Modern CTO Tech Titans: Why Accidental Managers are the Best Leaders with Rajeev Rajan, CTO at Atlassian
Mar 5, 2026
Rajeev Rajan, CTO at Atlassian and champion of developer joy, talks about why joyful engineers outperform productivity metrics. He explains why many great leaders are accidental managers and how career ladders should let top coders stay technical. Conversation covers scaling leadership as teams grow, staying connected across locations, and building trust, people, and developer-focused tools.
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Developer Joy Is More Important Than Productivity
- Developer joy beats pure productivity as a goal for engineers.
- Rajeev Rajan describes developer joy as uninterrupted flow: finding components, APIs, and docs quickly using tools like Compass to self-serve and avoid 3 a.m. blockers.
Three Pillars Of World Class Engineering
- Rajeev frames world-class engineering as three pillars: customer trust, people, and developer productivity.
- He explains customer trust (security/reliability), hiring top ICs and leaders, and architecture/productivity work at Atlassian.
Avoid Forcing Top Engineers Into Management
- Don't push your best ICs into management; offer parallel IC career paths.
- Rajeev says Atlassian hires distinguished engineers and interviews first-time manager candidates to probe motivation, preferring coaches over control-seekers.