Sydney and Melbourne should end 'pointless' tech rivalry, urges Atlassian boss Cannon-Brookes

Atlassian boss Mike Cannon-Brookes has called for Sydney and Melbourne to end their tech rivalry and unite against global competitors as Australia loses 30,000 tech jobs.

Atlassian boss Mike Cannon-Brookes says ‘our competitors as cities or for talent, or whatever, they’re well outside the borders of Australia’.

Australia’s two biggest tech hubs, Sydney and Melbourne, must abandon their longstanding rivalry and unite to fight a much larger global battle, according to Atlassian chief executive Mike Cannon-Brookes.

Speaking at the launch of Atlassian’s new Melbourne office, the software billionaire argued that the traditional contest between the cities is “kind of pointless” in the context of the world’s rapidly accelerating digital economy.

“Our competitors as cities or for talent, or whatever, they’re well outside the borders of Australia,” Cannon-Brookes said. “It’s not like we should be fighting each other. It’s like some sort of regional battle that’s kind of pointless. We should think about Australia competing.”

It comes as Australia’s technology workforce has gone into reverse, derailing the Albanese government’s goal of creating 1.2 million tech jobs by 2030, and exposing a major weakness in its Future Made in Australia agenda.

The once-booming tech sector lost more than 30,000 positions in the 2025 financial year, the first contraction since 2020, with job numbers falling to 949,172, according to the Department of Industry, Science and Resources annual report.

Mr Cannon-Brookes’s advice? Rejected Americanised local branding like “Silicon Yarra”, which he said diminished Melbourne’s true potential by anchoring it to a foreign aspiration.

“I think Melbourne, it’s a bit like Sydney, right? We just need to claim who we are instead of trying to be someone in the future,” he said.

Mr Cannon-Brookes’s perspective is grounded in Atlassian’s own experience. The company’s explosive growth in Victoria, surged from “basically zero people in Victoria in 2020, to 650 today”.

Mr Cannon-Brookes said this growth was achieved through flexibility and a global talent focus via Atlassian’s Team Anywhere policy. He said this proved that local talent was available, provided Australia was willing to meet it on its own terms.

“Tech is the largest industry in the world, it is also growing very fast. It is outstripping the other industries.

“We have a chance to compete with other countries to get more of that talent. “We should be thinking about how are we faring against Germany, Ireland, Singapore. What are they doing? And what are we doing? And are we keeping pace?”

Cannon-Brookes believes that the technology industry is rapidly on track to become the largest fundamental industry in Australia. But to fully capitalise on this boom, the country must foster a comprehensive national ecosystem. This means growing a broad range of technical skills — from AI and engineering to design, product development, and highly specific technical sales — not just getting “caught on our coding.”

Crucially, his call to look outwards extends beyond the start-up world. While he praised the homegrown technology creation scene for batting “well above our weight” globally, he issued a warning about traditional industries. Research and development spending in these sectors is “not keeping pace with the rest of the world,” an area he identified as the long-term “worrying thing.”

He said the national tech ambition, therefore, relies on two fronts: the homegrown tech companies continuing to scale, and the banks, insurance firms, and manufacturers embracing a deeper technological bent. Both require a united front on talent attraction and development that transcends the traditional Sydney-Melbourne rivalry.