“It might be a minority come in who apply from overseas and want to come work in Australia,but we think the vast majority of[the new jobs] will be people who live in Australia,” he said. “We should easily be able to find 1032 people to come work for us.”
The technology sector will need to fill 260,000 new jobs in the next four years to address a looming talent shortage,the Tech Council of Australia estimates. Farquhar said that,in a tight labour market,his company’s philosophy of allowing staff to work from anywhere would give his company a competitive advantage over others with stricter office requirements.
“Almost half of the staff we’ve hired in the last year live more than two hours from an Atlassian office,” he said. “So our ability to attract great talent,no matter where they are in the world,is way higher than any company that says ‘I need people to come into the office one day a week’,” he said.
“We’re already at record low unemployment,so there’s not people sitting there,twiddling their thumbs,waiting to join the tech industry. We’re going to have to retrain people from other industries to do that.”
The company is promoting its flexible work credentials by doing a tour of the east coast of Australia in a van. Farquhar,who worked out of a motor home while on sabbatical last year,said the idea was to show people across Australia they can work in high-paying tech roles without living in Sydney or Melbourne.
“People don’t[always] want to live in an 8 million person city like Sydney where the kid’s sport run on the weekend is an hour-and-a-half round trip,” he said. “They can work in Maroochydore or Mt Gambier,or they can work in a motor home,and they can have a great job.”