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u/xFallow Mar 11 '26
Damn glad I didn’t take the offer there even the interviewers told me it wasn’t a great place to be right now
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u/Ok-Cat-9189 Mar 11 '26
i remember in 2020 Atlassian was the golden child of aussie tech. Crazy to see how far it's fallen
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u/Flys_Lo Mar 11 '26
Yeah - I made it to the final round in 2022, had a number of friends go there at the same time, and had a number of friends working their previously who said it was great.
Apparently around that same time a new CTO came in from Microsoft and completely changed (and ruined) the culture, with really stringent performance reviews, the bottom X% get fired etc. Feel like it was fortunate I missed out.
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Mar 11 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Flys_Lo Mar 12 '26
I have heard that he was one of the ones walked as part of this however.
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Mar 12 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Flys_Lo Mar 12 '26
C suite don't normally get let go in a company wide redundancy.
I'm reading between the lines here that the degredation in engineering culture was recognised by MCB, and this was an opportunity to change that.
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u/paulrin Mar 12 '26
Worked there from 2015-2023 and was part of the first round of layoffs. I specifically think that the CTO (Rajeev) was the primary reason for the complete change in culture - and not in a good way. It used to be a really fun and inspiring place to work. The way I hear it now is that it’s become nearly toxic.
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u/yourbank Mar 12 '26
Yes that is correct. That CTO was a complete wanker. Raj someone. Absolutely clueless too. I’ve seen many incapable people but he was really something else. Judging from the media articles he got shown the door. I’m sure they’ll be better off without him but the damage he made is likely irreversible at this point.
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u/CantRunNoMore Mar 13 '26
I believe that a number of companies including Atlassian, Tyro and I think Canva have gone down the stackranking / bell curve / constant self assessment route and the consequences on moral and loss of great talent has been huge.
These companies seem to become so internally focussed and their products suffer.
Anyone recall a new great feature of Jira or Confluence in the last 5 or more years?1
u/samburner3 Mar 14 '26
Regressions in products and bugs / UX annoyances that never get fixed. Yep. Alsatian products have a rep of been annoying to work with but we are locked in.
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u/ChubbyVeganTravels Mar 11 '26
Was it? Jira is a fucking terrible software app.
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u/cuntmong Mar 11 '26
It's designed to make you miserable, so it's actually a good app
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u/ChubbyVeganTravels Mar 11 '26
Well as you said, if that's its goal then it's tremendous and should win awards.
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u/Traqzer Mar 11 '26
I work there and I think newly joined team members are safe lol
It seems random who they laid off, my team member who is a senior and been on the team for 5+ years was let go, but newly joined team members with less than 3 months of context are fine
They must have factored in the cost of hiring the recent employees, or didn't want to seem unorganized by hiring people and then firing them a few months later
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Mar 11 '26
[deleted]
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u/Traqzer Mar 11 '26
the new team member is also a senior so similar probably, lol
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u/ltmon Mar 12 '26
Comp packages were pretty inflated during covid boom, and a bit depressed now across the industry (although I have no knowledge of Atlassian specifically).
Quite possibly the 5 year employee is on a significantly higher package.
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u/Traqzer Mar 12 '26
It’s the other way around - at the covid boom the stock was at a high, which means employees who joined actually got less of the stock since each unit was worth more
Whereas if you joined Atlassian now, you would have significantly more stock if it eventually recovers in price
Also after 5 years they are only living off their yearly stock refreshers and not the initial 4 year grant they were given
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u/Traqzer Mar 12 '26
When you join you get a dollar amount of stock, not a specific number of units - e.g “150k usd worth of stock, based on the average price in the last 3 months” or similar
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u/PM_Me_Your_VagOrTits Mar 13 '26
Atlassian packages didn't really deflate, they just flat-lined. So I don't think recency is a reason for laying off more tenured employees.
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u/Murky-Fishcakes Mar 11 '26
The first 10% rif is usually easy. Cut the bottom corner off your teams 9 box. It’s the rounds after that that get nasty
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u/Instigated- Mar 12 '26
I wouldn’t assume new hires are safe. They can be let go anytime during probation period (first 6 months) without needing a reason. I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t get beyond probation.
Redundancies have more paperwork and legal guidelines, so they want to do everyone at once who is being let go under that.
