Let's reinvent all the things! - Anonymous employee Canonical Employee Review

2.0
Aug 4, 2013
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Working from home, travel, and if you really want, you can surely get away with producing like 0 value, but still get paid.

Cons

Unlike virtually every other technology company in the world, not even top engineers get equity. You better negotiate a high salary, because that's all you get! (and they will pay top of the market - you probably have to lie about your previous salary. do it) And the man who owns it all, makes seriously questionable decisions - often spending a year reinventing technology that already exists, because they can't work with the community. And in the end the new version is worse.. anyway... I don't actually ever see Canonical making it big. Nothing ever works right, at the technology level, and internal turmoil is rampant. Almost the entire rank of VPs were re-hired in 1.5 years. And there are completely dysfunctional teams run by pets of the owner, who are ruining Canonical, but are un-fireable.

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5.0
Apr 18, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

very good. happy so far

Cons

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2.0
Jan 5, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

> Highly visible open source company > O.K. pay and benefits > Twice yearly trips to interesting locations > Intelligent and mostly caring colleagues > Getting to put Canonical on your resume will help your career

Cons

> Toxic leadership style trickles down to the middle management. They're ruthless and single-minded (and extremely intelligent) at the top, and those seem to be the traits that get people promoted. The promotion process is also hilariously involved, and if you don't perform they'll demote you. > Insane interview process - mine took something like four months to complete, represented like 40+ hours of my time, and was considered average. > Twice yearly trips for grueling weeklong sprints. > The company only hires the best so, if you're used to being very good at your job, here you'll only be average at best. > Stack ranking - bottom X% of employees after each biannual review are placed on a PIP. > From what I saw, there are no "personality hires". Morale is expected to be derived solely from the company-paid work trips and the experience of getting paid to create open source software. Maybe this is unavoidable for full-remote companies, but it gets gloomy. > The video-on calls with your team and other teams will take up several hours of every single day, good luck finding time to actually get your work done during the day.

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