Last week, the historic rulings on Proposition 8 and DOMA served as an unprecedented cause for celebration for many Atlassians. What happened next is a shining example of the non-corporate culture Atlassians love so fiercely.
After the news of the rulings started to spread on Thursday afternoon, a blog post in our internal Confluence instance asked the big question: Can we, as a company, celebrate this?
Within minutes, the post received 105 likes and 106 comments from Atlassians all around the world.
One thread posed the idea of a getting a pride-themed T-shirt made in time for Pride, San Francisco’s annual LGBT celebration, over the weekend (a concept-to-launch window of less than 24 hours). Eventually a few DIY t-shirt designs were posted, and execs piped into the thread giving us the go-ahead to print them. Big thanks to Jack Nadel for the fastest T-shirt order ever!
And somehow, some way, our team made it happen. The feeling of elation and, well, pride in the office was palpable as we all donned our shirts and posed for a group shot:
Other teams throughout Atlassian felt the need to commemorate this momentous occasion as well. Atlassian Answers, our Q&A site, and Bitbucket, our unlimited private code hosting service, both modified their respective logos to show support for LGBT rights over the weekend:
Hell, even the dogs of Atlassian got in on the celebration!
These gestures may seem small, but our hope is that they signify that Atlassian is a diverse, inclusive workplace. The recent rulings have a very meaningful impact on the lives of several members of our team; to show that we support them is the least we can do.