The beating will continue until morale improves.

On a more serious note, at this rate, probably 10 years. I guess it's similar to drinking. You can get drunk in 10 minutes and be hung over for much longer than that.

It turns out that org charts are VERY resistant to letting people go, even when the executives push very hard.

No, the assumption is that companies are more interested in cutting labor costs than productivity. Even if you screw up and need to hire back 50% of those you fired, you still cut the labor costs of the 50% still fired. And you can pretend to be a cool, thought-leading, "AI-native" company, which might be enough to juice your share price enough to offset any actual productivity loss.

Capital will always be in opposition to the cost of labor and want to make it as close to zero as possible, and AI is a plausible story for attempting that, regardless of the reality of AI efficiency.

No the assumption behind the statement and many others on this topic is not AI is more productive than Human + AI, it’s that 9 (or 8 or 6) humans + AI is more productive than 10 humans. No one is suggesting getting rid of all workers, but many are saying they can get rid of a significant percentage of them. It remains to be seen if that ends up being true but it is fundamentally different from what you are describing

Must a business grow to be healthy? What about stability and longevity?

Prioritization and workforce realignment. Old hat.

Replacing headcount with technology? Also old hat.

If the cuts ate into the good parts of the business, I will worry. I doubt that happened.

The Java ones have been done since version 6 or so. We’re up to what, 11?

Stagnant, yes. Mature also.

Right! There is more performance to be taken away yet! They're nearly there but plenty is left. Jira can be made "let's go brew coffee and come back" slow if the really tried

I'm not saying Atlassian is or isn't doing well, but your market isn't going to infinitely expand, nor expand at the rate you need to keep up with your costs.

If you build cars and you replace people with robots, you might fire those people because those robots allow you to keep up with demand with less people. Your business is doing fine and well but you just need less people to do the same output. Better yet those robots might even produce more than what your demand is and therefore even if demand increases your ability to supply with less people still exists.

Businesses will always look to do the same output or more with less cost irrespective of whether the company is doing well or not. This is why we have also seen "AI layoffs" across companies that have had very good financial positions or even record sales.

The proof is in the pudding if AI actually improves productivity of those left over to justify it. But sometimes simple analogies can be rebutted by other simple analogies.

That's a very nice analogy. I agree and thinking about my previous comment, I suppose I just lashed out because I really dislike Jira the product and don't think that it can be salvaged, but I don't have anything against the engineers working there, and agree that they can be mentored and reassigned to a product where they'd be able to create something good.