Atlassian terminates 150 staff

https://www.cyberdaily.au/digital-transformation/12441-atlassian-terminates-150-staff-with-pre-recorded-video-will-be-largely-replaced-by-ai

by speckx • 12 months ago

220 166 12 months ago

cyberdaily.au

gnabgib• 12 months ago

Small discussion (5 points, 2 days ago, 10 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44740709

andrewstuart2• 12 months ago

It's a pretty impersonal way to announce layoffs but I think they all tend to be impersonal. I do think the 6 months of pay says a lot more than the fact that they used a video.

SoftTalker2• 12 months ago

Yeah the severance is nice but the execution is lame. If you don't have the balls to tell an employee to his or her face that they don't have a job anymore, you shouldn't be a manager or executive. Maybe it's a very distributed team, I guess then there's isn't a great way to do that.

geodel3• 12 months ago

If you don't have the balls to tell an employee to his or her face that they don't...

This is just bullshit. Managers don't have to do any such thing as it may become unnecessarily confrontational. Similarly lot of people resign via email. There is no need to have "guts" to tell manager in their face.

mingus88• 12 months ago

150 people is huge. The logistics of doing this in person just don’t make sense.

Are you going to send out hundreds of calendar invites spread across weeks for the sole purpose of being nice to people? Are affected employees expected to queue up to get their personal “you’re fired” before their access is cut?

dennis_jeeves2• 12 months ago

If you don't have the balls to tell an employee to his or her face that they don't have a job anymore, you shouldn't be a manager or executive.

What if your balls get ripped off? Just saying...

neilv2• 12 months ago

Maybe it's a very distributed team, I guess then there's isn't a great way to do that.

If you want to do it all at once, for all time zones... If there's overlapping "core hours" for different time zones, or you can schedule an all-hands videoconf time, you can do it then. Or do one for the global West, and one for the global East (which will have different cultural nuances anyway, and possibly separate management structures).

It's not that different than in-office. Except, for in-office, remaining colleagues see a person boxing up their stuff and walking out with their stuff in a box, or (worse) security escorting the people off the property. And then there's usually the desk of a terminate colleague there as a visual reminder for awhile.

One in-office layoff I saw, they arranged for all the people to be laid off to have impromptu meetings with their managers, and to go to conference rooms, at the same time... and then notified everyone still at their desks to go to an all-(remaining)-hands meeting, in a different office space, where they were told of the layoffs. Most of the axed people were already gone when the others returned. It might have been good intentions, but I'm not sure that was a good move.

It's a tricky problem, whether in-office or remote. Partly because the situation isn't right. ICs are more often let go because management failed, rather than any fault of the ICs.

jfengel• 12 months ago

Doing that for 150 people is a pretty long, ugly day, while everybody waited for their turn.

You could gather everybody in the same room, and announce it there, but that's still not really face-to-face.

Delegating it to their direct managers is even worse. They're generally not the ones who made the decision. Even if they were the ones who submitted a list of their people they could live without, it was the higher-ups who approved the layoff en masse.

There's just not a great way to give bad news. A video sucks, but it attracts attention only because it's different from the other sucky ways people do it.

themadturk• 12 months ago

I worked for Weyerhaeuser, a major US forest products firm in the Seattle area during the early 2000s. In 2009 they decided to get out of the forestry products business and become nothing more than a land owner. Multiple thousands of workers were let go. At least at the company headquarters, managers met with every worker to tell them whether they'd been laid off or not. The announcement came in the summer, a couple of months before the actual lay-off date, and salary and benefits were extended until year end. It was by far the most humane layoff I'd ever experienced.

belter2• 12 months ago

What about if they upgrade it to 12 months, and a fire by SMS ?

ozgrakkurt• 12 months ago

Pretty sure vast majority of people would prefer that

Hammershaft2• 12 months ago

If a company is bigger than Dunbar's Number I would absolutely take that trade as a prospective employee!

