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Politics, Stack ranking, PIP, hire and fire, toxic culture

Senior Software Engineer
Former Employee
Worked at Atlassian for 9 years
March 6, 2025
Sydney, Australia
1.0
Doesn't RecommendNeutral OutlookDoesn't Approve of CEO
Pros

High pay, and that's all about it.

Cons

Stack ranking creates a toxic culture, with everyone playing their own games and politics to survive in the company instead of being collaborative and thriving together.

Company policies force certain levels to get promotion in X amount of time, or else.

Their new performance assessment system has a wide variety of categories that can be used to put anyone into a PIP at the whim of a manager, torture them, and force them to resign.

Maybe not all, but many of the managers, especially the recent hires, are terrible. They are intentionally hired to fear-monger people into working like slaves, micromanaging, overloading, and pushing people to maximum stress to the point that people break down in meetings.

Employee relations doesn't consider employees as humans, but as resources to hire and fire.

Forget about any sort of work-life balance, peace of mind, and job security with this company. If you want to make some money for a while, go in with the same hire-and-fire temporary mentality that the company has towards its employees.

Advice to Management

There is no advice for management that intentionally killed a company's culture and values. They know exactly what they are doing; they want to promise visa/magic money as RSUs, force promotions and PIPs with the threat of terminations, and exploit people. Once they're in a position to receive a good chunk of RSUs/visa, etc., they torture and terminate them, then repeat this process with someone else.

Additional Ratings

Work/Life Balance
1.0
Culture and Values
1.0
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
1.0
Career Opportunities
1.0
Compensation and Benefits
4.0
Senior Management
1.0

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