Discussion
Atlassian defends firing engineer for suggesting CEO is ‘rich jerk’
danny_codes: I’ve noticed rich people seem to have the absolute thinnest skin. Maybe not enough bullying? Or too much? Unclear
pm90: Generally people in power will surround themselves with yes-men. It takes a good amount of humility and sincerity to look beyond this and deliberately choose people with a spine to listen to.The most charitable interpretation is that most rich/powerful people are just as flawed as everyone else. Obviously, their power/wealth makes them less deserving of that charity ultimately.
jamesfinlayson: > Generally people in power will surround themselves with yes-men.It's probably a CEO thing too - you have some vision for the company so you're going to hire people that enable that vision, not people that will question your every move.
grebc: I’m surprised he’s not busier shutting down coal or gas plants in Australia.
pm90: Has there ever been a positive story or product out of this wretched company; which has possibly destroyed billions in value across the US software sector by forcing everyone to use their disgustingly bad project management tool? When I interviewed there (and anecdotally from the people I know that worked there), at least they seemed like a nice place to work at. But alas even that had to be destroyed.
Avicebron: lol the only atlassian engineer I knew spent 3 months 4 times a year "working remotely" from various resorts across Europe, I'm sure the 4-hour review of javascript she did per month was really worth that plus the apartment in brooklyn.. absolutely insane
jjcm: Since there’s a lot of assumptions on personality here, I’ll toss my perspective here.Worked at Atlassian for 5 years, had plenty of interactions with Mike. I wouldn’t categorize him as a jerk. I have plenty of disagreements about decisions he’s made, and I think he heavily over-hired (and is paying for it now), but a jerk he is not.The reality is Atlassian has mechanisms, for better or for worse, that reward social discontent - Hello (their internal Confluence instance which has Reddit-like upvoting on blogs) and their karma bot on slack. Both of which tend to result in people gamifying these to boost their social status, which as you’ve seen with Reddit, often results in a subset of people realizing negative comments get more attention than positive ones. This got out of hand and they’ve been trying to dial it back, leading to cuts like these. It’s been a problem at Atlassian for a while.
jacques_chester: Maybe he was a great guy. But people change. It seems as though having your brains marinated in money is highly neurotoxic, no matter how you started off.(Anyway: the main offence is using the term "jerk" instead of "wanker").
nerdsniper: The employee didn't call him a jerk. That was a straw-man from Atlassian. Now we're arguing over whether he's a jerk or not.A opposed to what actually happened: Mike (CEO) fired 19,000 people. Then Mike held a video AMA regarding the firings. Mike took the meeting from the headquarters of the NBA team he owns.The employee, Unterwurzacher, parodied the CEO on Slack, writing, “What’s up Outragers, just dialing in from my NBA team’s headquarters to yell at the people whose careers I’ve just pummeled.”Then that employee was fired.
8note: does this particularly qualify him as a jerk? or just that the employee takes all the risk in employment, and capitalism does wrong by rewarding owners and management vs workers?that he's showing off how rich he is as the result of throwing these people on the street is just part of the system weve built
ai_slop_hater: I would say yes, he is probably not a good person.
briga: Regardless of the fact that he probably is a jerk, it doesn't seem like appropriate workplace behavior to be calling anyone a jerk. Just because you have free speech doesn't mean that your speech should have no consequences. Maybe it's unfair and a double standard, but to me it seems like a no-brainer that you shouldn't be calling people names in your workplace.
Freedom2: With the one caveat that Australia doesn't have free speech. It's the one thing that sets the US apart and ahead of others.
vladmk: It’s not a CEO thing - just like Jerk employees exist, jerk CEOs exist too
pmdulaney: I do think a sincere apology and a promise to behave himself or herself in the future should be acceptable.
eviks: So no way out since there is no way the CEO would be sincere here
roenxi: [delayed]
desecratedbody: I was going to write a similar comment, but it turns out that isn’t what she said but rather what Atlassian has said she suggested he is.https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2026/ex-atlassian-engineer-fig...> … It was an irrelevant personal attack and insult directed at a colleague, essentially calling him a ‘rich jerk’.> Unterwurzacher reportedly parodied the CEO on Slack, writing, “What’s up Outragers, just dialing in from my NBA team’s headquarters to yell at the people whose careers I’ve just pummeled.”
pm90: Wow. I mean, come on, thats like the least offensive thing ever. At the most, maybe tell the manager to tell them thats not the “spirit” of the workplace, but firing for this is a step too far.If the CEO wasn’t a jerk before he certainly is now.
