Atlassian’s goal of becoming one of the top tech companies in the world revolves around fostering “developer joy” and creating an amazing engineering culture, according to Rajeev Rajan, the executive responsible for all of engineering at Atlassian. The company has implemented a company-wide objective to track the level of joy across the company, recognizing its importance alongside revenue goals. Rajan believes that developer productivity is enhanced by providing excellent tools and empowering developers, while also creating a culture that supports and values their work. The company has made significant progress in improving developer productivity, with over 70% of developers reporting feeling productive compared to less than half when Rajan first joined.
One of Atlassian’s recent achievements is moving all its tools to the cloud, in contrast to their previous on-premises hybrid setup. Despite being later in adopting this approach compared to other companies, Rajan, who has experience transitioning Office 365 to the cloud while at Microsoft, acknowledges Atlassian’s progress. The company has also undergone a reevaluation of its focus, which included laying off a portion of its workforce and redirecting efforts toward areas like artificial intelligence (AI). Atlassian has partnered with OpenAI and is exploring how AI can enhance team productivity and assist its own developers in dealing with coding challenges, freeing them to focus on more creative aspects of their work.
While Atlassian is committed to retaining its core values as it evolves its culture, the company also recognizes the importance of empowering its employees to make decisions. By decentralizing decision-making processes, Atlassian aims to overcome the slow pace often associated with larger companies, ensure engagement and excitement among its workforce, and bring products to market faster. The COVID-19 pandemic has further emphasized the company’s remote work focus, with Atlassian maintaining a distributed team and embracing remote work as a permanent part of its operations while still valuing human connection through initiatives like “International Togetherness.”