For a country with a relatively small tech sector, Australia has become a weirdly revealing place to watch AI’s impact on software jobs. Between WiseTech, Block and now Atlassian, we’re on the bleeding edge of layoffs explicitly attributed to AI disruption.
Atlassian said today it will cut 1,600 staff, or about 10% of its workforce, with Mike Cannon-Brookes casting the move as a way to “self-fund” a sharper push into AI and enterprise sales.
What makes Atlassian interesting, though, is that its relationship with the AI revolution is genuinely unique and precarious, which helps explain why it has taken a particularly savage beating in the SaaSpocalypse rocking global markets. The stock is down 66% over the past 12 months.
The company is caught in a strategic vice. On one side, its products are extraordinarily sticky. Its flagship product Jira famously has its share of haters, but it is so deeply embedded in the organisational culture of software development that switching costs are painfully high.
