Atlassian terminates 150 staff
cyberdaily.au
cyberdaily.au
This is just bullshit. Managers don't have to do any such thing as it may become unnecessarily confrontational. Similarly lot of people resign via email. There is no need to have "guts" to tell manager in their face.
It just stops a ton of confusion, hope, etc. It allows that discussion to focus on "Do you want the two weeks?" and "What do you want me to do with those two weeks if you want them."
Part of being a good employee is making things clear to your manager.
Are you going to send out hundreds of calendar invites spread across weeks for the sole purpose of being nice to people? Are affected employees expected to queue up to get their personal “you’re fired” before their access is cut?
Yes, people generally put two and two together when there was a calendar invite with their manager and HR.
We were in a European office though, so layoffs aren't American-style "escorted from the office with immediate effect".
Management and leadership is practically a lost art these days, so many organizations are just filled with managers who haven't the first fucking idea how to actually manage people.
All that said to be like: "Well how SHOULD we correctly fire 150 people?" I dunno, to me that's like saying how do I hit a tree with my car in such a way as to make sure I'm not paralyzed? Like so much has already gone wrong to bring you to where this is a pertinent question that I don't think there's really a right answer at this point, there's just gradations of bad.
Atlassian grew from 3,600 people in 2019 to 12.100 in 2024. Triple in 5 years. Some adjustments are expected. Sucks to lose your job, but you might not have it in the first place.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1276817/atlassian-number...
So, I will fully grant that my original statement doesn't really matter here; this wasn't a department that over-scaled to meet a project that didn't exist, this is in fact, the far shittier kind of layoffs: the ones that are a direct result of a company taking by all accounts a fully functioning department and taking an axe to it to improve their bottom line in 6 months, trading experienced workers who likely have relationships with their clients for soulless chatbots for their customers to now argue with.
So yes, I fully acknowledge I was wrong, and also, this is shittier than I assumed without reading. Take that how you will.
I've been through a group, but face-to-face, layoff. 150 people in that scenario would be very doable if you split that into like 3 groups.
1:1 would be even better, and I think that ought to be doable, too, yes.
If a manager has several layoffs to do, you have people waiting on pins and needles for the dreaded calendar invite over a few hours or even days.
In a layoff, it’s important to do it humanely, quickly, and let people settle down as soon as you can. It’s bad for both the laid off and the remaining employees you have a trickle layoffs happening over a longer period of time… it’s less bad if you rip the bandaid off quickly.
You want to be able to say to your team, “Hey guys, we had a layoff this morning, and everyone affected has already been notified. It’s all done at this point - everyone in this room is not affected.”
If I hear through the grapevine there’s a layoff happening this morning, and my manager schedules a surprise 1:1 with me in a few hours because he has a few of them to do, I’m going to be a wreck between now and then.
Second time was smaller (maybe 10 people) and fully remote, and I had a surprise meeting with my direct manager over video chat.
I personally don't care so much about how the message is delivered, and more about severance, but it's interesting to see how different people handle the situation differently. Makes you wonder what alternatives they considered that they decided a pre-recorded message was best.
What if your balls get ripped off? Just saying...
If you want to do it all at once, for all time zones... If there's overlapping "core hours" for different time zones, or you can schedule an all-hands videoconf time, you can do it then. Or do one for the global West, and one for the global East (which will have different cultural nuances anyway, and possibly separate management structures).
It's not that different than in-office. Except, for in-office, remaining colleagues see a person boxing up their stuff and walking out with their stuff in a box, or (worse) security escorting the people off the property. And then there's usually the desk of a terminate colleague there as a visual reminder for awhile.
One in-office layoff I saw, they arranged for all the people to be laid off to have impromptu meetings with their managers, and to go to conference rooms, at the same time... and then notified everyone still at their desks to go to an all-(remaining)-hands meeting, in a different office space, where they were told of the layoffs. Most of the axed people were already gone when the others returned. It might have been good intentions, but I'm not sure that was a good move.
It's a tricky problem, whether in-office or remote. Partly because the situation isn't right. ICs are more often let go because management failed, rather than any fault of the ICs.
That is pretty much guaranteed to happen though, unless you have a system where the assumption is employment for life at all costs. Management's job is to make decisions, many decisions won't work out, and for some of those, the consequences mean some change in what roles are going to be needed. Sometimes it's a management success that means a certain role isn't needed too ("we successfully rolled out software to book business trips, so we don't need 17 travel bookers anymore").
And anyway, let's stipulate that managers should also be punished by being sacked for any big mistake: That wouldn't save ICs, since if you're, say, pivoting away from making furniture, you still don't need the furniture makers, even if you sack the "VP of Furniture" or the CEO. And it'd be stupid to appoint a new VP of Furniture over and over to keep trying to 'make furniture happen' just to save the jobs.
Often, the company actually still needs those skills for what it's doing, but it's a bean-counter move, to "appease investors". Knowing that this will put more pressure on remaining employees, and also knowing that they'll soon be hiring for the same roles.
This is another way it's not right. There's little sense of obligation to the employee.
