Growing pains evident - werkgeversreview Senior Java Developer bij Atlassian

After IPO Atlassian has changed significantly. 2 years ago there where 500-700 members of staff, now 1700+. Heavy recruitment, reorganisation, re-prioritisation, shareholders to answer to, there is a great deal of growing pain. It’s no longer the small company it once was but not at the larger company maturity level in regards to HR / management. Internal mobility is non existent. There’s significant growing pains and power / self protection struggles by managers who have time earnt their way to positions rather than being trained in management. In the 10 years I spent in software development I had my best experiences at Atlassian. With that it’s extremely disappointing and sad to say my last 12 months at Atlassian has also been the worst and most stressful. An extremely strong team I worked on who were delivering was split up, partly because of reorganisation and skills needed elsewhere, mainly as the technology we were using no longer fitted in to the new `Tech Radar` and immediate management wanted to water down the strongobjections by bringing in people who advocated the new `Tech Radar` stack...Nodejs, Springboot (only Springboot with Java) and Go. I watched a good team turn toxic, one painful memory, all members sat with heads down in a PR review when the dev manager crossed lines through valid team PR feedback after a colleague elsewhere in the company brought on to make our project more `Spring` like. On node.js projects any comments on Javascript where taken as attacks against the manager, PR comments watched, hipchat messages watched only to be raised in 1 and 1’s. Team members played against each other and micromanaged to fit the new `Tech radar`. I watched a good colleague put on performance review for use of Java 8 Lambda’s which looked to functional for the `Tech stack` before he subsequently resigned or debatably constructively dismissed. The IPO has lead to new large critical projects putting pressure on inexperienced management who have been at the company a long time working their way up. This has then been put down on to developers, decisions based on time, appearance of delivering and ability to recruit. It somewhat changed from a collaborative “we hire smart people atmosphere to tell us what to do not to tell them what to do” to bodies of developers micromanaged as a workhouse. Pick the right team and if the current `Tech stack` attracts you, you will have a fantastic experience at Atlassian. Hit the wrong team or if the company decides to switch again you are collateral damage and it’s hard to move internally with outside staff favored for roles due to recruiting targets. Developers raising concerns were noted as being `salty`, `a religious small minority` by the recently appointed CTO and founders. The same people raising concerns where some of the strongest most talented engineers who cared strongly about the work and quality of work they were doing. Other downsides are sometimes you are lead to feel like you should feel privileged working for Atlassian. Mandatory on call was introduced putting significant restrictions on movement and activities in personal / family time. It was non-negotiable, significant change to current duty, roles and contract with very poor compensation. Trying to discuss the new requirement was returned with `it’s mandatory`, `take one for the team, Atlassian give you free food`. For people being relocated overseas Atlassian only offered help in the form of cash which was fair in the sense it covered flights and shipping and initial hotel costs but you won’t have much if any left. The fee is taxed quite heavily, it can also hang over you with the crawlback clause it you are no longer enjoying your time at the company within the period set out. Atlassian could help out better on the relocation assisting in advice for people new to Australia such as the property market, banking, utilities, tax, day to day stuff you need to set up on arriving to Australia but may not be familiar with when you get here and start work.