I think firing by SMS also serves the noble purpose of illustrating to prospective employees that these are purely transactional relationships and that, no, this isn't a family, the exec's heart will not bleed.

notahacker• 12 months ago

Make it 24 months and most people will be happy being fired with a robocalled "fuck you"...

pmkary• 12 months ago

I actually have seen a very random company who fired its employees by SMS in the middle of the night... And not a single penny of severance packaging. They only got their last payment and that was it. It's a shame I forgot the company name to have them face some shame here...

WesolyKubeczek2• 12 months ago

I think it still sucks but at least it’s not made to look personal but not really.

When you were sorting your damn spreadsheet where I ranked at the bottom, you cared zilch; you could give my cognitive abilities some credit by not pretending you suddenly got infected with empathy or something.

xp845• 12 months ago

I realize that it sucks to be laid off. But business really is just business and it has nothing to do with how much any person values you. You would rightfully stop working immediately if your company can't pay you even for a week. They stop employing you if it no longer makes economic sense. It's the same thing in the reverse.

I could be told tomorrow to lay off some or all of the people who report to me if we can't afford to pay them. I'd hate it, I'd cry and feel sick and not be able to sleep all night wishing I could avoid it. I know that from experience. Nobody wants that and even CEOs feel like shit when they implement layoffs.

The alternative to having the 2-sided at-will employment system would need to be a two-way commitment, which seems far worse. Would you want to work under a system where everyone was expected to honor a 3-year employment contract, and to renew it like a New York apartment lease? So that you can't accept a new higher-paying job because you're committed to your company for 2 more years? And if you quit your job "early" you could be sued or be ruled as unemployable by future employers?

I don't see how there is much practical room between "anyone can terminate the relationship at any time and it's not personal" and "2-way long-term commitment and neither party can."

Hammershaft2• 12 months ago

Yeah I'm personally against the spectacle of empathy theater for layoffs at companies that long outgrew Dunbar's Number. The actual quality of severance packages and the dignity / professionalism of the process should be more central to how the public responds to these layoffs.

Seattle3503• 12 months ago

When I was laid off I was cutoff from all my colleagues because my Slack was cut. In fact everything was cut in the middle of my standup and I just dropped out of my Zoom call. I think you can be big and still grant dignity and closure to folks.

AlexandrB• 12 months ago

Doesn't a pre-recorded video speak to dignity (or lack thereof)?

RowanH• 12 months ago

In New Zealand we have an absolutely shit employment law process where the company has to 'propose' a restructure (in a formal fashion). Then 'consult' with employees for feedback. Then 'consider' the feedback. And then 99% of the time it's all just the same and people get made redundant.

It is absolutely brutal as it invites the chance of hope during the downsizing - and implies staff will be able to provide alternative suggestions. Which is quite plainly bananas.

It's enshrined in law and if you don't follow the process as an employer you can get taken to task by the governing body around it.

It's just far easier, and less harmful emotionally, to rip the band aid and provide a good package.

brk• 12 months ago

At this point a firing or layoff might as well just be a text message: "You're fired. K, thx, bye". Any words beyond that are just fluff anyway. To the person getting let go, it really doesn't matter if the decision caused the CEO to get ulcers, or if it was the easiest decision ever. Executive teams only take responsibility in words.

Someone12342• 12 months ago

I understand your point, but employees do need to know a lot of important information that cannot be communicated like that e.g. health/dental benefit lapse, severance, references, etc.

It is actually really important in mass layoffs to have this information immediately to hand.

drozycki• 12 months ago

Why bother with a text? Just lock them out of their accounts. They'll figure it out.

The termination ritual is for the people that stay and who the company may wish to hire in the future.

gosub100• 12 months ago

according to this, a 2024 tesla layoff just locked people out the building:

https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-staff-locked-out-layoffs

gtirloni• 12 months ago

Humans don't work like that. Empathy is a thing.

hn_throwaway_993• 12 months ago

Thank you. I always get frustrated whenever there are layoffs that everyone pounces on "but they didn't say exactly the right things, in exactly the right way, exactly how I expected!"

Layoffs suck, period. Like the good advice goes when starting a new relationship "Just ignore everything they say, and only focus on what they do." A generous severance package is loads more important than nitpicking the format of the layoff announcement. Plus, Atlassian famously has a global, distributed team that embraced remote work. Someone somewhere is getting the recorded clip regardless.

