‘Most toxic workplace I’ve ever been in’: behind the scenes at Atlassian
Rival Slack chats, a powerful clique and tough questions at all-staff meetings leading to some being ‘hunted down’. How the personal falling out of its co-founders has reshaped Atlassian – and why Scott Farquhar wanted Mike Cannon-Brookes to exit with him.
Scott Farquhar floated the possibility of Mike Cannon-Brookes stepping down with him as co-CEO of Atlassian, but the idea was dismissed by the executive committee who pushed for Cannon-Brookes to ascend to sole CEO.
The discussions between both billionaires contemplating leaving Atlassian happened before Farquhar made the surprise announcement in April 2024 that he would exit, The Australian can reveal.
The irreparable personal and professional falling out between the pair has reshaped the organisation structurally and culturally since it was formalised a year ago. Several insiders have pointed to the power entrusted to “gatekeeper” executives who fostered a culture that backed “Team Mike” over the more conservative Farquhar.
There were even internal Slack channels named Team Mike and Team Scott.
The pitch by the Atlassian co-founder to his best man and business partner reflected the level of tension that had imbued the pair’s working relationship. A clean-out of the co-CEOs’ office was entertained as a possible solution to smooth through the next phase of Atlassian’s growth and was one of several options discussed by Farquhar and Cannon-Brookes in the lead-up to Farquhar’s eventual departure.
“It was my personal decision to step down as co-CEO. There was no suggestion that we should both step down, and Mike continues to have my full support in his CEO role,” Farquhar said in a statement to The Australian.
The insider clique, referred to informally as “the assassins” by more junior employees, was led by chief of staff Amy Glancey, who is a trusted person close to Cannon-Brookes and described by numerous sources as the executive with the most sway inside Atlassian after the founders.
Glancey attends all Atlassian board meetings, sources confirmed. “She would be the one who has all the secrets,” one former staffer said.
Other sources say her group of advisers and communications staff had outsized influence.
Glancey’s influential group includes communications chief Louise Halloran, Cannon-Brookes executive assistant Faye Sterling, office manager Ashlee Hancock and the tech giant’s San Francisco-based global communications chief, Marie-Claire Maple.
An Atlassian spokesman said: “The statements put to us by The Australian from unattributed sources are inaccurate, false and misleading – in Australian vernacular, they are simply bullshit.”
Some of them have travelled with Cannon-Brookes on his $75m Bombardier Global 7500 private jet he purchased last year.
Sources claim Glancey’s team organised a police escort from the Miami Formula One Grand Prix in May for Cannon-Brookes and Atlassian staff, though Atlassian sources say it was externally organised as part of its sponsorship deal.
Atlassian is the major sponsor of the Williams team as part of a deal worth an estimated $40m-$50m annually that Cannon-Brookes clinched before the start of the current 2025 season.
US media reported Formula One teams were paying $US800 ($1220) to Miami police to escort star drivers and officials along the city’s gridlocked highways over the weekend of the grand prix.
Multiple sources say Farquhar would often counter or call out the expenditure billed by Glancey’s team at Atlassian functions and events, including a Las Vegas summit during which Glancey held a pre-wedding celebration.
“Scott said no, Mike said yes and overruled him,” another source said of Glancey’s request to fit the party in between formal Atlassian business. “Scott was always about equality, fairness and rules. Amy hated this.”
Another time, Glancey is understood to have organised a dinner for her group and other high-ranking officials, including Farquhar and Cannon-Brookes Atlassian sources claim, at a $2000-per-head restaurant in Vegas, when other staff were on a $80 daily per diem.
A source close to the company denied the group dined for $2000 per head, though given the Golden Globes awards were also being held at the time, there was a minimum spend enforced at most restaurants.
Several employee sources told The Australian they remained devoted to the Atlassian business, underscoring the foundational loyalty that still exists among many of its long-term hires.
“Atlassian is still an amazing place to work. The culture is still remarkable. Mike is actually a great leader. He’s just lost his challenger [in Scott],” one of them said.
Atlassian has long promoted the company as an attractive company to work for, including winning “Best places to work” status in Australia, the US, India and The Philippines.
The company once advocated: “Hire great people, give them the resources and freedom to do the best work of their lives and treat them so well they’ll never want to work anywhere else.”
But inside, the rise of the “assassins” has become a source of discontent, which Farquhar was said to be displeased about before he left.
“It was the most toxic workplace I’ve ever been in,” remarked one former executive.
One former staffer paid tribute to Glancey’s skill, saying: “She would take orders and she would execute on them. And she’s really good at what she does. She’s very smart, very insightful.”
