The Australian software company Atlassian, known for its teamwork tools like Trello, Confluence, and Jira, has announced that it will lay off 500 employees, or 5% of its staff. Co-CEOs Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar stated, “This is different from a financially-driven reduction,” and continued, “We need to go farther in rebalancing the capabilities we require to run faster at our company priorities.”
As part of a “rebalancing” initiative outlined by its founders, Atlassian has announced a 5% reduction in its workforce. This will enable the collaboration startup to concentrate on its shifting objectives.
Co-founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar commented, “Today marks a tough day in our 20-year history. We will be saying farewell to about 500 Atlassian employees, or 5% of our workforce, as we have decided to reorganize our organization to position Atlassian for the long-term best.”
Every Atlassian employee will receive an email informing them if they are affected within the next 15 minutes, according to a version of the post in a regulatory filing [PDF].
The post states that the round of layoffs is not financially driven and is not intended to save costs. Instead, it is an admission that recent “difficult decisions” to prioritize “the most important activities for our existing and future clients” were insufficient.
Cannon-Brookes and Farquharson said, “We need to go further in rebalancing the talent we require to run faster at our firm’s priorities. As a result, the Australian startup will “reinvest in jobs that better serve our aims.”
According to the co-founders, the “Talent Acquisition, Program Management, and Research & Insights” teams at Atlassian will experience the most significant cuts.
The choice to fire employees represented a significant and quick shift from Cannon-Brookes and Farquharson’s stance when they released their Q2 FY 2023 shareholder letter [PDF]. “We continue to expect operational expense growth to decrease in H2 as we follow through on our previously disclosed initiatives from last quarter to minimize discretionary non-headcount related spending and moderate the pace of headcount expansion,” the couple stated in that paper.
More than moderation, losing 500 employees.
Before, in November 2022, when Farquharson warned investors that layoffs at rival companies constituted an opportunity, Atlassian signaled its plan to keep hiring – cautiously.
He added that Atlassian planned to “be thoughtful around how many we hire and where we hire, but our experience is that we can come out strongly on the other side by selectively picking up staff that other people are letting go.” At the time, he said, “There are a lot of incredible people in the market who may only come on the market once a decade, and we have an opportunity to pick those staff up now.”
Following the release of Q1 FY 2023 results, which included hiring 989 new employees during the quarter, Farquharson made those comments.
Workers who are laid off will receive 15 weeks of salary and an extra week for each year of service. Once they have been remotely deleted, they will also be allowed to keep their business laptops. Employees with access to critical material will discover that their computers have already been locked.
