[HN Gopher] Atlassian terminates 150 staff
___________________________________________________________________
Atlassian terminates 150 staff
Author : speckx
Score : 184 points
Date : 2025-08-01 19:21 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cyberdaily.au)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cyberdaily.au)
| gnabgib wrote:
| Small discussion (5 points, 2 days ago, 10 comments)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44740709
| andrewstuart2 wrote:
| 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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| 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.
| geodel wrote:
| > 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.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| I mean, if you want to burn a bridge you can do so.
| Sometimes it's warranted. However, if you have a good
| relationship with your manager then it's absolutely ideal
| to tell it to their face (or with a 1 on 1 call). It's not
| about guts it's about mutual respect. Likewise for layoffs.
| geodel wrote:
| Right. If situation allows doing face to face is nice.
| But thing as they are lately doing via canned message or
| email is perfectly fine and one need not think any less
| of manager or employee just based on their communication
| method.
| ilc wrote:
| You can do both. You should ALWAYS write a formal
| resignation letter that's about 3 lines at most, before
| talking to the manager.
|
| It just stops a ton of confusion, hope, etc. It allows that
| discussion to focus on "Do you want the two weeks?" and
| "What do you want me to do with those two weeks if you want
| them."
|
| Part of being a good employee is making things clear to
| your manager.
| mingus88 wrote:
| 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?
| rdoherty wrote:
| I worked at Yahoo in 2008 when they laid off thousands and
| yes every single person got a calendar invite and met in a
| meeting room 1:1 with a manager. It was difficult but they
| did it. Times definitely have changed.
| xp84 wrote:
| Wow, just the logistics of that is impressive. I feel
| like I would watch a 60-minute documentary on pulling
| that together because it no doubt took dozens or hundreds
| of people weeks of logistics to do that, and unlike
| almost any other major project, literally no one involved
| was happy about any part of it.
| resize2996 wrote:
| Doing unhappy work at Yahoo probably wasn't unusual in
| 2008
| xmprt wrote:
| Did the people who got a calendar invite know that they
| were getting laid off in advance?
| Macha wrote:
| I worked at Yahoo some years later and the process was
| the same when I was there.
|
| Yes, people generally put two and two together when there
| was a calendar invite with their manager and HR.
|
| We were in a European office though, so layoffs aren't
| American-style "escorted from the office with immediate
| effect".
| rdoherty wrote:
| Not explicitly, but there were rumors a few days before.
| Also the signs were there: every single meeting room was
| booked, meeting rooms all had water & tissues, etc.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Needing to cut 150 people suggests _catastrophic_
| mismanagement. I get that workloads change, orgs pivot,
| business has to do business shit, but if you 've missed
| your headcount requirement for whatever work you needed to
| do by a HUNDRED AND FIFTY PEOPLE!? What even.
|
| Management and leadership is practically a lost art these
| days, so many organizations are just filled with managers
| who haven't the first fucking idea how to actually manage
| people.
|
| All that said to be like: "Well how SHOULD we correctly
| fire 150 people?" I dunno, to me that's like saying how do
| I hit a tree with my car in such a way as to make sure I'm
| not paralyzed? Like so much has already gone wrong to bring
| you to where this is a pertinent question that I don't
| think there's really a right answer at this point, there's
| just gradations of bad.
| throwaway7783 wrote:
| 150 people is less than 1.5% of their total number of
| employees (12,157 per google) . That is not a
| catastrophic overestimation.
| signatoremo wrote:
| "catastrophic mismanagement", "a HUNDRED AND FIFTY
| PEOPLE?". What is it with all the hyperbole on HN?
|
| Atlassian grew from 3,600 people in 2019 to 12.100 in
| 2024. Triple in 5 years. Some adjustments are expected.
| Sucks to lose your job, but you might not have it in the
| first place.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1276817/atlassian-
| number...
