Atlassian billionaire Scott Farquhar criticises ‘back to office’ mandates for workers

Atlassian billionaire Scott Farquhar has criticised big employers demanding staff return to the office and says half of his firm’s new employees work remotely in regional areas.

Tech billionaire Scott Farquhar says demands for workers to return to the “office cubicle” was shortsighted and that half of new staff at Atlassian now work remotely, based in regional areas around the world.

The co-founder of the software giant told the National Tech Summit in Brisbane that attracting and keeping talent in the sector was becoming increasingly important if Australia was to maintain its position as the “Lucky Country” in increasingly difficult times.

Scott Farquhar on stage with The Courier Mail editor Chris Jones at the National Tech Summit.

Mr Farquhar, who last year had a well publicised spat with Elon Musk over work-from-home (WFH) arrangements, said flexible conditions was a boon for decentralised states such as Queensland that did not have to attract entire companies to benefit from growth in the tech sector.

“Remote work is one of the best things that could happen to Queensland because for years they’ve been trying to attract people from Melbourne and Sydney but to do that previously they had to attract an entire company to move up to here,” Mr Farquhar said.

“Occasionally you will get a Virgin Airlines that will come up here, but it’s very difficult to attract an entire company.

“It’s a lot easier to attract employees one by one.

“These people want to work at home, and that has been a huge boon for us. We have 170 people who work for Atlassian in Queensland and we don’t have a single office here.

“These people have either been recruited or moved up here because we as a company have said that you can work anywhere.”

Mr Farquhar said 53 per cent of new employees recruited by the company over the past year live more than two hours from an Atlassian office. The company employs more than 10,000 people around the world. A quarter of its Australian workforce live outside of Sydney.

“So that means half our employees we’ve hired over the last few years couldn’t have come to work for us if we didn’t have that flexible and reliable working environment,” he said.

Tech Council of Australia and Tesla chair Robyn Denholm speaking at the conference on Thursday.

He criticised the move by some of the country’s biggest employers, including large banks, to mandate people work from the office at least two days a week.

“So I have to get in my car and drive to the office to sit in a cubicle and zoom with other workers who are at home because the two days I work in the office are different from the days they are in the office,” he said.

Last June, a war of words erupted on Twitter between Mr Musk and Mr Farquhar, after the Australian billionaire called the Tesla CEO’s remote work policy “something out of the 1950s”.

A letter from Mr Musk leaked to the public this week, in which he demanded Tesla staff return to the office or “pretend to work somewhere else”.

Mr Farquhar took the opportunity to try to woo Tesla staff, noting that the growing Atlassian planned to have 25,000 employees by 2026.

TechnologyOne chief executive Edward Chung spoke at the conference.

Commonwealth Bank has now ordered staff back to the office, stressing the importance of face-to-face interactions. Chief executive Matt Comyn has mandated that all employees must come to the office 50 per cent of the time.

NAB chief executive Ross McEwan also has ordered his senior leaders back to the office five days a week as part of his push to return to pre-pandemic work routines.

Tesla chair Robyn Denholm told the summit that Queensland was an increasingly popular place for tech businesses because of its lifestyle, access to quality universities and proactive government.

“The tech sector is still growing despite the fact there are reductions in terms of people hiring and lay-offs,” Ms Denholm said.

“But for every lay-off that has happened in the tech sector there has actually been 20 people hired. So overall it is still growing at twice the national growth rate in terms of hiring.”

TechnologyOne chief executive Edward Chung said the Brisbane-based software giant had been at the forefront of the tech sector for more than 30 years and was now exploring the application of artificial intelligence to everyday tasks.

That included installing cameras on council rubbish trucks in the Moreton region north of Brisbane to look for potholes in roads.