Former and current employees of Australian software giant Atlassian have lifted the lid on its toxic company culture that is being compared internally to the Hunger Games film series where young people fight to the death.

The cultural issues are being driven, multiple sources tell the Mail, by:

• aggressive management;
• brutal stack ranking that rates employees’ output based on other staff rather than objective goals;
• and performance improvement plans which, rather than helping workers improve, are designed to be ‘impossible’ so they can be legally fired without a redundancy payout.

Once the gold standard among Australia’s technology exports – and famed for its culture and ‘team anywhere’ approach to remote work – Atlassian’s image as a cosy corner of the tech space was shattered when 1,600 employees were laid off in March.

Atlassian CEO and co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes delivered the news in a widely criticised pre-recorded video, telling affected staff that he was ‘deeply sorry’ for the layoffs, which he blamed on artificial intelligence.

Cannon-Brookes, a Cranbrook old boy, founded the NASDAQ-listed company in 2002 along with Scott Farquhar, shortly after they graduated from university.

Farquhar left his post as co-chief executive in August 2024. 

Now, all signs point to the company still looking to reduce its headcount, not through costly redundancies but via a ruthless performance management system that quietly pushes workers out the door.

Atlassian’s image as a cosy corner of the tech space was shattered when 1,600 employees were laid off in March. The jobs cull isn’t over yet – but staff say a Hunger Games-style performance management culture has replaced typical redundancies. (Pictured: an artist’s rendition of the in-progress Atlassian tower next to Sydney’s Central Station)

Atlassian’s CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes announced the layoffs in a pre-recorded video that was widely criticised

As his company faces growing market pressure, Cannon-Brookes is also navigating a complex divorce from his ex-wife Annie (both pictured in 2016) after they split in July 2023 

It is understood that an in-depth performance review process is underway at Atlassian, and is expected finish by the end of July.

Previously, the process was every six months, but was changed to just once a year in response to staff feedback.

Atlassian employees speaking on the condition of anonymity tell the Daily Mail the system pits workers against one another – rather than being goal-focused – and puts them in constant fear of being managed out through PIPs that are ‘designed to fail’. 

The process, known internally as Apex, divides staff into five categories: ‘greatly exceeding expectations’, ‘exceeding expectations’, ‘meeting expectations’, ‘low expectations’ and ‘behind expectations’.

Staff spend a week filling out detailed self-evaluations answering questions, such as: ‘Are you committed to improving the organisation elsewhere?’, ‘Are you putting forward ideas that are being implemented?’ and ‘Are you turning down bad ideas?’

These self-evaluations are handed to their direct managers who give staff an initial ranking, before passing it up the ranks of Atlassian’s management, where they undergo several rounds of calibration.

Once evaluations reach senior management, staffers are ranked against up to 250 of their colleagues, with ratings consistently being pushed downward to meet a pre-determined quota, insiders claim.

It is widely believed that managers must meet a quota requiring 10 per cent of workers to fall into the bottom category, although Atlassian has denied this.

A source familiar with the process said that managers come together to ‘pick the winners and the losers’ and ‘effectively discuss which teams they like and don’t like’. 

‘Regardless of how good the output of one team is, someone still has to be in that bottom 10 or 20 per cent,’ the insider said.

An employee speaking anonymously said you could start with a glowing review from your direct manager and a ranking of ‘greatly exceeding expectations’ only to end up in the mid-tier pile of ‘meeting expectations’ after the calibration process.

Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar left the company in 2024

Mike Cannon-Brookes founded the NASDAQ-listed company in 2002, along with Farquhar. The once-inseparable Aussie ‘tech bros’ are no longer close friends

‘So if you’re in the middle of the range and just ‘meeting expectations’ you would be pretty worried that you’re getting bumped down by the time a remote person has read about you,’ they said.

The employee also said the process could be ‘psychologically damaging’ and feel ‘like a death march’. 

‘It’s not a nice place to be mentally, when you appear to have no control over your rating. Your yearly appraisal should not be a surprise,’ they said.

‘People find this time of year horrible – that’s all I can say. It all gets a little bit grim, with constant dark humour, people just waiting on the hammer to fall.’

A second anonymous employee told the Daily Mail that the system effectively amounts to ‘stack ranking’ – a controversial corporate practice in which workers are ranked relative to each other instead of objective criteria.

‘They literally choose one person in each department who is the “bar” for each performance level, and then rank everyone else in comparison to that person,’ the source said.

‘Every cycle, we spend a week writing up a justification for why we should be allowed to keep our jobs, and then it gets debated by managers who have never met us for the next month.

‘Even if it isn’t called stack ranking, the goal is the same: forced attrition.’

The employee also claimed that role requirements are kept ‘intentionally vague’, so that management can ‘move the bar quietly behind the scenes to suit their needs’. 

The Daily Mail understands that employees in the bottom 10 per cent deemed as falling ‘behind expectations’ are given the option of an exit package or a PIP.

Despite the illusion of choice, insiders say it’s a pre-determined outcome because the PIPs are ‘designed to fail’ and result in the employee’s dismissal. 

An employee told the Daily Mail that their colleague was let go despite passing the apparent requirements of their PIP and making ‘significant improvements’. 

‘Their manager told them they passed their PIP, but it was later vetoed by a senior VP in the US who had never met them before,’ the employee said.

‘They’re impossible to pass, no matter how hard you work.’

Another staffer told the Daily Mail that ‘most people just take the [exit] package’, knowing how unfair and demoralising the performance improvement plan is  

‘The PIP is not designed to be passable. You’re leaving the company either way,’ they said.

Various employees the Daily Mail spoke with say the ranking system has completely eroded Atlassian’s previous collaborative team environment.

‘There’s no longer an open culture where people are freely sharing information, which used to be the bread and butter of Atlassian. It used to be a very open environment,’ one staff member said. 

It is understood Apex was implemented in late 2023 by a US-based executive who was concerned that Atlassian’s low staff turnover rate was ‘not sensible’.

A source claimed the executive, who has since departed the company, said during a 2023 town hall meeting that Apex would achieve the ‘industry standard of 10 per cent forced attrition’ and make Atlassian ‘look like a Silicon Valley company’.

Atlassian has also denied having a forced attrition goal.

Staff reviews on anonymous forums such as Glassdoor also paint an overwhelmingly grim picture of the once-coveted workplace, citing a ‘Hunger Games culture’.

‘Do not come here unless you hate being happy, employee morale is at an all-time low, with company policies introduced to increase the attrition rate,’ a data scientist wrote.

Others were more blunt, with a former salesperson simply describing the workplace as ‘a sweatshop with poor management’.

‘Everyone is in a rat race to get visibility and forgets real skill,’ a UX designer wrote on Glassdoor last month. 

A former senior engineer compared the organisation to a meat grinder, saying it is now ‘impossible to make meaningful work connections [because] everyone is competing’.

‘You need to track your work daily and essentially justify why you should remain employed every six months,’ they wrote.

A program manager described an environment where ‘people are focused on surviving their next performance review rather than doing the best thing for the team and company’.

‘Everyone here is in abandon ship mode,’ noted another current staffer on Glassdoor.

In response to our request for comment, an Atlassian spokesperson said its performance management process was ‘fair and transparent’. 

‘We’re committed to building high-performing teams where everyone can do their best work. Like any other company, that requires clear expectations, regular feedback, and performance management,’ the spokesperson said

‘Our performance management process is fair and transparent, where direct managers own the performance rating for individuals on their team and we have systems in place to keep the bar consistent across the business,’

‘The vast majority of our employees, who meet and exceed the expectations of their role, are rewarded through this framework.’