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| The total headcount is irrelevant. What specific
| department overshot their required headcount by a hundred
| and fifty? Reviewing TFA, it's customer service and the
| context of it leans to being mass layoffs as Altlassan
| anticipates replacing those reps with LLM, which I'm sure
| Altlassan customers are simply _thrilled_ about, and
| related, means the CEO 's heartfelt message is even more
| hollow.
|
| So, I will fully grant that my original statement doesn't
| really matter here; this wasn't a department that over-
| scaled to meet a project that didn't exist, this is in
| fact, the far shittier kind of layoffs: the ones that are
| a direct result of a company taking by all accounts a
| fully functioning department and taking an axe to it to
| improve their bottom line in 6 months, trading
| experienced workers who likely have relationships with
| their clients for soulless chatbots for their customers
| to now argue with.
|
| So yes, I fully acknowledge I was wrong, and also, this
| is shittier than I assumed without reading. Take that how
| you will.
| thrawa8387336 wrote:
| The "logistics"? What logistics, they're not going to build
| a base in Mars. It's a non-problem for any half competent
| manager/executive
| deathanatos wrote:
| Yes.
|
| I've been through a group, but face-to-face, layoff. 150
| people in that scenario would be very doable if you split
| that into like 3 groups.
|
| 1:1 would be even better, and I think that ought to be
| doable, too, yes.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| I will say 1:1 layoffs are very tricky logistically, and
| can be less humane in some ways.
|
| If a manager has several layoffs to do, you have people
| waiting on pins and needles for the dreaded calendar
| invite over a few hours or even days.
|
| In a layoff, it's important to do it humanely, quickly,
| and let people settle down as soon as you can. It's bad
| for both the laid off and the remaining employees you
| have a trickle layoffs happening over a longer period of
| time... it's less bad if you rip the bandaid off quickly.
|
| You want to be able to say to your team, "Hey guys, we
| had a layoff this morning, and everyone affected has
| already been notified. It's all done at this point -
| everyone in this room is not affected."
|
| If I hear through the grapevine there's a layoff
| happening this morning, and my manager schedules a
| surprise 1:1 with me in a few hours because he has a few
| of them to do, I'm going to be a wreck between now and
| then.
| jlarocco wrote:
| I was once laid off in a group of about 50, and we were all
| invited to a conference room meeting to be laid off in-
| person by some higher up director, and a group of our
| managers. This was long before remote work was popular, and
| we were all on site, though.
|
| Second time was smaller (maybe 10 people) and fully remote,
| and I had a surprise meeting with my direct manager over
| video chat.
|
| I personally don't care so much about how the message is
| delivered, and more about severance, but it's interesting
| to see how different people handle the situation
| differently. Makes you wonder what alternatives they
| considered that they decided a pre-recorded message was
| best.
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| > 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...
| neilv wrote:
| > _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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I was part of one mass layoff. They had two meetings at our
| site, one for the people being retained and one for the
| people being let go. We had an idea what was happening but
| you didn't know until your meeting started which group you
| were in. It was done in person though not via a video
| message.
| xp84 wrote:
| > the situation isn't right. ICs are more often let go
| because management failed, rather than any fault of the
| ICs.
|
| That is pretty much guaranteed to happen though, unless you
| have a system where the assumption is employment for life
| at all costs. Management's job is to make decisions, many
| decisions won't work out, and for some of those, the
| consequences mean some change in what roles are going to be
| needed. Sometimes it's a management _success_ that means a
| certain role isn 't needed too ("we successfully rolled out
| software to book business trips, so we don't need 17 travel
| bookers anymore").
|
| And anyway, let's stipulate that managers should also be
| punished by being sacked for any big mistake: That wouldn't
| save ICs, since if you're, say, pivoting away from making
| furniture, you still don't need the furniture makers, even
| if you sack the "VP of Furniture" or the CEO. And it'd be
| stupid to appoint a new VP of Furniture over and over to
| keep trying to 'make furniture happen' just to save the
| jobs.
| neilv wrote:
| These are traditional textbook examples for layoffs, of
| the kind told to impressionable young aspiring
| economists. Sometimes they are true.
|
| Often, the company actually still needs those skills for
| what it's doing, but it's a bean-counter move, to
| "appease investors". Knowing that this will put more
| pressure on remaining employees, and also knowing that
| they'll soon be hiring for the same roles.
|
| This is another way it's not right. There's little sense
| of obligation to the employee.
| jfengel wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| belter wrote:
| What about if they upgrade it to 12 months, and a fire by SMS ?
| ozgrakkurt wrote:
| Pretty sure vast majority of people would prefer that
| Hammershaft wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Make it 24 months and most people will be happy being fired
| with a robocalled "fuck you"...
| pmkary wrote:
| 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...
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| 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.
| xp84 wrote:
| 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."