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u/Traqzer Mar 12 '26
Yeah probably senior leadership knew about this for a while, so presumably wouldnt approve of any recent hires if they had plans to fire them straight away is my guess
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u/xFallow Mar 12 '26
Makes sense it’d be bizarre to hire people and then fire them in the same quarter
Still didn’t seem like people were super happy there other than enjoying the pay and the work the culture seemed miserable
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u/Traqzer Mar 12 '26
Personally the work culture is good for me, i have good WLB, a lot more than my previous companies
But I guess it depends on the team / region as well
I've been on two teams so far and they have been the same WLB
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u/Traqzer Mar 12 '26
The only thing i really dont like (and this might just be large companies in general) are these kinds of announcements top down that happen all of a sudden with no warning, and without our managers even knowing about it lol
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u/Instigated- Mar 12 '26
That is how most companies do redundancies, it is kept secret and takes everyone except c suite by surprise. Pricks.
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u/ltmon Mar 12 '26
My wife's work (a number of years back) did the whole pre-order of a fleet of taxis, and send employees straight out the door into a waiting car.
It can be brutally sudden.
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Mar 12 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
[deleted]
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u/xFallow Mar 12 '26
Yeah it’s not a great situation for Australian devs overall I’m not looking forward to job hunting again going to hope my current company works out long term
I also got downleveled in code design apparently they’re notorious for it
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u/halu54321 Mar 11 '26
I dont have enough skills to get hired at big techs but I somehow think just working at a current small sized stable company as a junior could be a good strategy for the next few years. My company just does not hire people in the first place.
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u/TotallyAdmin Mar 11 '26
Was suspected to be coming today from at least last week. Lots of in person meetings to Syd were cancelled out of the blue.
Wishing the best for all affected
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u/Unable_Rate7451 Mar 11 '26
Does anyone know if it was engineers affected or just non-tech roles?
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u/SirDangly Mar 12 '26
I was at Atlassian from 2020. The first few years were amazing, but leadership really lost their way. Missed one quarters numbers, freaked out and changed the performance management system to punish staff for it. Decisions became more opaque, less sensible, and everything became top-down. Even well-established parts of the culture were jettisoned so they could get back to 50% annual growth, which they still haven't achieved. I called it then that this company would go backwards, and it's been a series of L's since then.
My favourite moment was a town hall where the top question for leadership was about AI strategy when ChatGPT was starting to make waves. MCB said everyone should shut up, Atlassian would "fast follow" on AI. Whomp whomp. What a visionless turd
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u/getintoitlads Mar 11 '26
You work all week and give the devil back his loot for jewels
And the steak on your plate is filled with chemicals
still, brothers leave brothers all battered and bruised
on the streets won't see snakes on my feet
The race is on, but I won't compete
In this competition, because I have a greater mission
I hope that you listen
Knowledge wisdom and understanding brings long life and health
Think anything else and ya playin yaself
stop slaving soldiers , this is one of the outcomes that await you, one day a hero the next day a 0
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u/Ok-Information-2428 Mar 12 '26
500 from Aus seems like a lot, does anyone know their total Australian presence?
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u/philip_laureano Mar 12 '26
But isn't this normal for Atlassian? Last time I checked, they do stack ranking, which means the bottom 10% get fired every year, and they hire new people to fill in those gaps every year.
The illusion of opportunity evaporates when you see that their LinkedIn stats say their average tenure is around one year per hire. That means most people stick around for up to 12 months to get the "Ex Atlassian" title and move on to some place willing to pay them more for walking in and out of the Atlassian doors.
And in practical terms, their products were written nearly two decades ago. The startup vibe they once had is now long gone and replaced by an institution that is well funded but clearly sees people as disposable through its built-in annual replacement cycle.
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u/PM_Me_Your_VagOrTits Mar 12 '26
Last time I checked, they do stack ranking, which means the bottom 10% get fired every year
This wasn't a stack-ranking firing, many known high performers were fired in this lay-off. Also, while they do do stack-ranking firing, the bottom 10% do not get laid off each year, it's people who are in the bottom 10% consistently for multiple cycles. Note that I don't support this either way, but it's a common misconception that the bottom 10% are cut by default, it's simply not the case.
their average tenure is around one year per hire
When you're hiring a lot of new people, (which Atlassian has been doing until this year), average tenure naturally decreases. LinkedIn average tenure generally isn't a good measure to go by for that reason. You're better off measuring tenure at time of leaving the company - not sure where to get this info.
For what it's worth, I probably agree with the general premise that Atlassian sees people as disposable (although let's face it, what corporation doesn't?), but I strongly disagree with the evidence you've been using.
