Software company Atlassian Corp. TEAM announced Monday it will lay off 500 workers, about 5% of the company, as cutbacks in the tech sector continue. In a blog post, co-founders and co-Chief Executives Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar said that the cuts will be focused on recruiting, program management and research, and that savings will be reinvested in other areas of the company. “This is different to a financially-driven reduction, where you would look to make ‘broad-based cuts’ – for example, a 10% cut equally distributed across every org within the company,” they wrote. “This is not what is happening here.” Affected employees will have the option of remaining and communicating with their teams until the end of the week, the CEOs said. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Atlassian disclosed that the layoffs will result in $70 million to $75 million in charges in the fiscal third quarter, with $27 million to $29 million in cash charges and the rest non-cash, such as accelerated vesting of stock and office-space reductions. Atlassian — known for software programs such as Jira and Confluence — has seen its stock decline by 34.2% in the past 12 months, as the S&P 500 index SPX has declined 6.5%.
Market Pulse Stories are Rapid-fire, short news bursts on stocks and markets as they move. Visit MarketWatch.com for more information on this news.