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Yeah, I was just musing on some companies trying to make
| "dear John" talks when laying people off. I prefer to work
| where I might be dehumanized, but with everybody being
| honest about it.
|
| > The alternative to having the 2-sided at-will employment
| system would need to be a two-way commitment, which seems
| far worse.
|
| You probably just haven't tried it, or have little
| knowledge of how it works in practice, because your example
| is way radical. Learn about the actual conditions under
| which it works over here in Europe (you don't get locked in
| to a duration of employment, the notice period in Poland,
| for example, may be up to 3 months if you worked at one
| place for three years or more -- to give time for knowledge
| transfer).
| Hammershaft wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Doesn't a pre-recorded video speak to dignity (or lack
| thereof)?
| duskwuff wrote:
| Any announcement of a mass layoff is going to be a one-way
| conversation regardless of how it's conveyed. (A 150+
| person conference call with the participants unmuted would
| inevitably be a fiasco.) Making it available to employees
| as a prerecorded video does at least mean that it's likely
| to be better rehearsed, and that the recipients can listen
| to it at their own pace, e.g. by pausing to take notes.
| RowanH wrote:
| 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.
| jopsen wrote:
| Might it not depend on the industry?
|
| I've heard of unionized factory workers negotiate lower
| salaries to keep the shop open. Granted that was Europe.
| markdown wrote:
| > ...and implies staff will be able to provide alternative
| suggestions. Which is quite plainly bananas.
|
| Why is that bananas? When covid hit my country, the
| national airline fired ~90% of flight attendants. They had
| been willing to be put on leave with 0 pay until the
| airline needed them again, but the airline wasn't
| interested in that. They were very happy to have an excuse
| to get rid of these long-serving employees and hire fresh-
| faced 18-25yr olds on starter salaries in their stead.
|
| Having a mandated process like you mentioned (maybe for
| companies with more than 50 employees) could have made a
| massive difference in an instance like this.
|
| The flight attendants in my example eventually all got
| their jobs back, but only after a years-long legal battle
| during which some lost their homes and most had a very
| tough time.
| brk wrote:
| 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.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| 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.
| xienze wrote:
| They email you said documents or a link to an employee
| services website.
| paxys wrote:
| I'd much rather get a link to all this information than sit
| while an HR drone recites it to me for 10 minutes.
| drozycki wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| according to this, a 2024 tesla layoff just locked people out
| the building:
|
| https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-staff-locked-out-layoffs
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >"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.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| Yep, only worse and less worse
|
| just make it fast and not painful at least
| armada651 wrote:
| There are right ways and wrong ways to lay off someone.
| They aren't determined by words, but by actions.
|
| If the company has a healthy cashflow it can afford to give
| the employees that have been laid off a larger runway in
| terms of how many months of salary they will still pay out.
| If you've given them stock options, you can give them more
| time to decide whether to exercise the vested option.
|
| I'd gladly take a "Good riddance" with 6 months of salary
| and 2 years validity of my options over a "We regret that
| it has come to this point" with just a one-month notice.
| AtlanticThird wrote:
| I agree with the theme of your message, but it's actually
| very challenging legally to change an options expiration
| date after its issued, and likely has negative tax
| implications
| armada651 wrote:
| I've heard this excuse a lot over my career, mainly from
| people trying to backtrack on a promise of issuing
| options to begin with.
| xp84 wrote:
| I don't know what you mean by "bad" or "right" but a layoff
| isn't necessarily bad. It's inevitable unless you demand
| incredibly conservative hiring practices, only hiring if
| you're willing to commit to that role existing for their
| natural life. So, it happens. There is a right way to do it
| and that's without any BS. Sadly people don't get much time
| to say their goodbyes, especially in a remote situation,
| but if even 1% of laid-off people become disgruntled it's
| not smart to be really loose with access to important
| systems after you've laid someone off.
|
| Now, if you mean "bad" as in it's unpleasant to hear or
| give the news, I agree with you, it's always the opposite
| of fun.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| I mean, there is. Fundamentally it involves recognizing and
| respecting their humanity. Just like it is incredibly rude
| to break up with a significant other over text, it is
| similarly rude to lay someone off with a pre-recorded video
| message. The only reason one would do either of those
| things is for their own benefit, because it is easier for
| _them_ compared to the alternative.
| leptons wrote:
| That's true in the current world. But back about 8 years
| ago I got laid off from my programming job and it was
| honestly a relief. I was happy. I got a pretty good
| severance, and I knew I'd have another job soon. I had 5
| job offers within 2 weeks of interviews, all paying the
| same or more. But now? It would be devastating as there are
| very few jobs available and more competition for them. I
| used to have 5 recruiters a day contacting me, but now I'm
| lucky if I get contacted 1 time every 5 months or so.
