Discussion
Atlassian CEO: AI doesn't replace people here, but we're firing them anyway
neogodless: Related:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47343156 Atlassian to cut roughly 1,600 jobs in pivot to AI (reuters.com)~yesterday, 273+ comments
bigwheels: Also:An important update on our team https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47342835 - Yesterday, 18 comments
bloppe: I've become convinced that "investing in AI" is just the magic incantation CEOs are using to spin layoffs as a positive rather than a negative for the company's reputation among investors
Ekaros: When your customers have less developers you need yourself less developers. And if they are paying by the seat... Your income is directly affected by layoffs... So reduction does make sense.And as they say any new companies can replace the Atlassian products by bespoke vibe coded alternatives in a few days...
NwtnsMthd: That last sentence holds a lot of truth.Our company has drastically downsized its dependence on Atlassian in the past month, we will be completely free in a few more. With the help of modern AI tools we've been able to replace their products with internal tools that are better tailored to our needs.
fred_is_fred: I think any company with some motivated developers and a budget for h/w or cloud could rebuild a good enough JIRA in a month. I don't see how Atlassian survives long term
apercu: It's PR to cover management failure due to "me too", which reached ridiculous levels in the last 5 years.
odshoifsdhfs: You are being downvoted because of the 'me too', but think you are refering to companies copying other companies (Amazon hires 10k? We hire 10k! Google fires 5k? we fire 5k) and not the 'me too' movement about sexual assault/harrassement.
afavour: Yup. I thought this was an interesting take on the Block layoffs, from a former employee:"I Worked for Block. Its A.I. Job Cuts Aren’t What They Seem."https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/opinion/block-jack-dorsey...
mandeepj: also -"Salesforce CEO says Block's cuts shouldn't fuel worries of mass layoffs: 'That company has its own unique issues'" https://www.aol.com/articles/salesforce-ceo-says-blocks-cuts...one more :-) -https://gizmodo.com/sam-altman-says-companies-are-ai-washing...
autoexec: > “We are doing this to self-fund further investment in AI and enterprise sales while strengthening our financial profile,”They take in billions every year but still come away with millions in negative income. I have no idea what their problem is but I'm pretty sure the 1,600 people they just fired weren't it. Throwing away people in yet another round of layoffs to further invest in AI is not a good sign.
dasil003: Have you looked at the actual expenses and where you think they should cut rather than people? Or are you saying with all those people they should be able to turn their growth story around?
Zigurd: I was talking to people I know about this topic and looking for obvious big success stories of vibecoding replacing enterprise tools like Atlassian I found they are very hard to find. At this stage I have no doubt that there are IT departments trying to displace SaaS products and re-engineer legacy systems, but it's probably too early to measure results.
lokar: I don't see what it has to do with "me too"Take block:AFAICT, it was just really badly managed. A long time ago it got about as much share of its main market as it was going to get. They took the cash flow from that and hired a bunch more engineers to try to break into adjacent markets, and failed, and failed and failed.Now they are just retreating to the steady income from their core business
entropicdrifter: Pretty sure by putting "me too" in quotes and not saying #MeToo, what they're talking about is really FOMO. The companies are performing layoffs because of the trend
