Do we like Atlassian?
Makes work software (Jira, Confluence, Trello, Loom, Rovo AI); founded in Sydney, now US-incorporated.
Our score: 6 out of 10. Mostly a decent, useful business with a real climate record, but the 10% layoff and a US labour-board loss over a firing dent the nice-guy image. We'd back it, with some reservations.
Atlassian started in Sydney in 2002, when two uni mates, Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar, set up a software company. Farquhar stepped down as co-CEO at the end of August 2024. Cannon-Brookes now runs it alone. It's now listed on Nasdaq and sells Jira, Confluence, Trello and more.
The big drama this year was jobs. In March 2026 Cannon-Brookes announced cuts of about 10% of staff, roughly 1,600 people. He said the aim was to fund more AI and enterprise sales investment. The union Professionals Australia said Australian staff were told the day the news broke, with a consultation period running.
There's also a workers' rights ruling. According to a report on the US National Labor Relations Board decision, a judge found Atlassian broke federal labour law by firing an engineer in June 2023 after she challenged restructuring decisions in Slack. The company was ordered to reinstate her with back pay.
On the good side, Atlassian has long pushed climate action. It committed to net zero by 2040 and says that goal stands. Its own sustainability report admits business travel emissions rose 13% in a year. It also says its Foundation will put US$8 million into education over two years.
Security and reliability are a mixed bag. In October The Register reported Atlassian telling datacenter customers to patch a critical file-access flaw. A 2022 outage that deleted customer sites ended with Atlassian acknowledging its own errors. Overall we'd say a solid, slightly dented 6.