Fresh off of annihilating a tenth of its workforce, Atlassian is being accused of illegally firing an employee, Bloomberg reports.
Federal prosecutors allege that the Australian software firm fired engineer Denise Unterwurzacher for criticizing its CEO over his “re-leveling” plan to effectively demote and layoff many of its staff members — and for his flippant attitude.
The firing, attorneys for the National Labor Relations Board argue, amounts to an illegal retaliation against an employee. And if allowed to stand, it “would upend well-established principles” under US law, NLRB lawyer Colton Puckett said at an early March hearing in Austin, Texas, per a transcript obtained by Bloomberg. Labor laws protect an employee’s right to voice criticism and take collective action at work.
Unterwurzacher’s firing centered on a June 2023 incident that took place during an “Ask Me Anything” video call with employees. While the company’s billionaire cofounder and at-the-time co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes explained that only a few employees would be fired during his re-leveling plan, he was sitting in the headquarters of the Utah Jazz, a basketball team he co-owned.
“Employees disagreed in the chat, which resulted in Cannon-Brookes angrily interjecting to tell off the people who were complaining,” Puckett said in an opening statement at the hearing, per Bloomberg.
Unterwurzacher, along with many of her colleagues, vented her frustrations in a company Slack channel called “Outrage Notification,” a play on “outage notifications,” mocking what she framed as the out-of-touch nature of Cannon-Brookes’ remarks.
“What’s up Outragers, just dialing in from my NBA team’s headquarters to yell at the people whose careers I’ve just pummeled,” Unterwurzacher wrote.
Days later, Atlassian fired Unterwurzacher, claiming she had “engaged in acrimonious communications and ad hominem attacks against teammates and colleagues.”
Her lawyers think differently: Unterwurzacher was acting in the spirit of one of Atlassian’s professed “core” values, “Open company, no bullsh*t.”
Turns out that only applies so long as you don’t hurt the boss’s feelings in Slack, though. (Where have we heard this one before?)
“Just because it was a CEO doesn’t excuse the conduct,” Atlassian attorney Troy Valdez told the judge. “It was an irrelevant personal attack and insult directed at a colleague, essentially calling him a ‘rich jerk.’”
“Rich jerk” are Valdez’s words, not Unterwurzacher’s, however. While being cross-examined by Valdez at the trial, who grilled her for engaging in an “ad hominem” attack, she coolly explained, “I think it’s difficult to point out the power imbalance in a way that is not potentially described by somebody as an ad hominem attack.”
The trial comes amid Atlassian making another labor-related headline. Last Thursday, it announced it was laying off ten percent of its global workforce, or about 1,600 employees, explaining that it was pivoting towards AI.
Despite being open about its AI enthusiasm, Atlassian balked at characterizing the firings as a sign of AI replacement.
“Our approach is not ‘AI replaces people,’” Cannon-Brookes said in a memo to employees. “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.”
So much for “no bullsh*t.”
More on tech: Jack Dorsey Defends Wearing “Love” Hat While Firing 4,000 Employees in Pivot to AI
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