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Comment by jjcm | Hacker News Reader

Another recent ex-Atlassian here (I left 4 months ago after working there for 5 years), and I'll +1 this. Was a really solid company. I took multiple 3+ week vacations over my 5 years, and one 3 month vacation. In addition it felt like the company actually cared about me. I had the best work life balance of any company I've worked for at Atlassian.

Some other things about this article stood out to me though. The author brings up: "Interesting fact 1: Atlassian is the only company that has words "shit" and "fuck" in their core values." without the context here. These values are "Don't fuck the customer" and "Open company, no bullshit". It seems strange the author is calling out the language of values I actually feel were pretty decent. If anything this is just a reflection of word choices of Australian vs American cultures. It feels like the author is just trying to pull every gotchya out there due to a bad experience with a manager.

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>If anything this is just a reflection of word choices of Australian vs American cultures.

Too right, cunt.

> These values are "Don't fuck the customer"

Not really living up to that one lads, considering your software is an absolute raging dumpster-fire

Engineers are not the customer, the executives of companies willing to sign off on the license fees are, they're the only ones they need to keep happy.

In fairness to Atlassian I work for a charity and we get to use their products for next to nothing and I've found Jira to be a valuable project management tool.

My experience is that dev's have...mixed feelings about it because it can get in the way of "actual work" but only a few of those dev's are as good and organised as they think they are. The rest it's like herding cats and without Jira or an equivalent they'd be churning out dogshit.

It’s interesting that as a dev my feeling about PM’s is more or less the same. Transforming the garbage in Jira tickets into something resembling a product is a challenge.

Are those people happy waiting 10s for a page to load? Seems like wasting their time is most expensive of all for the company.

I've worked with some large Jira installations and I don't remember ever running into 10s page loads without a broken VPN/internet connection. This sounds like a very very broken setup.

Ours doesn't take that long usually, but it sure can be slow.

My company uses Confluence (NOT self hosted) and it regularly takes 10s or more to load a page on a 400Mbit connection. Text content only, no diagrams. Confluence is a joke

Their assistant might not be but what does the exec know?

> These values are "Don't fuck the customer" and "Open company, no bullshit".

Huh. As a customer, this is surprising.

> If anything this is just a reflection of word choices of Australian vs American cultures.

Correct - I can think of, for example, a national ASX listed ISP (Aussie Broadband) with the word bullshit in their core values - "No Bullshit": https://www.aussiebroadband.com.au/forms/investors/statement...

I think, about 20 years ago, one of the street vendors at Badaling section near Great Wall of China had written their rules for employee on their back wall. One of them was

- Do not hit or scold customers.

Using those words in their official core values just seems a bit juvenile and unprofessional. Not a red flag, but maybe a yellow one.

I agree it feels unprofessional. It would be like adding a hashtag.

its very Australian.

Those are quite commonly used words at Aussie companies. I guess it's just a cultural difference.

While others have said it's an Australian thing, to give an example a popular Sydney based pub-brewery down the street from me has the rule "No Dicks!" on their wall and it really works. Always a friendly place to be, the people genuine and a sense of community.

Swearing, when used properly, punctuates an otherwise boring corporate message.

You're making their point more beautifully than you could ever imagine...

Some workplaces really are trying to be the chill pub all the way down to the beer on tap.

But you can have an environment that's "a friendly place to be where people are genuine and there's a sense of community" without that crap

I swear more than the next person but I don't want my workplace codifying it. We can leave that kind of tech-bro bs back in the 2010s.

> But you can have an environment that's "a friendly place to be where people are genuine and there's a sense of community" without that crap

Yes, and you can also have the environment with "that crap".

Why is one approach superior to the other, beyond the fact that it appeals to you?

Work for an Australian company, have those words in our core values.

It's normal.

For non-Australian companies, yes. But for Australian companies, it's the standard. It'd be like saying, "My employees in Spain are falling asleep in the middle of the day! It's so juvenile and unprofessional!" despite a seista being a cultural aspect of the country.

It's likely your viewpoint of professionalism doesn't match that of Atlassian's here. As an Australian, it seems perfectly fine to me.

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