ReptileMan• 12 months ago

"but they didn't say exactly the right things, in exactly the right way, exactly how I expected!"

There is no right way to lay off someone. Only different shades of bad.

dyauspitr4• 12 months ago

It’s just a way of punishing a company for layoffs, probably a good thing because you want companies to be scared of layoffs.

gchamonlive• 12 months ago

My last layoff was a lot more impersonal and they still called me.

I had expressed a couple of months before my desire to leave. They then called me to say it was "a hard decision but it was best for the company to let me go".

I almost laughed. How hard is it really to let someone go that wants to go?

Worse than using a pre-recorded video is doing a live meeting with a default script. These corpocrats are like robots.

nomel• 12 months ago

These corpocrats are like robots.

I'm from the US, so employment here is at will. There were layoffs at every company that I worked for, and are entirely expect by anyone what has worked a while, when the economy turns down a bit.

Out of them all, the "red envelope on your desk" was the best approach, in my opinion. It let people have a moment to themselves to react to and accept something that they were, at that point, unable to change. Then, the manager would have one-on-one with everyone, to explain the packages. In my opinion, I wouldn't want a manager to tell me. It would be awkward and unnecessary, since it's usually entirely out of their control.

burnt-resistor• 12 months ago

Meta did/does layoffs by email (rather than internal messaging because it disconnects access to everything) and makes everyone in the company WfH that day. Devices get FedEx'ed back. Zero communication other than "Sorry, not sorry" impersonal boilerplate.

blitzar2• 12 months ago

Stay classy Atlassian

geodel3• 12 months ago

You have issues, you open JIRA ticket.

fHr2• 12 months ago

Now thats the spirit!

flappyeagle2• 12 months ago

If I got laid off I would want it in an email. I’m losing my job no matter what might as well have it in writing and no bullshit

sokoloff2• 12 months ago

Pretty much this. I have a great relationship with my boss. If the time comes where he needs to let me go, I need 2 words from him [which could be in email] and then the only things I care about that day are the details of the severance.

No disrespect given nor received, but this is all business at that point. Some other day, we can work out any transition plan we need to work through and I'll happily hang out with him socially afterwards, but the things I need from the company at that moment are the severance details, nothing else. Emailed attachments are perfect.

blitzar2• 12 months ago

If I got laid off (by Alassian) I would want it in the form of a JIRA ticket assigned to me.

renewiltord• 12 months ago

1% layoff, 6 months severance. There, saved you the trouble.

herval• 12 months ago

honestly this is the least cruel layoff I've seen in recent years. At least someone went through the trouble of recording a video (instead of dismissing people with a chatgpt-generated email) and it includes a 6-month payout...

froggertoaster• 12 months ago

6 months severance speaks volumes more about this layoff than the video does.

kulahan• 12 months ago

Interesting how this is downvoted when the top comment is essentially saying the same thing.

nsksl• 12 months ago

How exactly should they be terminated? 150 1:1 meetings?

belter2• 12 months ago

I suggest a coding challenge, and the first five to submit it and pass the functional tests can stay?

nartho• 12 months ago

Accounting and marketing are not going to be happy.

jesol• 12 months ago

Yes.

fkyoureadthedoc2• 12 months ago

Not only should my boss behave like he's putting down the family dog, I should be able to face my VP in single combat with my weapon of choice.

tuesdaynight• 12 months ago

I know your comment is going to be deleted because HN is not the place for these kind of comment, but you made me laugh loudly, so thank you.

amlib• 12 months ago

Best we can do is a 20 frag limit quake 3 deathmatch duel in q3dm17

BeFlatXIII• 12 months ago

This but without the irony.

h4ck_th3_pl4n3t• 12 months ago

I suggest a monster truck derby battle.

And we'll call it "Rehabilitation"

pablobaz• 12 months ago

That could work. 15 managers doing 10 1:1 meetings each isn't so hard. It can get tricky with people being on vacation etc. But very possible and normal.

cyberpunk2• 12 months ago

Have you ever had to do these? 10 back to back layoffs is a rough day. I had to do 5 in one day once and had to seek out a very expensive hangover.

