Software company Atlassian laid off 252 employees at its San Francisco headquarters last week, according to state filings.
The local layoffs at the Australian company’s office at 350 Bush St. are part of a larger plan to eliminate roughly 1,600 jobs worldwide — about 10% of the company’s global staff — with most of the reductions concentrated in North America.
The company is best known for popular workplace project planning and collaboration tools, including Jira, Confluence and Trello.
Chief Executive Mike Cannon-Brookes called the layoffs an “incredibly difficult decision,” in a memo to employees. “I believe this is the right decision for Atlassian. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.”
The company said the restructuring was intended to “self-fund further investment in AI and enterprise sales.”
Cannon-Brookes said artificial intelligence was reshaping the company’s workforce needs, even if it is not directly replacing workers.
“Our approach is not ‘AI replaces people,’” he said. “But it would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn’t change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas. It does.”
The company expects to incur between $225 million and $236 million in restructuring costs, including layoffs and office space reductions.