Mike Cannon-Brookes, the billionaire boss of Atlassian, has sparked outrage by replacing 150 jobs with artificial intelligence, and telling the discarded workers with a video message rather than face-to-face.
The sacked staff received a video from Mr Cannon-Brookes on Wednesday morning explaining that most of their jobs at the software company would soon be taken by artificial intelligence (AI).
In the video, Mr Cannon-Brookes stopped short of naming who was leaving, forcing staff to wait 15 minutes for an email about their fate.
Staff impacted had their laptops blocked, but are expected to be paid for the next six months.
The Atlassian purge came just hours after the Commonwealth Bank confirmed it would cut 45 call centre jobs and replace them with an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot to deal with customer enquiries.
