Great team working on interesting projects in company that has the potential to be huge. - Anonymous employee Canonical Employee Review

3.0
Oct 25, 2014
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I work with a great team that communicate and work well together. There is flexibility around wfh and work hours, but when it's important, all hands are on deck. The bonus' they have for staff every once in while is a nice perk. Free fruit, drinks.

Cons

It weird that they make you take some of your holiday allocation in order for them to close the office for Christmas. You have to buy our own computers and don't get any allowance for it until you've worked there for 3 years. Departments are not aligned with managment and visa versa, which makes for extra work as things are constantly having to be re-done at the last minute. Great, talented people leave all the time. Staff retention is low, because the quality of Senior Managment is low, everything is last minute because senior managment are not aligned with each other and don't have a 12 month plan. An established company that operates like a start-up. Change one major thing and the company could soar.

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5.0
Apr 18, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

very good. happy so far

Cons

could be better, like the time of application to final round

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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