenko said. “Here in the U.S., we sent out more than 2,000 résumés.”
Few of them engendered a response. Interviews with Apple, Amazon and Facebook proved unfruitful. The couple’s arrival in America had coincided with massive layoffs in the technology sector.
Their circumstances were further complicated because of their status. They are neither citizens nor green card holders. They became aware of Ukrainians who left the U.S. after six months in which they could not secure employment.
Butenko and Kolesnyk are grateful that they discovered Teknika, a business that employs developers in Ukraine.
“Teknika has provided us with a good start in a new country,” Butenko said. He was open to moving cross country in part given Teknika’s location. He loves spearfishing, and the business is located on Northwest Florida’s Gulf Coast.
For Kolesnyk, Southern dialects are hard to understand, but she finds Florida Panhandle residents to be less shallow than Californians.
Projects currently in the house at Teknika include a service that delivers construction materials to job sites; a site where people can explore and book outdoor adventures using criteria including location, type of activity and number of people; and a mobile tire-changing service intended for northern climes where people switch to snow tires in the winter.
Kolesnyk is the project manager for Chaos Audio, a TechFarms tenant that has developed and taken to market a programmable, multi-effects guitar pedal.
The couple finds it hard to make long-range plans given the volatility of the world. They plan to marry when it becomes more possible to bring together relatives scattered by what amounts to a Ukrainian diaspora. They are thinking about beginning the naturalization process in the United States.
Meanwhile, they are looking forward to a hike in the Great Smoky Mountains. And their search for fine food is ongoing.
In Panama City Beach, they have discovered a fondness for Sue’s Thai Café and for Liza’s Kitchen. Butenko swears by Liza’s mahi sandwich and its breakfast burritos.
“They are amazing,” he said.