Sucks for everyone. I’ve been laid off by email, it’s fine.

Someone12342• 12 months ago

What if their direct manager was also terminated? It could result in a manager's manager having such a large cohort as it to take several days while employees wait to see if they're fired or not (word would get out immediately).

quietbritishjim• 12 months ago

That's not so good for the people remaining, or even those laid off but later in the queue. Once the first person gets laid off, everyone will know it's happening and be wondering whether they're included. You're just dragging out the suspense over the hours or (more likely) days those meetings take place, rather than getting it out of the way in a few minutes. That's probably worse than the dubious joy of a personalised message about your termination.

(Though, here in the UK, redundancy procedures can take weeks, so a few days is not much compared to that.)

kimos2• 12 months ago

This is how I have seen it done. You end up with managers firing people they do not know, and employees getting 15 min meeting invites and knowing what it means. But it’s much more compassionate and human.

bloodyplonker22• 12 months ago

A JIRA ticket with hundreds of legal dependencies.

MBCook4• 12 months ago

Well they certainly shouldn’t tell everyone that a bunch of people are being fired and then to just wait and sit around and see if you get the email of doom.

jcotton42• 12 months ago

At least a live mass meeting.

NitpickLawyer• 12 months ago

I swear there was a post not to long ago about a company that laid off a lot of employees in a live meeting, and it went badly, and people in the comments were saying "a prerecorded video would have been better". The duality of Internet forums, I guess...

kelseyfrog• 12 months ago

[JIRA] Your boss assigned HR-5678 to you.

HR: Atlassian / HR-5678

Acknowledge Receipt of Your Termination Notice

chrisco2553• 12 months ago

I was at Atlassian when a major product was cancelled which was based in the Austin office and MCB flew out to Austin to deliver the news that some would be laid off and others reassigned. I think a town hall over video chat would have been fine.

fullstackwife• 12 months ago

This is inconsequence!

Hipchat/Stride was a flop, because it was a poor product, poorly executed. Switch to Slack was a huge relief for everyone.

Atlassian support engineers used to be the best part of the service. Poor products + Great support = made Atlassian great

fHr2• 12 months ago

Yes? Wtf

flappyeagle2• 12 months ago

1% layoff why does this even matter. They have more than that in natural attrition in a quarter

MBCook4• 12 months ago

I suspect it’s more about how they gave the announcement than the size of the layoff itself.

Plus general AI hate, and they’re obviously blaming this on not needing people because of AI.

dpedu• 12 months ago

I don't see what AI has to do with the layoff story. The first mention of AI is "The company has also embedded AI in its customer contact form" and it appears the author decided to include this for no apparent reason.

The article also has a footnote stating "Updated to remove claims of AI replacing jobs." so I suppose there was probably a stronger - but still invented by the author - claim included that has since been removed.

criemen• 12 months ago

Presumably because the layoff is targeted at a specific (set of) teams in customer service, rather than a 1% haircut across the company?

fkyoureadthedoc2• 12 months ago

6 months severance is very good compared to my last company who gave people a week per year of service when they had layoffs. They did have the direct manager personally deliver the news, but I'd take a slap across the face from the CEO for that 6 months if I was looking at a couple weeks.

andoando• 12 months ago

Give me 6 months severance and I'd be unhappy if I didn't get laid off.

deanmoriarty• 12 months ago

Seriously, someone laying me off right now with 6 months severance could be one of the best things that ever happened to me.

bgnn2• 12 months ago

If it is about the European office as the article mentions, specifically the Netherlands office, 6 months severance is quite low as the layoff is due to an arbitrary reason (moving to AI) instead of a necessary reason (financial difficulties). I would sue them if it was me, get minimum a year pay as severance.

justsomehnguy2• 12 months ago

A couple of questions:

a) why a year? why a 6 months is not enough?

b) if this was a burger joint and people were replaced with a robots would you require a year too?

tartoran• 12 months ago

employees they would have to wait 15 minutes for an email about their employment. Those who were terminated had their laptops blocked immediately.

So you get an email explaining you were made redundant and halfway through reading that your laptop locks itself out?

