Business software maker Atlassian said Monday that it will lay off 500 employees, or around 5% of its workforce. Atlassian shares were up 1% in extended trading following the announcement.
The technology industry has been contracting slightly in the past year after Covid caused individuals and companies to change their behaviors, even as unemployment continues to be low in developed countries. Atlassian’s competitors Alphabet , Asana , GitLab , IBM , Microsoft and PagerDuty have also announced job cuts in recent months, with central bankers seeking to tamp down rising prices by lifting interest rates.
Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes, Atlassian’s co-founders and co-CEOs, said the move is less about financial needs and more about focusing on key priorities such as IT service management and helping customers move workloads from on-premises data centers to the cloud. Cuts are not evenly distributed across the company, they wrote in a blog post.
The company generated about $873 million in revenue in the fourth quarter, up about 27% year over year, although it ended the period with a $205 million net loss. Australia’s unemployment rate in January was 3.7%, according to government statistics.