You could gather everybody in the same room, and announce it there, but that's still not really face-to-face.
Delegating it to their direct managers is even worse. They're generally not the ones who made the decision. Even if they were the ones who submitted a list of their people they could live without, it was the higher-ups who approved the layoff en masse.
There's just not a great way to give bad news. A video sucks, but it attracts attention only because it's different from the other sucky ways people do it.
I think firing by SMS also serves the noble purpose of illustrating to prospective employees that these are purely transactional relationships and that, no, this isn't a family, the exec's heart will not bleed.
When you were sorting your damn spreadsheet where I ranked at the bottom, you cared zilch; you could give my cognitive abilities some credit by not pretending you suddenly got infected with empathy or something.
I could be told tomorrow to lay off some or all of the people who report to me if we can't afford to pay them. I'd hate it, I'd cry and feel sick and not be able to sleep all night wishing I could avoid it. I know that from experience. Nobody wants that and even CEOs feel like shit when they implement layoffs.
The alternative to having the 2-sided at-will employment system would need to be a two-way commitment, which seems far worse. Would you want to work under a system where everyone was expected to honor a 3-year employment contract, and to renew it like a New York apartment lease? So that you can't accept a new higher-paying job because you're committed to your company for 2 more years? And if you quit your job "early" you could be sued or be ruled as unemployable by future employers?
I don't see how there is much practical room between "anyone can terminate the relationship at any time and it's not personal" and "2-way long-term commitment and neither party can."
> The alternative to having the 2-sided at-will employment system would need to be a two-way commitment, which seems far worse.
You probably just haven't tried it, or have little knowledge of how it works in practice, because your example is way radical. Learn about the actual conditions under which it works over here in Europe (you don't get locked in to a duration of employment, the notice period in Poland, for example, may be up to 3 months if you worked at one place for three years or more — to give time for knowledge transfer).
It is absolutely brutal as it invites the chance of hope during the downsizing - and implies staff will be able to provide alternative suggestions. Which is quite plainly bananas.
It's enshrined in law and if you don't follow the process as an employer you can get taken to task by the governing body around it.
It's just far easier, and less harmful emotionally, to rip the band aid and provide a good package.
I've heard of unionized factory workers negotiate lower salaries to keep the shop open. Granted that was Europe.
Why is that bananas? When covid hit my country, the national airline fired ~90% of flight attendants. They had been willing to be put on leave with 0 pay until the airline needed them again, but the airline wasn't interested in that. They were very happy to have an excuse to get rid of these long-serving employees and hire fresh-faced 18-25yr olds on starter salaries in their stead.
Having a mandated process like you mentioned (maybe for companies with more than 50 employees) could have made a massive difference in an instance like this.
The flight attendants in my example eventually all got their jobs back, but only after a years-long legal battle during which some lost their homes and most had a very tough time.
It is actually really important in mass layoffs to have this information immediately to hand.
The termination ritual is for the people that stay and who the company may wish to hire in the future.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-staff-locked-out-layoffs
Layoffs suck, period. Like the good advice goes when starting a new relationship "Just ignore everything they say, and only focus on what they do." A generous severance package is loads more important than nitpicking the format of the layoff announcement. Plus, Atlassian famously has a global, distributed team that embraced remote work. Someone somewhere is getting the recorded clip regardless.
There is no right way to lay off someone. Only different shades of bad.
just make it fast and not painful at least
If the company has a healthy cashflow it can afford to give the employees that have been laid off a larger runway in terms of how many months of salary they will still pay out. If you've given them stock options, you can give them more time to decide whether to exercise the vested option.
I'd gladly take a "Good riddance" with 6 months of salary and 2 years validity of my options over a "We regret that it has come to this point" with just a one-month notice.
Now, if you mean "bad" as in it's unpleasant to hear or give the news, I agree with you, it's always the opposite of fun.
When I was laid off I appeared stoic throughout the conversation. Because lots of people were laid off so there was no point to discuss “why”. The only question was severance. But then the HR got curious about my lack of reaction. He started questioning if I had job offers at hand and if my access could be cut right then (others were given a week).
Why? Because that makes the average editor pleased with themselves? I'm sorry but I can't eat or wear that as a hat.
Personally I don't want companies to self-sabotage by not laying off people when they need to. Worst case you'll have companies file for bankruptcy en masse after turning human resources into hot air useful to nobody: now we've really fucked up. The more efficiently labor is allocated in an economy, the better everyone will be off.
And yes, I recognize that high churn through frequent growth and contraction phases is also inefficient, but bad leadership is a tangential issue at best.
But more importantly, layoffs are rarely just about cutting costs. They're often called "restructurings" because that is exactly what happens - usually whole departments or positions are let go when a company decides to exit business lines or make a significant change in direction.
Layoffs suck, but keeping folks around when there is basically no useful work for them to do isn't a solution either, it's just kicking the can down the road.
If that sort of firing happens you have bad leadership and the company is screwed anyways.
I had expressed a couple of months before my desire to leave. They then called me to say it was "a hard decision but it was best for the company to let me go".
