Atlassian founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar revealed the news in a blog post, citing changing company priorities.
Australian software company Atlassian will lay off 5 per cent of its workforce, equivalent to around 500 staff members.
In a blog post dated March 6, founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar stressed the decision to lay off staff did not reflect financial performance, but rather its shifted focus on new growth opportunities.
“To be clear, this decision is not a reflection of Atlassian’s own financial performance, as we will be reinvesting in roles that better support our priorities,” the blog post read.
“As a company, we have massive growth opportunities in front of us, particularly across cloud migrations, ITSM, and serving our enterprise customers in the cloud. Although hard, this rebalancing will help us put more wood behind these arrows.”
The most impacted teams include talent acquisition, program management and research and insights. In the spirt of the company’s famous ‘No Bullshit’ ethos, the blog post revealed the packages affected team members were offered. It included a global separation package (15 weeks + 1 week for each year of service), accelerated vesting, six months of healthcare benefits and immigration visa support.
Staff members have the opportunity to communicate with their teams until Friday March 10.
“Every single person has made contributions that have changed our company for the better and will leave a lasting impact on their peers and teams. This is about rebalancing the roles we need across Atlassian first and foremost,” the blog post read.
In February this year, Atlassian reported its Q2 earnings, which showed quarterly revenue of $873 million, up 27% year-on-year. But its operating loss ballooned out to $99.2 million, compared to an operating income of $23 million for the same period the previous year.
The move is largely in line with the rest of the tech market, with companies like Microsoft, Meta, Salesforce and Google all laying off staff. Interestingly, data from 365 Data Science found the majority of roles affected were in HR, which accounted for 28% of all layoffs in recent months.
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