In March 2026 I got caught up in the 10% workforce reduction by Atlassian.
I am not taking it personally as I have seen that a lot of other very experienced and well regarded individuals have also been posting their new status on LinkedIn.
As I was the last one to join a team of more than 10 developers I can see how some metrics would have zoomed in on me as a suitable sacrificial lamb to attempt to satisfy investors that Atlassian was actively shifting to focus on profitability. Ironically, I was encouraging the team to move to smaller stories as I had recognised that flow of Jira tickets would be a metric of team productivity.
I did find it a bit offensive that the announcement implied that the individuals being dropped from the company were somehow not seen as able to adapt to the new direction, as from my personal experience none of my managers or colleagues were consulted and I was more active in applying AI than some colleagues. I can empathise more with the former colleagues who got caught up in the previous layoffs now.
Anyway, while I have some time on my hands I will be posting a few experiences from my time at Atlassian and other companies onto my main blog. Some posts will be intentionally vague, but should provide enough context to teach about the importance of attention to detail - something that will continue to be valuable with or without AI.