I almost laughed. How hard is it really to let someone go that wants to go?
Worse than using a pre-recorded video is doing a live meeting with a default script. These corpocrats are like robots.
I'm from the US, so employment here is at will. There were layoffs at every company that I worked for, and are entirely expect by anyone what has worked a while, when the economy turns down a bit.
Out of them all, the "red envelope on your desk" was the best approach, in my opinion. It let people have a moment to themselves to react to and accept something that they were, at that point, unable to change. Then, the manager would have one-on-one with everyone, to explain the packages. In my opinion, I wouldn't want a manager to tell me. It would be awkward and unnecessary, since it's usually entirely out of their control.
a) why a year? why a 6 months is not enough?
b) if this was a burger joint and people were replaced with a robots would you require a year too?
b) If they have permanent contracts, yes. It's rare to have permanent contracts at a burger joint though. They often have 0 hour contracts. It's no communism here in those sectors.
This is how things are set up. Companies open shop here because the salaries are 2-3x lower than the Silicon Valley, for exactly this reason (job security).
Can't say I would agree with you on the everything, 'cuz I've experienced the malicious compliance from the people who doesn't perform ok except on the paper, but I appreciate your stance.
> "If we reduce the number of employees for better short-term financial results, employee morale will decrease," he said. "I sincerely doubt employees who fear that they may be laid off will be able to develop software titles that could impress people around the world."
https://www.polygon.com/2013/7/5/4496512/why-nintendos-sator...
Just something to think about. I get that every company is different.
So, they announced the layoffs with a pre-recorded video versus a company-wide meeting - or - as is more common in my experience: No warning or explanation beforehand.
So you get an email explaining you were made redundant and halfway through reading that your laptop locks itself out?
Telling people “wait to see if you’re fired” is absolutely cruel. Hold a virtual meeting, even if it’s just to play a video, and hit send on all those emails the instant it’s over.
What a horrible thing to do to people. Can’t even do it yourself? Gotta pre-record it?
> What a horrible thing
They offered 6 months severance which dispels any serious notion of 'cruelty'. Substance over form.
Ever sent an email and not had it arrive instantly? 15 minutes is enough wiggle room to clarify that.
When I was involved in a mass layoff, all of the emails went to an email that was going to be cut off.
"Sleep well Wesley, I'll likely kill you in the morning."
Nobody is getting good sleep that night, at least until the doom hour has passed without an email.
Much emotion, team reminiscing, and a fair amount of drinking happened and it was an interesting but honestly pretty decent way to handle it I thought. I was largely indifferent to whether I was in the 2/3 or 1/3 and ended up quitting on my own a couple months later.
My personal hope based on their products' performance would be that they hire some people who know how to make performant code, but that's clearly never going to happen.
Note: you typically want it to all happen on the same day, which makes it impractical for someone in HR to call 150 separate people.
Note2: I’m not saying I agree with how this was handled. Just curious.
Sort of a moot point though. Laying off spooled-up knowledge workers is probably the stupidest thing you could do if you're creating software and not investment opportunities.
and not Atlassian products , but that part didn't make it to the final cut.
Because their software never gets tired of giving you the run around, while actual people do.
A simple chatbot could pass along that information.
Anyways... modern corp culture, don't expect too much from larger companies. Once a company grows beyond a certain limit, it becomes impersonal as it has to.
This is getting even more ridiculous than I had previously expected.
No disrespect given nor received, but this is all business at that point. Some other day, we can work out any transition plan we need to work through and I'll happily hang out with him socially afterwards, but the things I need from the company at that moment are the severance details, nothing else. Emailed attachments are perfect.
Plus general AI hate, and they’re obviously blaming this on not needing people because of AI.
The article also has a footnote stating "Updated to remove claims of AI replacing jobs." so I suppose there was probably a stronger - but still invented by the author - claim included that has since been removed.
People develop relationships with coworkers, you care if someone has issues, you're happy if a solution makes customers/coworkers happy but none of that matters to the lawnmower, it just mows lawns.
Unnecessary actions that squander scarce resources (trust, labor that understands the enterprise and its customers) in the name of vague platitudes about AI and shareholder returns. Almost like none of these people actually know how to manage an organization for any length of time longer than a fiscal year.
And we'll call it "Rehabilitation"
Sucks for everyone. I’ve been laid off by email, it’s fine.
Net positive in my book. Of course on an individual level it sucks, these are people with dependants and so on, but so are the 200 who were saved.
(Though, here in the UK, redundancy procedures can take weeks, so a few days is not much compared to that.)
HR: Atlassian / HR-5678
Acknowledge Receipt of Your Termination Notice
Hipchat/Stride was a flop, because it was a poor product, poorly executed. Switch to Slack was a huge relief for everyone.
Atlassian support engineers used to be the best part of the service. Poor products + Great support = made Atlassian great
Not doubting the role that support plays for Atlassian. Just highlighting how I witnessed MCB handle a similar situation 7 years ago, by flying to Austin from Australia to deliver the sad news. The article makes him sound heartless or cold but that wasn't my experience. That being said, an async video message is a weird play.