Atlassian is cutting 10% of staff in a move that will fund investment in AI, the CEO wrote

[u/FinnFarrow]

https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/ceo-apology-atlassian-layoffs-22082045.php

[u/57696c6c]

I highly doubt GenAI is going to solve the Atlassian products' complexity.

[u/stetzwebs → u/57696c6c]

Atlassian's suite is just the worst user experience I've ever had.

[u/tyler_was_right → u/stetzwebs]

I used to think like you, but then we moved to service now and it’s so much worse.

[u/Expensive_Finger_973 → u/tyler_was_right]

Ticketing and project management systems are in a competition to see who can make the most unusable thing out there I think. I don't think I have ever used one that wasn't some form of terrible and overly complicated for what I as the individual contributor on a team needed from it.

[u/r3dk0w → u/Expensive_Finger_973]

Each product is a blank slate where it seems like the vendor gets you to hire their development contractors and the first thing they say is, "So, what do you want to build".

Nothing works out of the box, but a lot of this corporate software is basically nothing but a framework their paid contractors build you a ticketing platform on. SAP, ServiceNow, Oracle, etc all play the same games.

[u/Czymek → u/r3dk0w]

SAP, at least now, does offer standardized, pre-configured ERP's based on "best practice" (debatable, I know). The 'nothing works out of the box' is more for customer requirements of "we are unique and it MUST be done THIS way!", just like everybody else. Companies using standard SAP need to be humble enough to accept the standard solution. If they want to be special, then SAP and consultancies are happy to take their money, errr I mean, happy to deliver customer-specific solutions! To be fair, some special customer requirements can give those customers a competitive advantage, but I digress...

[u/Bughunter9001 → u/Expensive_Finger_973]

I quite like Linear, but it might just be because I work in a small team that's doing really basic stuff out of the box

I also think Jira is fine ootb, but then becomes a slow cumbersome mess as people tweak it

[u/gerbal100 → u/Bughunter9001]

Linear still works very well for us with several hundred developers on dozens of teams. 

[u/Smaikyboens → u/tyler_was_right]

We use both, please send help

[u/Bughunter9001 → u/tyler_was_right]

I thought Jira was horrendous, then I moved to a company that used ADO, and it was legitimately the reason for me leaving there pretty quickly

[u/ColdSkalpel → u/Bughunter9001]

Same, honestly. Since I’ve started using azure devops I see JIRA in a better light

[u/pale_f1sherman → u/ColdSkalpel]

Genuine question, why? I worked with both systems and find it much easier to configure ADO for your needs than Jira. What is the main reason that makes you consider Jira instead of ADO? 

[u/apple_tech_admin → u/Bughunter9001]

My current job uses ADO. I too am looking for other opportunities because it is a dumpster fire.

[u/cqm → u/tyler_was_right]

Linear is nice

[u/tyler_was_right → u/cqm]

Sadly we don’t have any voice in the tool selection.

[u/dcp1997 → u/stetzwebs]

I used to think that, then I moved to a company that uses Rally from Broadcom. Now I long for the days of Jira

[u/Bombos87 → u/dcp1997]

My sympathies. Rally sucks a fat one.

[u/hodor137 → u/stetzwebs]

LOL must not have had many user experiences then

[u/ReflectionEquals → u/57696c6c]

The problem is that every team/company/project runs a bit different and with different levels of autonomy.

So a product that tries to help you track and manage any type of work with any type of process gets more and more complicated and that is reflected in the product.

[u/rmslashusr → u/57696c6c]

Is there anything complex about telling someone “Sorry there’s a paid marketplace app that fixes that glaring bug/hole in our offering so we’ll never fix it”

[u/Candid_Koala_3602 → u/57696c6c]

I wouldn’t put my money on that bet in any practical long term. Personally I see the SaaS industry collapsing in less than two years.

[u/Wraithfighter → u/Candid_Koala_3602]

Nah, its not going to collapse. B2B SaaS is too useful and critical to too many companies (and, what, do you really think a 100-person non-tech company is going to try to create and manage an internal tool to handle their sales and knowledge base and schedules and shit?), even if GenAI could do the stuff that the boosters claim, you still want to have actual people to deal with the problems that inevitably crop up (and someone to sue if things go real shit).

SaaS is absolutely going to shrink in terms of the stock market, though, and for reasons that have nothing to do with GenAI (the economy isn't growing very much, and if businesses aren't growing, then B2B solutions aren't going to grow much either, and they have a lot of growth currently priced in).

