PandaDoc Lays Off Employees. Barysiuk Calls It a “Difficult Day” for the Company
Reform.news Editorial Team · 21 October 2026, 13:17
https://reform.news/en/pandadoc-lays-off-employees-barysiuk-calls-it-a-difficult-day-for-the-company/PandaDoc is parting ways with some of its employees. The company’s co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Sergey Barysiuk announced the news on LinkedIn.
According to him, the layoffs are related to changes intended to help the company focus on the areas that matter most to its customers and to PandaDoc’s future. Barysiuk did not specify how many people are leaving the company or which teams are affected.
“Today is a difficult day for PandaDoc. We’ve made the hard decision to say goodbye to some wonderful people,” he wrote.
Barysiuk noted that some of the departing employees had worked at PandaDoc for many years, including during the most difficult periods for the team in Belarus and Ukraine. At the time, the company had to relocate employees and their families while ensuring that its product continued to operate without interruption.
“They helped make PandaDoc the company it is today,” he stressed.
The PandaDoc co-founder appealed to employers to consider the specialists leaving the company. He said he was ready to provide personal recommendations and would work with any of them again.
“Many of them grew their careers alongside PandaDoc, and I’ve seen firsthand how much they care about their work and the people around them,” Barysiuk wrote.
PandaDoc is a company founded by Sergey Barysiuk and Mikita Mikado that develops a platform for managing electronic documents. The service allows users to create, send, track and sign commercial proposals, contracts and other documents, as well as automate related workflows.
***
Barysiuk’s reference to “the most difficult times in Belarus” relates to events following the 2020 presidential election. At the time, PandaDoc co-founder Mikita Mikado publicly offered assistance to law enforcement officers who chose to resign rather than take part in suppressing protests. The initiative provided financial and legal support, as well as help with retraining.
On September 2, 2020, searches were conducted at PandaDoc’s Minsk office. Four employees were detained: Director Dzmitry Rabtsevich, Chief Accountant Yulia Shardyka, HR Specialist Uladzislau Mikhalap and Product Manager Viktar Kuushynau. They were charged under an economic crime statute. The company’s founders linked the criminal prosecution to the initiative to help law enforcement officers and said the authorities had effectively taken the employees hostage to force them to abandon the project. Mikado later announced that the initiative was being suspended because of his colleagues’ arrests.
Viktar Kuushynau was held in custody longer than the others: he was released on August 20, 2021, after spending nearly a year in detention. The criminal case was discontinued that same month. The Prosecutor General’s Office said that damages had been repaid and that Rabtsevich and Kuushynau had admitted their guilt; PandaDoc’s management considered the prosecution politically motivated. The company moved its business out of Belarus and opened offices in Poland and Ukraine.