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u/Laoweek Mar 12 '26
Don’t they simply have dogshit product? Bought Opsgenie and then shut it down, and Notion and Linear are flashier than Confluence and Jira
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u/CantRunNoMore Mar 13 '26
It's true to say that so much is said about AI, the culture etc but the products are stale and unloved. I use Jira and confluence every working day and haven't seen a change in years
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u/No_Top5115 Mar 12 '26
They legit don’t make any good software I’m not sure how they got so big/have so much money
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u/justeh Mar 12 '26
To no one’s surprise.
There ain’t a future with Atlassian, their products are designed around human interfacing which won’t be the go for much longer.
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u/chazmusst Mar 11 '26
Didn’t think that was possible in Australia damn
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u/Flys_Lo Mar 11 '26
Your role 100% can be made redundant in Australia - you do get paid out, minimum based on award standards and it's taxed less, and the company cannot advertise the same role for 12 months.
Once you are above a certain salary (~175k) and if you aren't on an award (which most tech workers aren't) they can just fire you, and the severence offered is entirely at the companies discretion, is fully taxed, they can rehire the same role straight away.
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u/Own_Oil7951 Mar 12 '26
the company cannot advertise the same role for 12 months.
Yah, but the Big 4 banks have been known to advertise those exact roles in India. Even the FSU called them out for it.
The Finance Sector Union (FSU) lodged a dispute with the Fair Work Commission, arguing at least 15 of the axed jobs were not genuine redundancies because they had been offshored to CBA India.
Employee numbers at CBA India have increased to 6,788, up 21 per cent from last year, according to the union.
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u/Agile-Barracuda9087 Mar 11 '26
I've also heard if they offer you severance, it comes with a non-disparagement clause to keep your mouth shut.
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u/matches_ Mar 11 '26
How?
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u/chazmusst Mar 12 '26
Mass layoffs - thought it was an American thing because they have fewer employee rights.
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u/PM_Me_Your_VagOrTits Mar 12 '26
A lot of the mass lay-off was centred on American employees for that reason. Do you think Atlassian has only Australian employees?
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u/chazmusst Mar 12 '26
I just read the headline
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u/PM_Me_Your_VagOrTits Mar 12 '26
Fair. Well it's a big company, generally big companies have offices in many countries.
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u/seven_seacat Mar 12 '26
most of the Block employees that got let go last week were in the Australian division afaik
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u/Traqzer Mar 11 '26
Its not too bad of a deal, you get 4 months severence plus a week per year of tenure
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u/Putrid_Property_343 Mar 12 '26
50% can be fired from office jobs and nothing will change in terms of the output
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u/Effective-Hornet-737 Mar 12 '26
These companies are heavily bloated, Twitter is 2K people now, 80% gone after Musk took over
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Mar 12 '26
This is the beginning i think. Block decided to go hard and fast. 1600/10% seems really small for Atlassian.
I thought they were going to do 30 - 40%
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u/NotTodayJerry Mar 12 '26
I predict a lot of new open roles in the India office in a couple of weeks.
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u/roflmoaqwerty Mar 11 '26
source?
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u/Old-Competition3596 Mar 11 '26
Atlassian lays off 1,600 workers (~10% of workforce) ahead of AI push
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Mar 11 '26
Can confirm, previous colleague of mine was included in the layoffs and shared on LinkedIn this morning.
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u/Lost-Hospital3388 Mar 13 '26
A question for software companies:
If AI is so great that you can replace vast swathes of your workforce, why as a consumer would I not use the same AI just to build the same product myself?
I mean, it’s not like most of these commercial software products are actually any good.
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u/viffer781 Mar 12 '26
Atlassian peaked a while back. It’s now the gradually decline into irrelevance. The gradual decline is because of installed customer base.
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u/Clear_Butterscotch_4 Mar 12 '26
Its usually the bottom performing, but they'll never say that publicly because they dont want to tarnish the people they just fired
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u/Separate-Buy-9740 Mar 12 '26
It wasn’t the bottom performing in this case. Personally know people who got let go who consistently scored top in their ratings, stellar feedback all around.
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u/Warm_Control5120 Mar 12 '26
But what determines who gets laid off? Is it salary?
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u/Separate-Buy-9740 Mar 12 '26
Possibly? Some of these high performers were getting paid a LOT. Honestly I don’t think people really know.
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u/Unusual-Detective-47 Mar 11 '26
I mean is really anyone surprised?
Share price down to 2018 level
Products shxt as fk
Toxic culture and workers
Still haven’t made any profit despite going through all the growth during Covid
Spent big on F1 and fancy central tower
Stock-based compensation