“This is different to a financially driven reduction,” Mr Cannon-Brookes and Mr Farquhar said, adding the redundancies would affect around 5 per cent of the software giant’s total workforce.
It’s a sharp about-face for the Nasdaq-listed company, which had been a vocal proponent of the need for more skilled tech workers in Australia to support its lofty growth targets and large cloud migration program.
Headcount tripled
Last October, co-founder Scott Farquhar launched a hiring drive to secure 1032 new roles at Atlassian by driving a branded bus called the “AtlassiVan” around major city centres to attract new talent.
The company’s headcount more than tripled in the last four years to 10,787 employees at the end of 2022, according to documents filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
One engineer employed by Atlassian told The Australian Financial Review on Tuesday that the company’s vast engineering teams were unlikely to lose “that many” team members and that there were still programs within the company to attract skilled engineering talent.
“I don’t think developers are going to be that hard hit,” the senior engineer said on the condition of anonymity.
“But we all got the sense that there would be some firings over the last few months. It’s happening everywhere and lots of people I know, who’ve been let go from other tech companies, are trying to get jobs here.”
Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-chief executive officer of Atlassian. Bloomberg
Cost-cutting programs have seen thousands of technology workers laid off, with investors rewarding those technology businesses.
Despite a tough twelve months that saw Atlassian’s share price slide 27 per cent, the local tech success story has been caught up in the bullish sentiment across equity markets enjoying a 37 per cent surge since January to trade 39 per cent higher at $176.30 a share on Tuesday morning.
In early February, Atlassian beat its own guidance for revenue and earnings but delivered soft revenue guidance for the March quarter; with revenue of $US890 million to $910 million forecast, versus expectations of $US900 million.
