India, March 12 -- Layoffs are brutal. Their impact rarely stops with the employee; it ripples through entire families. Anyone who has lived through one knows the template: an unscheduled Teams call, or a normal workday suddenly turning strange when login access is denied. In some cases, a stone-faced HR representative reads out a scripted note of forced empathy, often while the real message hides behind the language of restructuring, efficiency, or now, AI. Every layoff is a grim reminder that, for all the talk of culture and values, employees can quickly become statistics on a balance sheet. Atlassian's latest move carries many of the familiar markings of that now well-worn script.

Atlassian's decision to cut 1,600 jobs, roughly 10% of...