MBCook4• 12 months ago

I took it as they said you’d get an email in 15 minutes but immediately (before then) locked your computer so you wouldn’t be able to read it anyway.

Telling people “wait to see if you’re fired” is absolutely cruel. Hold a virtual meeting, even if it’s just to play a video, and hit send on all those emails the instant it’s over.

What a horrible thing to do to people. Can’t even do it yourself? Gotta pre-record it?

genidoi• 12 months ago

is absolutely cruel.
What a horrible thing

They offered 6 months severance which dispels any serious notion of 'cruelty'. Substance over form.

maccard• 12 months ago

and hit send on all those emails the instant it’s over.

Ever sent an email and not had it arrive instantly? 15 minutes is enough wiggle room to clarify that.

dmoy• 12 months ago

Presumably it was sent to both corporate and personal email addresses?

deathanatos2• 12 months ago

I have yet, in my entire career, to work for an employer that was at all disciplined about sending email that needs to address me, in the capacity of my employment, to the right email address. They almost all default to internal.

When I was involved in a mass layoff, all of the emails went to an email that was going to be cut off.

meindnoch• 12 months ago

Startup idea: developing a custom login screen for each OS, that is able to display a farewell video, so the user can be immediately locked out.

jrockway• 12 months ago

Microsoft is working on this because they'd be the primary user.

makr17• 12 months ago

Better than one company I was at. Wednesday-evening meeting to announce that there will be layoffs. "If you are affected you will receive an email by 7am EST tomorrow." Which I summarized in slack as

"Sleep well Wesley, I'll likely kill you in the morning."

Nobody is getting good sleep that night, at least until the doom hour has passed without an email.

tiffanyh• 12 months ago

Genuinely curious: for remote based company with large numbers of employees - what is the best way to handle this?

Note: you typically want it to all happen on the same day, which makes it impractical for someone in HR to call 150 separate people.

Note2: I’m not saying I agree with how this was handled. Just curious.

evrimoztamur• 12 months ago

Soon we shall see headlines of AI HR personnel being deployed to appropriately 'therapise the employees and mentor them for future opportunities' and HR companies which coordinate them for you. The second extreme that follows is one where we do away with HR and operate on a perfectly managed gig market where you will be hired and fired automatically!

al_borland• 12 months ago

Why would being remote mater? If a typical on-site situation would involve HR and your manager bringing you into an office to tell you, I'd assume a remote situation would be the same, just over a video call instead of having to walk down to an office. It shouldn't really take any more time.

gopher_space• 12 months ago

Tell your employees as soon as the idea pops into your head, and make sure they know there'll be something in it for them if they stick around until then. A layoff in nine months gives people time to plan.

Sort of a moot point though. Laying off spooled-up knowledge workers is probably the stupidest thing you could do if you're creating software and not investment opportunities.

ardit33• 12 months ago

Well, at least it is a video. Meta had its layoffs with emails when they did all those rounds in 22-23 and 24. You got an email if you were safe, and another if you were terminated plus some links to some portal etc. Plus, there was some video/zoom call for some I think.

Anyways... modern corp culture, don't expect too much from larger companies. Once a company grows beyond a certain limit, it becomes impersonal as it has to.

kazinator• 12 months ago

Every problem I ever had with an Atlassian product turned out to be related to an unimplemented 5+ year old feature request.

A simple chatbot could pass along that information.

betaby• 12 months ago

“Every person should be using AI daily for as many things as they can.”

and not Atlassian products , but that part didn't make it to the final cut.

xp845• 12 months ago

In case anyone was wondering, the "CSS Team" described in the video's title is Customer Service & Support, rather than Cascading Style Sheets.

My personal hope based on their products' performance would be that they hire some people who know how to make performant code, but that's clearly never going to happen.

nwmcsween• 12 months ago

Sadly the time when an org wanted people to excel and really grow at is over, the new normal is peak capitalism of maximizing value.

