Australia's tech darling Atlassian has announced it will cut 1,600 workers globally, marking the largest layoff in Australian tech history and signaling that even homegrown success stories aren't immune to the industry's brutal restructuring.
The job cuts, reported by The Guardian, come as the Sydney-based software giant pivots hard toward artificial intelligence, joining a wave of tech companies betting everything on AI while slashing human headcount.
Co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes, who's worth an estimated $20 billion, framed the cuts as necessary for the company's "AI transformation." The company plans to redirect resources toward generative AI features for its flagship products - Jira, Confluence, and Trello.
Mate, here's what that means in practice: 1,600 people are losing their jobs so Atlassian can build chatbots into project management software.
The Australian tech community is reeling. Atlassian has long been held up as proof that Australia can build world-class tech companies without relocating to Silicon Valley. The company's Sydney headquarters and Melbourne offices have been talent magnets, attracting engineers from across the Asia-Pacific region.
Now those same workers are flooding LinkedIn with "open to work" badges.
"This is devastating for the local industry," one commenter wrote on the Australia subreddit. "Atlassian was supposed to be different - the Aussie company that actually valued its people." Another noted that with Sydney's astronomical cost of living, losing an Atlassian salary could force families to leave the city entirely.
