Mike Cannon-Brookes cuts 150 Atlassian staff in ‘cold’ video message

AI evangelist and Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar. Picture: Richard Dobson

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Atlassian employees woke up to some harsh news on Wednesday morning, delivered in a recorded message from their billionaire chief executive and co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes.

Appearing in a hoodie and speaking from his home office, MCB sprung the news on 150 staff that they would be laid off and replaced, in large measure, with artificial intelligence.

Affected employees weren’t told of their fate before the announcement and instead endured 15 minutes of anguish to find out, via email, whether they had been tapped for the exits. This chosen few had their laptops immediately blocked and were promised six months’ pay to see them out the door.

Mike Cannon-Brookes delivering the bad news to his employees about job cuts. Picture: Supplied

Titled “Restructuring the CSS Team: A Difficult Decision for Our Future”, Cannon-Brookes didn’t suggest there was much difficulty in the decision at all, a frank and cold sentiment noted by some employees. Instead, he spoke as a funeral director might. “We will create a space for them to say goodbye,” he said.

Atlassian is a business that prides itself on transparent messaging. One of its core values is the principle Open Company, No Bullshit, displayed throughout Atlassian offices globally. Regardless, the news landed uncomfortably for some, even as Cannon-Brookes overshared that ridding Atlassian of its European-based workers would be more difficult, owing to their contract arrangements. The process, however, had already begun.

Some agreed that former co-CEO Scott Farquhar, who stepped down from his role last year, would have taken a softer tone in delivering the news.

“MCB is the colder person out of the couple,” said a person who saw the video. “Scott was the warmer one.”

Perhaps. Farquhar was on television this morning just as readily spruiking the benefits of AI and encouraging corporate figureheads to take it up as quickly as possible. Farquhar remains on the Atlassian board.

“Every business person, every business leader… should be looking at how AI can transform what they do,” he said. Did he know this was coming?

As for the reason behind the sudden development, Cannon-Brookes described a situation in which Atlassian’s customer service team had become a victim of the business’s broader success; large clients had been moved off an older, dinkier software platform and into the smooth-running realm of the “cloud”, reducing the volume of complex support tasks required at the company.

Future complaints, he said, would more likely be treated in part with AI.

“I want to be really clear that these changes only impact obviously the cost organisation – for anyone anywhere else we are not looking at any other roles,” he said.