Atlassian Lays Off 500 Employees

What’s going on:  

Today Atlassian — the company behind innovative tools such as Jira, Confluence, and Trello — has announced that it is laying off roughly 500 staff, which is 5% of their global workforce. This comes after a restructuring one month ago, according to Tech Crunch.  

The company is providing affected employees with 15 weeks of severance pay, plus an extra week per year of service, while also paying out unused paid time off. Atlassian is also offering accelerated vesting and employer-sponsored healthcare for the next six months, plus visa support.  

Why it matters:  

Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar, Co-Founders and Co-CEOs of Atlassian, emphasized today that their decision is not indicative of the company’s financial state (which, despite increasing revenue, has been showing net losses in its quarterly reports).  

Instead, they view this as a “rebalancing” that will help the company to focus its attention on areas of development and growth. 

Seeing as Atlassian is a big work software provider, this reorganization might have an impact on available products for offices. With so many layoffs in the tech sector, some of these companies are suffering due to reduced personal — and it’s unclear how Atlassian will fare in the future.  

How it’ll impact the future:  

Atlassian is cutting back its workforce in areas like Talent Acquisition, Program Management, and Research & Insights, so as to further prioritize their Cloud Services and products such as Jira Service Management.  

The company will face up to $75 million in charges related to the layoffs.