| thisisit wrote:
| I agree. Sometimes people don't know how to deliver bad
| news.
|
| When I was laid off I appeared stoic throughout the
| conversation. Because lots of people were laid off so there
| was no point to discuss "why". The only question was
| severance. But then the HR got curious about my lack of
| reaction. He started questioning if I had job offers at
| hand and if my access could be cut right then (others were
| given a week).
| egwor wrote:
| I think that there are definitely bad ways to lay people
| off and those should be avoided. As a manager/company, not
| trying to do this as best you can reflects very badly in
| the workplace and in society.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| It's just a way of punishing a company for layoffs, probably
| a good thing because you want companies to be scared of
| layoffs.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| No companies will ever be 'scared' of layoffs, especially
| when it benefits them financially (in the short-term)
| gchamonlive wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| blitzar wrote:
| Stay classy Atlassian
| geodel wrote:
| You have issues, you open JIRA ticket.
| fHr wrote:
| Now thats the spirit!
| flappyeagle wrote:
| 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
| renewiltord wrote:
| 1% layoff, 6 months severance. There, saved you the trouble.
| herval wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 6 months severance speaks volumes more about this layoff than the
| video does.
| kulahan wrote:
| Interesting how this is downvoted when the top comment is
| essentially saying the same thing.
| nsksl wrote:
| How exactly should they be terminated? 150 1:1 meetings?
| belter wrote:
| I suggest a coding challenge, and the first five to submit it
| and pass the functional tests can stay?
| nartho wrote:
| Accounting and marketing are not going to be happy.
| jsk2600 wrote:
| But CEO said "Every person should be using AI daily for as
| many things as they can."...
| jesol wrote:
| Yes.
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Best we can do is a 20 frag limit quake 3 deathmatch duel in
| q3dm17
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| This but without the irony.
| h4ck_th3_pl4n3t wrote:
| I suggest a monster truck derby battle.
|
| And we'll call it "Rehabilitation"
| pablobaz wrote:
| 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.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| 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.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| 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).
| kimos wrote:
| Or some other unrelated manager doing the firing.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| 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.)
| kimos wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| A JIRA ticket with hundreds of legal dependencies.
| MBCook wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| At least a live mass meeting.
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| [JIRA] Your boss assigned HR-5678 to you.
|
| HR: Atlassian / HR-5678
|
| Acknowledge Receipt of Your Termination Notice
| chrisco255 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Hipchat was a success, which is why Atlassian purchased it,
| but Slack leapfrogged it and Stride was too late.
|
| Not doubting the role that support plays for Atlassian.
| Just highlighting how I witnessed MCB handle a similar
| situation 7 years ago, by flying to Austin from Australia
| to deliver the sad news. The article makes him sound
| heartless or cold but that wasn't my experience. That being
| said, an async video message is a weird play.
| fHr wrote:
| Yes? Wtf
| flappyeagle wrote:
| 1% layoff why does this even matter. They have more than that in
| natural attrition in a quarter
| MBCook wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Presumably because the layoff is targeted at a specific (set
| of) teams in customer service, rather than a 1% haircut across
| the company?
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Give me 6 months severance and I'd be unhappy if I didn't get
| laid off.
| deanmoriarty wrote:
| Seriously, someone laying me off right now with 6 months
| severance could be one of the best things that ever happened
| to me.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| In the past I got laid off with 6mo severance and it was
| legitimately one of the best things to ever happen to me -
| hated the job and paid off all my credit cards. Found
| another job in a month.
| bgnn wrote:
| 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.
| tartoran wrote:
| > 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?
| MBCook wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > is absolutely cruel.
|
| > What a horrible thing
|
| They offered 6 months severance which dispels any serious
| notion of 'cruelty'. Substance over form.
| maccard wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Presumably it was sent to both corporate and personal email
| addresses?
| deathanatos wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Microsoft is working on this because they'd be the primary
| user.
| makr17 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| "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.
| xp84 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| Animats wrote:
| Have we had the first layoff announced by an AI yet?
| xcke wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| "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.
| cbsmith wrote:
| Is there a good way to lay off 150 people?
| heybales wrote:
| This is good news for customers though. I'm sure those savings
| will be passed on, right? Right?
| jlarocco wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| ch33zer wrote:
| Best of luck to all employees. I almost accepted an offer there
| but decided to go elsewhere. The remote work was very appealing.
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