{"id":39882,"date":"2023-10-20T15:05:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/what-atlassian-did-when-they-realised-theyd-hired-an-arsehole-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:05:00","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:05:00","slug":"what-atlassian-did-when-they-realised-theyd-hired-an-arsehole-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/what-atlassian-did-when-they-realised-theyd-hired-an-arsehole-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"What Atlassian did when they realised they\u2019d hired an \u201carsehole\u201d – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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At Atlassian<\/a> nothing is more important than culture.<\/p>\n

So when Scott Farquhar learned that the company had hired somebody who was difficult the company co-founder had a simple response.<\/p>\n

\u201cA little while ago there was somebody that everyone thought was an arsehole basically, and I asked people \u2018well why are they still here?\u2019\u201dhe says.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we made the choice that they were not really right for Atlassian.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was instructive that even as you get larger you need to spend more time explaining to people that culture is more important than job performance, and I will support you at making sure we hire the right people. Or let people leave the company if they don\u2019t fit that culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Atlassian Summit in San Francisco overnight, Farquhar and co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes spoke of the importance culture at Atlassian.<\/p>\n

The company has been named Australia\u2019s best place to work for two years running<\/a>, and the second best medium-sized workplace<\/a> in the United States.<\/p>\n

But what is \u201cculture\u201d?<\/h3>\n

Farquhar says while values are a part of the company that never changes, culture is the environment in which work gets done, and naturally evolves as a company grows.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow work gets done in a 20-person organisation is very different to how work gets done in a 200 or 2000-person organisation,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

And the most important ingredient of a company\u2019s culture are its employees, Cannon-Brookes adds, that\u2019s why it\u2019s important to manage hiring practices as a startup grows, something Farquhar admits the duo didn\u2019t get right initially.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first 50 people we hired, Mike and I interviewed and hired personally, and then the next 50 people, we were less involved in the interview process,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hadn\u2019t put any values in place, or really structured the types of people we were looking for.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then one day we looked at the types of people that were coming to join Atlassian because we had free food and a pool table and ping pong and all these perks. People were joining Atlassisan because of the perks, not because we built amazing software that helps teams change the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Realising they were attracting the wrong type of employee, Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar took a bunch of their first employees on a company retreat, and asked them \u201cif you were going to rebuild Atlassian, what would be the properties you would look for in employees\u201d.<\/p>\n

The duo then did the same thing with Atlassian\u2019s executive team.<\/p>\n

The results were pretty similar, about 80% Farquhar says, and it was those attributes that became and remain Atlassian\u2019s values:<\/p>\n