Atlassian’s Mike Cannon-Brookes addresses staff over media scrutiny linked to Farquhar
It’s rare to hear Mike Cannon-Brookes unbutton himself and speak in public. And right now he’s pissed, especially with us, with this newspaper, with our inquiries into the cultural health of Atlassian, with our write-ups of his staff lay-offs, with our nosing into his relationship with Scott Farquhar and, of course, his soaring private jet usage.
“Trust me, if you’re in my world for the past month, ooft, it’s been fun,” he told staff on Thursday. Cannon-Brookes isn’t one to bare his soul so easily, so “ooft” was a glimpse into the Real Mike, the man beneath the bun. And he’s quietly seething.
Cannon-Brookes was speaking to about 3000 Atlassian employees during a virtual Town Hall. They’d dialled in, these workers, around 8am for an hour-long free-for-all of questions, curated by Amy Glancey, his chief of staff.
On the recent sacking of 150 employees, their jobs lost to AI, Cannon-Brookes did break with form, owned the hard call: “These are tough decisions.
“There is a large team that worked on all of these things, but all these types of decisions come to me, to make, approve, whatever, so accountability rests on my shoulders.”
From there, accountability flew at high speed in a westerly direction. A brave employee named “Michael” wanted to know what the executive team was doing to mend the “public perception issues” at Atlassian. People have been talking, Michael said. “My professional network is asking me how bad it is to work here.”
A terrified Glancey turned to her boss. “Mike, do you wanna take this on?”
“Not particularly, but I will,” he sulked, giving the necessary background. “For anyone outside of Australia, (long sigh) context is the past few weeks there have been a bunch of stories, from one particular Australian newspaper called The Australian.”
That’s us.
Mike’s displeasure appears to centre on reports that he and his co-founder, Farquhar, have suffered a cooling in their very long friendship.
It was Farquhar who resigned as co-CEO of Atlassian in August last year, but without any bad blood, apparently. Even though everyone says as much. Even though Cannon-Brookes didn’t attend the farewell party.
“(The) stuff about Scott and his departure made us both laugh, to be honest,” said Cannon-Brookes. “Not that we were making fun of it, just the ridiculousness of what’s there. (I’ve) seen Scott a whole bunch of times since, spoke to him only a couple of days ago, pretty much almost weekly. Lots of things are pretty much bullshit, but people are going to write what they’re going to write.”
Farquhar is on the board of Atlassian and he owns a big chunk of the company. Of course they talk; he’s a massive stakeholder. Lots of people suffer through working relationships with colleagues they hardly adore. Jim Chalmers and Andrew Charlton do it all the time. Jim’s probably doing it with Albo right now.
On he went, Cannon-Brookes, slightly amused by it all: “It’s very strange to be a character in a story that’s being written about and being like, ‘Wait, this is not the story’ ”, which is what every billionaire says when they lose control of the narrative. It’s why PR was invented, Mike; it’s why you pay Kate Lord.
But, fine, blame us; how dare we inquire into the affairs of Atlassian, a listed multinational corporation. How dare we contrast the blather about saving the planet with those wasteful jet flights to Bora Bora or wherever.
“We don’t comment on – I’m gonna get myself in a lot of trouble here – gossipy, trash-media,” he continued.
But, wait, wasn’t that him stepping off a commercial flight at Sydney Airport earlier this week? Wasn’t that him, without an ExecuJet contingent, lumping through the terminal like everyone else and carrying his own luggage? We’d wager that was a result of someone reading our trash, someone important with Cannon-Brookes’s ear, for a man of such hubris wouldn’t have parked his Bombardier so lightly.
“We have a good reason to believe,” he said, pausing, “let me stay within the legal boundaries here – we have good reasons to believe it’s a targeted and very personal campaign. People outside the company, fine, you know, I understand, that’s part of my world.”
Presumably that’s a reference to his wife, Annie, from whom he’s been separated the past two years. She and Cannon-Brookes are in a proxy battle over Kevin Chiu, a former employee who was fired for allegedly downloading files and transferring money out of the family office venture.
Chiu did this, allegedly, at the behest of Annie’s close pal, Catherine Manuel.
“We do know that some of these stories are being fed by current employees – that’s people within our walls leaking information. That creates a huge risk for any words I put here, right?
“Because are we gonna get leaked? It shouldn’t be leaked, but then you’re like, ‘Ah, but should we not address it?’. Nah, nah, nah, nah, there’ll be, cue some BS story about Angry Mike, which isn’t fair, but that’s the way it goes.”
Well, he is angry, there’s no denying it. And he’s prescient, if nothing else.
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