Software firm Atlassian lays off about 500 employees

SYDNEY: Australia-based software company Atlassian, known for making tools like Jira, Confluence and Trello, has announced to lay off 5 per cent of its workforce, or about 500 employees.

Atlassian co-founders and co-CEOs Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar in a note on Monday announced that this move shouldn't be seen as a reflection of the company's financial performance.

Rather, the co-founders presented this decision as a "rebalancing" that will allow the company to focus on areas where it is growing.

"We've made hard calls to reduce our investment in specific areas, in order to reinvest in others. This is different to a financially-driven reduction, where you would look to make abroad-based cuts -- for example, a 10 per cent cut equally distributed across every org within the company. This is not what is happening here," the co-founders wrote in a blogpost.

Atlassian will lay off workers in areas such as talent acquisition, programme management, and "research and insights".

The company will be offering affected employees 15 weeks of severance pay, plus one additional week per year of service, with unused paid time off also getting paid out.

Further, it will offer accelerated vesting and employer-sponsored healthcare for the next six months, as well as visa support, also the employees will be able to keep their work laptops, too.