I'm from Europe, and would be in general agreement that US work culture is harsh in many ways. Also, it's entirely believable that companies present themselves as better than they really are. Further, I sympathize with the author's difficult personal situation.

With that out of the way, I generally find the article absurd.

First, and this is probably my age, I continue to be surprised by how low the bar is these days for angry employees to expose dirt on the public internet. In this case it seems to be anonymous, but I personally still live by the code that you keep this stuff private. None of the claims made seem to warrant such aggressive and counterproductive action, and drawing noses on founder's faces makes the entire thing look incredibly childish.

Also, when you call your manager "Rio, with his manager being Sean", I hope those are pseudonyms. But they're not, since the names are directly in the company's response, so there goes your anonymity.

"In Atlassian you're disposable"

Yes, it's called employment. Every employee in every company is disposable. This isn't an excuse to treat you badly, but disposable you are. Live with that expectation, instead of thinking they're your friends or family. They're not. Likewise, employers are disposable.

"Long-term it turned out to be a good move, since I received no promotion or salary increase in 2.5 years"

"It has been 2+ years at Atlassian and I am still stuck in the same role"

Again, I must be getting old. Do people expect a yearly promotion these days? The above to me sounds like extreme impatience.

Further, it's unreasonable to expect unlimited promotion opportunities. If the "salary house" in a team of 10 allows for 3 seniors, it means not everybody can be promoted to senior. Promotions are part of a distribution and have caps, that's not unreasonable, it's common sense.

As to HOW the selection is made on whom gets promoted, agreed that this can be a messy and sometimes unfair process. Indeed, personal factors may be at play and there's the roll of the dice regarding whether managers like you. that point is fair, yet highly common in business, and hard to solve.

In this case, a very hard claim is made that you can't get a promotion when you have children, whilst the evidence to support this conclusion is thin, and based on a single exaggerated case.

As for approving/denying any type of leave, the situation he describes does sound very harsh. In general though, even in work cultures far more generous with leave days, managers still needing to approve/decline them is common. A decline should mean postponement, not that you can never take the days. Honestly, I'm having a hard time making sense of this particular claim. There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding on both sides.

"There's a lot of favoritism in the company"

Get used to it. This is how the human species works. It doesn't mean you have to kiss up like a weasel, but unfortunate as it is, managing your visibility and selling yourself is part of any professional work life.

Take this simple yet brutal life lesson from this old man: your job is to make your manager look good, as well as to not make them look bad. That's the job.

"Wellbeing and COVID"

Indeed, companies do not care about your well being. Stop having this expectation. If they could downsize a team, automate your job or offshore it, they will. If this would lead to personal catastrophe, nobody cares. This is the nature of business.

Employees aren't much better. They easily switch employer and will definitely not help out when the business is going under, they run instead.

There's no loyalty in commerce.

"Employment law violations"

Another confusing claim. A single qualified candidate is interviewed and the manager wants to do more, to get a bigger sample set. Likely with the idea to pick the best from the subset. What absurd law would be violated here? Seems like plain common sense.

Anyway, I'll end it here. It seems to me like the author is dealing with a lot of personal trauma, so the piece should be read with that in mind.