Atlassian President Jay Simons and CIO Archana Rao

Atlassian President Jay Simons & Atlassian CIO Archana Rao

Archana Rao is the CIO of Atlassian. Before joining the company, she was the Vice President of IT at Veritas Technologies and at Symantec before that. Jay Simons is the President of Atlassian. Before becoming President, Jay was Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Prior to Atlassian, Jay was the Vice President of Marketing at BEA Systems. June 10, 2019

397: Atlassian’s President, Jay Simons, and CIO, Archana Rao, discuss the unique culture of Atlassian. Both note that the company is extremely open, honest, and direct. The work of the executives is transparent to the rest of the company. Archana believes that allowing people to see other’s work, performance, and perspectives provides a recognition that there are challenges everywhere and it builds an immensely strong culture because people tend to work well together in this way. Jay has seen the company go from 100 to 3,000 employees in his 11 years with the company, and he declares that this culture has scaled remarkably, which in his mind is a testament to foundational parts of the culture that the company created.