Don't Be Gutless: How Atlassian CEO Fires Employees

Co-founder and CEO of Atlassian Mike Cannon-Brookes says the hardest lesson to learn as a first-time CEO was how to fire employees.

[nickr]

Scroll down to see some people who were fired from Atlassian.

[AndyNorrisForReals]

I bet they fired the people who would have made atlassian products intuitive.

[carstenw]

This isn't a video about _how_ the Atlassian CEO fires employees, so the title is wrong. It is a video about the biggest mistakes he has made, by his own admission, and not firing employees fast enough was at the top.

[I_dont_want_an_at]

this guy likes to say he started the company with a credit card. But when your dad is a banking executive, are you really taking a risk?

[jntx]

Disagree with comments. If you are in project management. Hire the right person at the certain time. Company grows, expectations and demands changed when techno advanced. If the professional is not versatile fast enough to adapt and deliver to the expectations of changes... you dragged the team, the project and the company growth...it's easy to detect by performance and finance analyst report

[melodym]

So if your going to fire so easy why not hire contractors so you test them out first and if they make the grade you keep them?!🤔 The two major things of why a company is not performing better is 1. Not enough training or many times no training at all. A employee needs to be trained on how your company operates, how the product works, have an understanding of the clients needs and how to effectively project those needs. They also need to understand how to project manage their own projects, what you use to help employees do just that. 2. No communication or poor communication among team. If you have one guy developing, another a engineer of the product, another a tester, another a tech writer and visual designer and they all are not on the same meetings with the client then how would they know what piece of details they are forgetting if the client mentions? All meetings should be recorded or have everyone involved. In order to create a solid product/product presence all team members need to know what the clients expectations are. You can't just fire people because you think they weren't working out when the bigger issue can be how you come about bringing them up to speed. Not everyone is going to ask to be in all meetings or learn all others jobs in the company so they know when they start on their portion of the work! Be realistic to what's really going on. Don't lay a blame if you haven't focused on these two key areas and have not nurtured a flexible stance on learning/development.

[DemonCuz]

Anyone with an intelligence quotient above 100 i'm sure is the first to be fired.

[I_dont_want_an_at]

software is not important. As soon as the artificial superintelligence assumes management of the universe, we can relax and enjoy more human pursuits. We'll never have to do soulless coding again!

[RafaelSantos-jviz]

When almost 20 years of monopoly protects you from the harshness of the industry and you end up going so far up your own but with the "Good will Hunting syndrome", stupid ideas like this start splashing all over the place...

[WriterThinkerDogger]

Here is the issue with this style. You end up losing the valuable information this employee who didn't "fit" might give you, a new perspective, etc. Mediocre people--people who know how to do just enough to get by and not rock the boat-- rarely get fired, but excellent people sometimes do. If you simply fire people without even trying to hear their point of view, how can you learn anything about the processing style of people who DON"T automatically fit with your style or how you have structured your company? I understand and agree if you have to instantly fire someone who is cruel, or puts everyone down, or is egregiously deficient despite warnings and chances to work on this. . But for every other case, this is arrogance at it's worst, and you have guaranteed yourself that your company will never grow to the size and gather the audiences you haven't already achieved. Even someone who seems not to be productive: find out why. What if there is something about your culture (such as open office which is hard on introverts) that is pushing people out? What if women or minorities are getting subtly abused? Enough to affect their productivity, but they haven't wanted to bring it up to you. This is a cruel process and I've seen it backfire bigtime. At a recent company, 3 people let go this way ended up at Google. Google, which is extremely selective. And they are thriving there. But the instant firing took a terrilbe toll on their confidence and on their finances. It is terrible for the productivity of cowrokers who you might suddenly 'not like' and have to have the 'guts' to terminate viciously and suddenly. Certainly, I always wanted to work for Altassian--until I saw this arrogant video. And if you are upset that I called this video arrogant, instead of hearing why I think that, you have proven my point. No, you are not being "kind". You are making things easier on youself, in the short term, by not learning how to work with this person.

[Whoo]

...Is he a bogan, by any chance?

No offense
j/w

[evilpilch]

"need a different environment altogether" - possibly a very diplomatic way of saying, you're shit. Maybe you can achieve something elsewhere, but its certainly not going to be here.