Atlassian is slashing 150 customer service jobs — and it's actively denying the cuts have anything to do with AI.
The Australian software company will slash 150 roles out of its total 12,000 globally, telling local reporters the cuts were focused on the customer service and support team.
The news was delivered to staff in a video by co-founder and CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes. The video announcing the cuts was in itself controversial.
Cannon-Brookes delivered the message in a prerecorded video sent out to staff in a Zoom meeting, but reportedly didn't reveal which roles were being lost until emails were sent out 15 minutes later.
Laid off staff will be paid for a further six months, at least. The job cuts will impact staff in Australia, Canada, Germany, India, the UK and the US.
Reports suggested that the roles were being replaced by AI. However, the company has denied jobs are being outright replaced by AI.
"We have made this decision after implementing improvements to the customer experience across our platform and tools, resulting in a significant reduction in support needs," the company reportedly said.
"While we’re proud of this momentum, it leaves us with more capacity than needed to deliver strong customer support," the company said in the statement, adding that customers will be able to “self-service through the embedding of AI in our contact form, but it’s primarily because our customers need less help with the product."
"These roles are not being replaced by AI,” the statement added.
AI job losses
The fact remains that some Atlassian customers will be interfacing directly with AI amid customer service job cuts, but that's not the only reason critics are pointing the finger at AI.
The same day as the job losses were announced, Atlassian co-founder and board member Scott Farquhar delivered a talk to the Australian Press Club in which he reportedly said it was time to move on from "jobs from the past".
"Every person should be using AI daily for as many things as they can," Farquhar reportedly said. "Like any new technology, it will feel awkward to start with, but every business person, every business leader, every government leader and every bureaucrat should be using it."
Three weeks ago, Atlassian released a report suggesting that AI tools were helping developers save ten hours a week — but "organizational inefficiencies" meant they were still overworked.
Wider cuts
Beyond that, the job losses come as a host of other companies cut jobs in favour of AI — though they don't always phrase it quite like that — with some using the funds saved to pivot to AI-focused services and hire AI-skilled staff.
Last year, Intuit cut 1,800 roles to "allocate additional investment" to areas including AI, while Cisco cut 6,000 jobs with AI investment listed as one motivation.
In 2023, Dropbox cut 16% of its workforce in order to refocus on AI product development while Google cut 1,000 roles.
Most notably, Klarna cut hundreds of jobs in customer service, saying AI could do the work, but had to reverse that plan and hire human agents once again after a fall in quality.
That trend of rehiring customer service workers fired in favour of AI is expected by Gartner to continue, as the technology fails to cover possible interactions.
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