The company’s monthly “town hall” discussions featuring all staff became a bone of contention, and unpopular questions allegedly led to “you being hunted down”.
“[So] the last run of the town hall had 90 per cent anonymous questions,” according to one source. Another said the only questions chopped were those that were rude or repetitive.
Decoding the CEOs
Glancey had worked at e-commerce marketplace Groupon in a communications role, before making the jump to Atlassian in 2016. She was promoted to become chief-of-staff in the office of the co-CEOs in late 2018.
Her LinkedIn profile includes career highlights such as coining the term “obligifting”, which has been described as gifting out of a sense of duty, and creating a movement around Fair Dinkum Power, a dig at then prime minister Scott Morrison’s pet name for coal in 2018. It was closed down a year later.
In a 2021 Sydney Morning Herald interview, Glancey described her role as “decoding how they [Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar] work, what they mean when they say something, how to be brave enough to tell Mike to stop talking”.
In the same article, Cannon-Brookes was quoted as saying: “Amy tells me how it is. No bullshit. Like a consigliere, she’s a close and trusted adviser.”
One source said Glancey “might push back on Mike, on certain things, but for the most part they were enablers. They would just do whatever Mike wanted. They would make sure it could happen.”
Another recalled how Glancey would in meetings use analogies that flattered Cannon-Brookes. “She would say, ‘Scott is the sort of football player who would do all the training during the week and turn up with his uniform looking perfect, but then Mike would turn up with his shirt out looking untidy but end up scoring the winning try’.”
When Farquhar resigned, Glancey posted: “So incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to be on part of this journey with you Scott Farquhar … I can’t wait to see where you turn your mind, heart and soul next.”
The Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar fallout became so cold that company insiders were blindsided by the leadership revamp. In the past, they had always found a way back.
But the last several years of their tenure together became bitterly complicated by their respective spouses and an ill-fated decision to buy adjacent mansions in Sydney’s Point Piper that now sit empty, one of them sold.
Farquhar spent his last day as co-CEO working remotely and celebrating at dinner with 50 friends and no Atlassian figures, including Cannon-Brookes, present.
Office expansion issues
Farquhar was never enthralled by the expansion of the office of the co-CEOs.
Glancey, described by one of the sources as a “powerbroker”, is alleged to have had discussions with Atlassian board members and told them Cannon-Brookes should be convinced to take power.
A source close to Atlassian management denied Glancey was “Team Mike”.
Regarding the possibility of both CEOs leaving executive life: “A plan was hatched for that not to happen,” another source said.
Farquhar’s suggestion both he and Cannon-Brookes move on would have left Australia’s biggest technology company looking for a new leader after a two-decade global success story.
The co-founders would have stayed on as board members and major shareholders under the proposal. The pair each have fortunes of about $25bn, much of which is tied up in Atlassian shares or proceeds from the parcels of stock they have sold since floating the company on the Nasdaq in 2015.
Instead, Farquhar is now a director and special adviser to Cannon-Brookes.
Farquhar is certainly the quieter of the pair, yet one source lamented that the leadership inside the company was unbalanced without him.
The same source said Farquhar and Cannon-Brookes remain “professional and civil”, and are “maybe not best buddies any more … that’s life”. Losing their spark was hardly unusual over the course of a multi-decade partnership, they added.
The Australian learned that the software billionaires were never that close to begin with, but their professional partnership was so effective that they fell into a narrative that emphasised the friendship as warmer and more loyal than it perhaps ever was. As they drifted, the narrative remained intact.
“If you step back, you have two guys who built their business on credit cards together. And then as you become successful, your lives diverge, and you become in some ways like your best mate becomes your worst enemy. Because they know each other so well, and love and hate can be so closely linked,” hypothesised one of the sources.
The more gregarious Cannon-Brookes is now entrenched at the $US50bn company they built together. In an Atlassian webinar this week promoting new enterprise software products, Cannon-Brookes riffed on the company’s Williams F1 sponsorship as a metaphor for teamwork.
“Let’s just say it’s much harder to be a really good driver in the rain. It makes it much more difficult. And hence, the really talented drivers tend to win more in wet conditions,” Cannon-Brookes told the tech crowd. He was referring to how wet weather races are tactically more sophisticated and the pressure falls on the pit crew to hit their marks.
Ultimately, two CEOs keeping an equal grip on power proved unworkable.
“It’s inevitable,” mused one of their former employees. “There’s only room for one on the throne.”
Know more? Email: williamsp@theaustralian.com.au, stensholtj@theaustralian.com.au
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