9x39: Making powerful people feel bad usually gets a negative response from them.Even just generally, if you make someone lose face publicly, they're prone to lash out at you since they often feel they can't back down.
devmor: Reading this comment really shifted my perspective on this whole thing. I’m less upset about the firing and more upset that anyone ever has the ability to control the livelihoods of 19,000 people.Maybe businesses shouldn’t get that big.
biotinker: > that he's showing off how rich he is as the result of throwing these people on the street is just part of the system weve builtJust because our system rewards jerks doesn't mean that you're no longer a jerk, you're just a rich jerk.
colechristensen: Eh, you don't hear about the ones who are well adjusted.Usually nobody cares if you're a poor jerk. At least unless you do something phenomenal you don't get wide attention."New" rich people, especially those with power over other people, can develop plenty of complexes and insecurities that come out as weakness... like firing somebody for mocking them."Old" rich, generational wealth tend to develop a set of manners and habits where they don't get noticed or embarrass themselves quite so much by displaying such weakness.You don't stay rich for a long time if you act like a fool.
Maxious: He might have been a top bloke then but in recent years he has had irreconcilable relationship breakdowns with his co-founder https://www.reddit.com/r/australian/comments/1m3ilhy/inside_... , wife and CFO https://www.afr.com/technology/mike-cannon-brookes-wins-inju... and most recently CTO https://www.afr.com/technology/atlassian-slashes-1600-jobs-a...
denkmoon: Nobody is forced to use it, they use it because it aligns with managers' incentives. Which are not related to ensuring technical work is completed effectively. Or having good visibility. Everything being obscure and hard to use allows you to paint the picture with your own words rather than the picture being painted right there on the computer screen plain as day.
Aeolun: Regardless of whether it is 'appropriate workplace behavior' to call a jerk a jerk, firing someone for it is so far outside the range of 'appropriate behavior' that it's hard to make a comparison.
giantrobot: > The most charitable interpretation is that most rich/powerful people are just as flawed as everyone else.I can't believe that. They pulled themselves up by their bootstraps at their private schools and then had to claw and fight as a legacy admission to the school their parents attended. From there they lived hand to mouth destitute with barely a million dollar loan from their parents!Then there was the existential crisis of meeting with their college roommates' parents and their own parents' bridge buddies to secure millions in loans. It was their flawless vision and skill that let them be at the right place and the right time. If they wouldn't have had the foresight to fall out of a lucky vagina we would all be worse off.You see they're scrappy go getters that started from the absolute bottom. They're infallible supermen whose greatest assets are their humility and unerring genius.
Barrin92: I've been in positions to hire/fire before and never, ever would I fire someone over a kindergarten insult. How pathetic do you have to be to pull rank over "you rich jerk"excellent case btw why you should never let these tech bros have power over your life, they're super charged angry little school boys with worse fantasies than a Soviet commissar
tiew9Vii: He was a passionate climate activist, possibly still is.He has since purchased a private jet under controversy.His company now sponsors an F1 team.He now seems to be a typical billionaire. You don’t get to be a billionaire without being ruthless.He probably is now a rich jerk. When I worked at Atlassian and on boarded, one of the managers said if you are in a lift with Mike or Scott, and they asked what you do here, you better tell them what value you are bringing…Mike was also very public he was proud Atlassian was not a high payer, he wouldn’t compete with Google etc on pay, at the time, yet people still wanted to work at Atlassian. Also didn’t hide the fact they absolutely utilised lack of local market knowledge for visa holders when nearly have the office was a temporary visa holder at the time.
YZF: Let's bring this close to home. You hire someone to mow your lawn. They come in every week and mow your lawn. And you pay them. One day you walk by and they're talking with your neighbor and you overhear them saying you're a rich a-hole and a jerk, and an idiot. I mean not appropriate workplace behavior. Are they going to still have a job or would you prefer that someone else mows your lawn? I mean they just said nasty things about you- nbd. not something that should affect their status as your "employee".
cedws: CEO is one of the least meritocratic jobs ever. It’s all just vibes, and the vibes are based off of what school you went to, who your parents know, where you grew up. Deep down they probably know this hence the insecurity. If it were a meritocracy they’d be toppled fast.
trashcan2137: My sides can't handle this much freedom. This can be hardly called an ad hominem.
handoflixue: What a wild cultural difference. Where do you live?Over here in the USA, I don't think any customer service worker expects to be able to openly mock a customer and still have a job. I struggle to imagine the idea of calling my boss a wanker to his face and still expecting to have a job. To insult the CEO seems like it might as well be a resignation - if you have that little respect for leadership, why are you working at that company?
bmicraft: > if you have that little respect for leadership, why are you working at that company?What an astoundingly dumb question. Most people work somewhere to get paid, and If you think its unusual to hate the boss, oh boy, do I have news for you!
bmicraft: Several things severely wrong with this example. The employee didn't talk to an outsider, they didn't talk to someone the CEO would be likely to have known personally, and they're so far removed from the CEO nobody thinks they'd know them on a personal level.You just can't talk about a CEO as if they're a person interacting and hiring people individually because they just don't.
