Culture shock: AI pivot tests tech’s most coveted intangible
As performance becomes the catch cry of the AI era, data suggests companies pushing culture to a breaking point may be undermining the very transformation they are trying to achieve.
The recent mass redundancies at Atlassian have highlighted a tension across the technology sector about whether the push to build AI-first companies is coming at the cost of the cultures that built them.
As Capital Brief reported, the Sydney software giant — once a global benchmark for workplace culture — cut roughly 1,600 jobs on 12 March. Beyond the redundancies, the company’s culture has been under intense pressure in recent years, with the introduction of a deeply unpopular internal performance review system known as APEX widely blamed for eroding the values that once defined it.
It is a pattern playing out across the sector.
“As AI reshapes the tech industry and layoffs continue across organisations of all sizes, it’s easy for leaders to fall into the trap of thinking they have to choose between culture and performance,” said Justin Angsuwat, chief people and customer engagement officer at Culture Amp. “The data shows that’s a false trade-off. Culture isn’t a ‘soft’ metric — it’s a business driver.”
Performance has become the catch cry of a sector-wide cultural reckoning.
In January, Mark Zuckerberg announced he would fire 5% of Meta’s “low performers” and replace them. Microsoft made performance-based cuts the same month. Sergey Brin urged employees working on Google’s Gemini AI tools to be in the office every weekday and clock 60-hour weeks.
