Atlassian also issues billions worth of RSUs to employees every year. The buybacks are necessary to offset that. Shareholders are getting nothing out of it, and the fact that the stock price has been in freefall for years despite the buybacks shows that.

Software companies hid behind “free cash flow” and “YoY revenue growth” and “non-GAAP profit” for years in the zero interest world. Now that the heat has turned up a notch investors can see what I said before - most of these companies are wildly overstaffed and addicted to spending.