Billionaire Atlassian CEO on the biggest trade-offs and wins of remote work

As companies continue to fumble return-to-office mandates, one company that’s figured out how to offer employees permanent flexibility is Atlassian.

Atlassian adopted a “Team Anywhere” policy in 2020 that allows employees to choose between remote, in-person or hybrid work.

Although Google, Zoom and other major corporations are requiring employees to spend more time at the office, the Australian software company hasn’t changed its remote-work rules.

The flexibility has empowered people to make big decisions about how and where they live. Atlassian’s billionaire co-founder and co-CEO Scott Farquhar tells CNBC Make It that more than 40% of company employees live more than two hours away from an office and work remotely, up from just 25% two years ago. As of Dec. 18, Forbes placed Farquhar’s net worth at $14.2 billion.

The switch to a distributed workforce has been an “overwhelmingly positive” move for the software firm, Farquhar, 44, adds, but there are still big challenges.

He assumed recent graduates would prefer remote work, but instead, “the vast majority of entry-level and younger employees were moving to cities to be closer to our offices, and have chosen to go in every week,” Farquhar says. Research suggests many young employees like being in-office for networking, mentorship and getting feedback from their manager.

But if young employees want to see their colleagues in person, and the rest of their team prefers to be remote, how do you strike that balance? That’s the problem Atlassian is still trying to solve, says Farquhar.

“I don’t think we’ve yet worked out what we do for younger employees in the office,” he explains. “Do they require their bosses to come into the office sometimes, too? If so, how frequently? What other support do they need?” 

Another pain point has been working across time zones, Farquhar says. 

At first, Atlassian allowed employees to work in the time zone of their choosing, as long as managers approved it, and they were located in one of the 13 countries where Atlassian is considered a legal entity. 

“What we’ve found is that we’ll make exceptions, for example, for one or two people to work in Japan, but the rest of their team is 12 or 14 hours behind, and at the end of the day, their happiness at work suffers,” he says. 

Introducing some restrictions to employees’ location flexibility, like designated time zones for each team, has helped, Farquhar says, but he acknowledges that Atlassian “hasn’t nailed it down yet.”

“We’ve had to say no to candidates who couldn’t accommodate their team’s time zone and adjust our location policies so they’re clear and specific,” he adds. 

In some cases, Atlassian has helped employees move internally to a different team that better suits their preferred time zone — but Farquhar recognizes that’s not a long-term solution.

Research shows such groups benefit from remote work because it allows them to better balance work and family responsibilities and gives them access to higher-paying jobs otherwise not available in their area, among other reasons.

But the most striking change with remote work is happier employees, Farquhar says. Workers can move closer to family without switching jobs, save money, or just have more control over their workday. 

Adds Farquhar: “It just feels like a much more human way to work.”

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