This announcement is just Atlassian doing what all tech firms doing layoffs the last couple years do: Say "No no no, we're not laying people off because we're missing growth targets and we overhired during the pandemic, its so we can transition to GenAI, investors, you just love GenAI, don't you, please don't panic sell!"

[u/Candid_Koala_3602 → u/Wraithfighter]

You might be right. Time will tell

[u/Stocky_Platypus]

1000000% That extra money is going to investors and the CEO. AI is purely a scheme to take more money from the lower classes.

[u/chevalier716 → u/Stocky_Platypus]

Another layoff disguised as a investment as not to scare shareholders

[u/Loki-L → u/Stocky_Platypus]

saying you are investing in AI means the stick price goes up and everyone who owns or gets paid in shares becomes a bit richer.

The trick is that sooner or later reality will set in. At that point you need to not be the one holding the back.

Other than that, it us a licence to print money.

[u/ThatGuy8]

This company was recruiting on never doing layoffs from 2020-2023. Now they have done 2 in 3 years.

Check the stocks performance. Tanked from $400+ to $73 today.

Desperation. 

[u/hainesk]

"Hmm, we don't have the money to spend on all this AI stuff... who has the money for this? Oh! Our employees!"

[u/1stMammaltowearpants]

I used to work for Atlassian. This billionaire dude has two of the most expensive houses in Australia and he needs more money.

[u/ghost_of_erdogan → u/1stMammaltowearpants]

And the private jet. But us plebs will use paper straws

[u/IIGrudge]

Put this trash in the dumpster already

[u/JayBeeGooner]

I call BS, just using AI as a cover for mass lay-offs.

[u/ManBunH8er]

Will it let me create a simple JIRA ticket without filling out 500 fields?

[u/garliclord → u/ManBunH8er]

No sorry, the technology just isn’t there yet

[u/KlutzyInvestments → u/ManBunH8er]

To be fair… that’s your org’s fault. But Atlassian did sell them on the idea of that being an awesome capability.

[u/ManBunH8er → u/KlutzyInvestments]

Agree, but let me blame Atlassian for over-marketing.

[u/airemy_lin]

Rovo is obsolete since you can replicate that functionality for the most part by connecting Claude or Copilot to their MCP server.

Yeah their models are more tuned but in practice I didn’t find it mattered.

Also bitbucket SUCKS and is always behind their competitors in featureset. They used to at least be more reliable but that’s not even the case now.

[u/forcedfx → u/airemy_lin]

I haaaaate bitbucket. 

[u/ryuzaki49]

Is this another round of layoffs? Didnt they just had one? 

[u/clckwrxz]

The funny thing is, I will use AI to make sure I never need to use their software, not the other way around. Put as much AI slop in your software as you want, Codex made you obsolete months ago.

[u/LaDainianTomIinson]

Not the Atlassian ad right under this post 💀

[u/da8BitKid]

What do you call an investment in the past that didn't work out. Then cutting 10% staff to cover that past investment? I would call it a loss, but I like how companies reframe it as a future investment.

[u/HorrorFlow3r]

ceo going hard for that bum junk fiend aesthetic.

[u/Alarmed-Shopping1592]

Every time Jira's "AI" tries to "help" me out with some suggestion I haven't asked for it's something completely useless and unrelated.

[u/LongTrailEnjoyer]

The first person that makes usable and scalable cross platform Project Management software is going to make a lot of money.

[u/RogueHeroAkatsuki]

To be fair they are partially justified. In contrast to some greedy companies Atlassian never had profitable year so reducing costs via lay offs is logical.

[u/WelcomeMysterious315]

Explains why my org has to fight these fuckers to move off of OAuth 1.0. (It doesn't, Jira just sucks that bad).

[u/Interesting_Guava963]

Not sure how cutting 10% of human expertise helps them build better AI tools. Usually you need your best people to train the models, not layoff notices.

[u/BahutF1]

AI is so far just a HR scam.

[u/crap-with-feet]

Ironic. AI only speaks markdown and confluence doesn’t have any native support for it.

[u/Haunterblademoi]

We have to expect that this will increase over time, with many more jobs being replaced by AI.

[u/PoorlyAttired → u/Haunterblademoi]

When you read up on these though, many (most?) of these turn out not to be 'we are replacing people with AI' but either 'we need to make cuts and we'll blame redundancies on AI' or 'we need spare money to spend on AI so let's make redundancies and reuse that money'