Atlassian joins the layoff trend as it sacks 500 employees

Software company Atlassian, the owner of Jira, Confluence, and Trello tools, announced yesterday that it would be reducing its workforce by 5%, amounting to about 500 employees before the end of this week.

This latest announcement comes a month after the company claimed to have embarked on a reorganization strategy to better reflect its operation in a changing and challenging macroeconomic environment.

The decision was made as part of a restructuring plan to streamline the company’s operations and focus on its core products. It also plans to reduce its investment in specific areas to reinvest in others. Those affected by this layoff decision were mainly teams in the Talent Acquisition, Program Management, and Research & Insights departments.

The Co-founders and CEOs, Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar announced the announcement on the company website. The decision was made as part of a restructuring plan to streamline the company’s operations and focus on its core products and skills.

Speaking on the layoff decision, one of the co-founders said,

We made tough calls to prioritise the most critical work for our current and future customers. While it helped us streamline work, we need to go further in rebalancing the skills we require to run faster at our company priorities.

The company claims that this decision was not based on its financial performance, even though it had reported net losses in its quarterly earnings releases, despite its increase in its overall revenues.

According to Fool.com, Atlassian experienced a slow year in 2022. The IT company’s share fell a whopping 66%, which kicked it out of the world’s top 20 software technology companies. It also experienced slow customer attention, especially in terms of paid subscriptions.

But this is not isolated to Atlassian. For many leading IT companies, 2022 was a generally tough year filled with macroeconomic situations, a turbulent economy, and desperation that weighed down their earnings and revenues.

Read Also: Layoffs reach over 67% of last year’s figure in Q1 of 2023

What is in store for affected Atlassian employees

Atlassian has stated that affected employees will be given support to help them transition out of the company. Some of the offerings include:

• Global separation package – Atlassian hopes to provide 15 weeks + 1 week for each year of service. Sign-on bonus provisions will be waived, and any accrued and unused Paid Time Off (PTO) will be paid out.
• Accelerating vesting – Accelerate vesting for the next quarterly vesting event (May 2023). Those who have been here for less than a year (usually not eligible for vesting), will receive vesting for the number of quarters they have worked at Atlassian.
• Providing healthcare – Six months of healthcare benefits for employees and their families and continued access to our Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and Modern Health through this time.
• Visa support – Individual consultations with Atlassian’s mobility team and meetings with external immigration counsel to review visa status and options.
• Laptops – All employees can keep their laptops once company details are remotely erased.
• Internal mobility – Opportunity to apply for open roles internally through our Internal Mobility process. The team will work with impacted Atlassian worldwide over the next four weeks to explore suitable opportunities.
• Outplacement services – Atlassian is partnering with a third party to provide coaching, resume-building and guidance, and job-seeking support.

Also, affected employees can interact with their teams and still have access to the company’s communications tools until the end of the day Friday, Mar 10, 2023, local time.

Despite the job cuts, Atlassian remains optimistic about its prospects and continues investing in new products and services.

Read Also: Tech layoffs in 2023 have already exceeded half of 2022’s total, but here is why the industry would be fine