* Spineless management - managers, directors, VPs...none of them have any real power to do anything, and they're solely focused on keeping their job/salary intact; they will let the CEO and HR destroy and humiliate their teams and won't stand up for their teams no matter how unfair their teams are treated
* CEO's approval is required for even for the tiniest of the decisions - the company is essentially his toy
* No real pay raises - even talk of it is seen as a Bad Thing (otherwise would be stamped as "cultural misfit", lack of "passion" for the job, and so on)
* Stack-ranking of employees twice a year, which is nothing but a popularity contest and pseudoscience at best; the bottom ~10% will be PIPed out; bottom 20% won't get any bonus/payraise (but even higher rating wouldn't get anything meaningful)
* Graduates and Associates will be fired if they fail promotion within a year
* HR operate with an iron-fist - no disagreements are allowed (either will be ignored completely or fired silently)
* Zero career progression - management will use any excuse to reject promotion (because "we are better than everyone else, and know better than everyone else in the world")
* The company encourages and rewards "heroes" who become bottlenecks, dominate decision-making and take-over every meeting
* Very high attrition rate circa 20-30% (due to toxic work environment, high workload, 10% PIP+termination every 6 months, random firing, and so on)
* Insane hiring process - takes months, only the very desperate put up with that as good ones typically get better offers elsewhere & quickly too
* Long hours, high pressure & toxic work environment which can't be fixed with a couple "well-being webinars" they organise - it's as if the company hates its employees!
* Involuntary time-off twice a year (one in Aug and one in Dec, 10 days each, 20 days of PTOs prebooked per year!)
* Employees spend considerable time in the recruitment process for which there's no benefit (not counted towards 360) and as such the regular work suffers and had to be completed overnight or weekends
* CEO surrounds himself with yes-men. He thinks those leave Canonical are those not "aligned" with his vision, and those stay share his vision. But the reality is, the vast majority of the senior management who stay are sycophants who always "support" and praise him so that they can get by comfortably and stay out of friction for their job/pay and mental health
It used to be a benevolent opensource company, but there's nothing "Ubuntu" about Canonical today. It's a ruthless Corporation which milks the opensource Community and FOSS while contributing barely anything back and treat employees with complete mistrust and like slaves. A toxic culture driven by fear, PIPs, threats and passive-aggression (HR head is from Amazon!).
