Atlassian to axe 500 jobs ‘with the heaviest of hearts’

theguardian.com:

Australian software company Atlassian will cut about 500 jobs, representing 5% of its workforce, becoming the latest tech company to announce large layoffs amid souring economic conditions.

Co-founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar said in a staff memo that they were announcing the cuts “with the heaviest of hearts”.

“To those who are leaving us: we are deeply sorry,” they said in the note, disclosed as a regulatory filing in the US.

The US$45bn Nasdaq-listed company and one of Australia’s most successful startups found a niche in developing software that allows teams to coordinate resources on complex projects.

It is the latest tech company to announce significant redundancies amid inflation-fuelled pressure on business and household spending.

Video conference company Zoom, payments portal PayPal and music streaming service Spotify are among those to reveal large layoffs in 2023.

Google’s parent company cut about 12,000 jobs in January, shortly after Microsoft cut 10,000, citing shifts in digital spending habits and broader economic weaknesses. Facebook owner Meta revealed similar cuts late last year.

The layoff tracker run by TrueUp Tech puts the total number of global job cuts in the sector at more than 160,000 this year, which is already two-thirds the number recorded during all of 2022.

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The reduction in roles is probably higher given many tech companies have not been replacing staff members who have resigned.

Atlassian’s cuts come just months after a recruitment drive, showing the volatility of a sector that tends to record extraordinary growth and sharp pullbacks, depending on economic conditions.

Many tech