“I’m liable for all of engineering at Atlassian,” Rajeev Rajan stated in our interview onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt final week. His aim — and that of the 2 CEOs on the prime of the agency — is to create one of many prime tech corporations on the world. Nice. So how do you try this?
Rajan explains {that a} key a part of the method since his appointment a yr and a half in the past is to allow “developer pleasure.” Atlassian created a company-level OKR (goal and key consequence) to trace the enjoyment throughout the corporate — which is simply as vital as firm income targets. He stated developer productiveness is boosted by having superior instruments, having empowered instruments, and creating an “wonderful engineering tradition.”
The corporate had a methods to go on that entrance. When Rajan joined, the corporate did a survey and requested if builders felt productive. Lower than half the corporate stated sure, a quantity that has since climbed to above 70%, Rajan says.
“Coding is a component science and half artwork. It’s good to really feel enthusiastic about what you’ve created. And the issues that are available the way in which of that pleasure is when you have got friction. While you’re writing code, you get caught, you need assistance from any person else in a distinct time zone. You don’t know find out how to join and you then cease. So we’re targeted on the issues that trigger builders to get blocked, and the way you unblock them.”
Atlassian simply accomplished a challenge to maneuver all of its instruments totally into the cloud, versus the on-premises hybrid it had utilized earlier than. Most different corporations had a head begin on Atlassian on that entrance, however Rajan has some expertise in that space. At Microsoft, he was a part of the crew to take Workplace 365 to the cloud, for instance.
“Once I got here to Atlassian, we have been a bit of late relative to possibly Microsoft however making good progress,” says Rajan.
A giant a part of the job was refocusing. Atlassian laid off a chunk of its workforce earlier this yr, and the corporate’s CTO sees that as a possibility to drag again in some locations, whereas focusing extra on different areas — like AI.
“We introduced Atlassian intelligence at Crew 23, which is our annual convention. We did a partnership with OpenAI and we’re actually targeted on how do you get groups to be extra productive by AI,” says Rajan. “The second side is utilizing AI for our personal engineering. Our builders are utilizing totally different sorts of coding assistants. I believe what AI coding assistants do is that they take a few of that drudgery away from you so as to deal with probably the most inventive facets of writing code and constructing issues and so forth. And so it’s actually thrilling to see that come into play. And we’re actually excited by the productiveness good points we get from AI, you recognize, coding help.”
Values keep the identical even because the tradition shifts
At Atlassian, part of the main target is to retain the values which have been a part of the 20-year firm, however determining how the tradition evolves.
“Tradition is an important factor if you’re making an attempt to scale, if you’re making an attempt to get to the subsequent stage,” Rajan explains. “And I noticed it’s vital to not change the values. We have now some actually good values at Atlassian. One of many values is an open firm, no bullshit. You recognize, we’re very open about how we discuss and convey issues out. And that’s actually vital to have that dialogue going.”
Issues can transfer too slowly in large corporations as a result of merchandise and selections have to maneuver by too many individuals. By empowering individuals to make selections, you’ll be able to hold issues shifting and, consequently, guarantee individuals stay engaged and enthusiastic about their work as a result of they see it coming to fruition and being deployed.
“Transfer quick, and don’t break too many issues,” Rajan quips.
Distant first, distant all the time
The pandemic accelerated Atlassian’s deal with distant work — the corporate has a distant, distributed crew they usually don’t have any intention of fixing that.
“We’re fully distant/distributed. We do have places of work, and we do one thing referred to as Worldwide Togetherness. The human connection is tremendous vital,” says Rajan.
You’ll be able to see the complete interview right here:
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