People develop relationships with coworkers, you care if someone has issues, you're happy if a solution makes customers/coworkers happy but none of that matters to the lawnmower, it just mows lawns.

giancarlostoro• 12 months ago

So let me get this straight, they emailed what? 12,000 employees, and told them they would be fired or not in about 15 minutes? Please tell me they didn't email 12,000 employees this ticking time bomb of a revelation. If I were at Atlassian and survived the lay offs I would be sprucing up my resume. There's no good way to lay off people, but this is even worse.

sokoloff2• 12 months ago

At a consulting company I worked at, we were told on Wednesday that layoffs affecting around 1/3 of the company would happen on Thursday and Friday and that the company was paying for an all-company event at a nearby pub-restaurant where the execs and senior managers did not attend, but most of the company did.

Much emotion, team reminiscing, and a fair amount of drinking happened and it was an interesting but honestly pretty decent way to handle it I thought. I was largely indifferent to whether I was in the 2/3 or 1/3 and ended up quitting on my own a couple months later.

Animats• 12 months ago

Have we had the first layoff announced by an AI yet?

xcke• 12 months ago

I think the layoff sucks, but there are proper ways to communicate it, and this was not the right way. The proper process is for the manager to carry out this sensitive procedure—quickly, but with empathy. (I'm not a manager, but I'm sure it's easy to be a "Happiness Manager"; the coin has two sides.) Even if individual meetings weren't possible, they could have just held a 150-to-1 live session. Saying the exact same thing as the video would have been different. Why? Because it wouldn't be a pre-recorded video. For those who are willing to accept an employer sending a goodbye SMS, I have to wonder how much commitment you really had to that workplace. If you had none, fine, who cares. But if your commitment was more than just a transactional job, like someone selling groceries from 8:00 to 17:00, I don't think you'd want to work for a company that follows such processes.

MortyWaves• 12 months ago

There’s something oddly fitting about the company that forced the Jira monopoly on so many companies also being cruel and cold with prerecorded firing videos.

jasonephraim• 12 months ago

The people being laid off didn't get told by a video. The video was sent to the general staff and informed everyone that those who were being let go would get an email direct to them shortly after.

So, they announced the layoffs with a pre-recorded video versus a company-wide meeting - or - as is more common in my experience: No warning or explanation beforehand.

nielsbot• 12 months ago

"Why Nintendo's Satoru Iwata refuses to lay off staff"

"If we reduce the number of employees for better short-term financial results, employee morale will decrease," he said. "I sincerely doubt employees who fear that they may be laid off will be able to develop software titles that could impress people around the world."

https://www.polygon.com/2013/7/5/4496512/why-nintendos-sator...

Just something to think about. I get that every company is different.

hakfoo• 12 months ago

This is Atlassian. The only way their software impresses people is with how bad it is.

cr125rider• 12 months ago

You don’t choose atlassian, you end up on atlassian. Just like M365.

cbsmith• 12 months ago

Is there a good way to lay off 150 people?

heybales• 12 months ago

This is good news for customers though. I'm sure those savings will be passed on, right? Right?

jlarocco2• 12 months ago

LOL! Passed on to the AI company is more like it.

Because their software never gets tired of giving you the run around, while actual people do.

stego-tech• 12 months ago

Yet another tech company sacrifices perfectly useful labor while earning $1.1bn in profit last quarter rather than retraining or reallocating that labor elsewhere within the organization and reducing recruitment costs - costs which will surely be higher, now that they've joined their counterparts in shoving their reputation into a rusty woodchipper.

Unnecessary actions that squander scarce resources (trust, labor that understands the enterprise and its customers) in the name of vague platitudes about AI and shareholder returns. Almost like none of these people actually know how to manage an organization for any length of time longer than a fiscal year.

sour-taste• 12 months ago

Best of luck to all employees. I almost accepted an offer there but decided to go elsewhere. The remote work was very appealing.

kyleee• 12 months ago

I wish they’d lay off Jira

dvfjsdhgfv• 12 months ago

“Every person should be using AI daily for as many things as they can.”

This is getting even more ridiculous than I had previously expected.

thealistra• 12 months ago

Couldn’t they add a ChatGPT like bot that would answer questions about confluence or jira content as first AI feature instead of adding unhelpful chatbots for customer support

Atlassian terminates 150 staff

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