Nice diversion, not a serious company - Executive Canonical Employee Review

1.0
Jul 17, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Very (very) flexible, making work/life balance easy Truly fantastic people, especially on the engineering side Whenever someone I care about asks if they should take a job there (as Canonical tends to hire the popular open source kids, whatever their actual abilities to run a business), I tell them, "Yes, if you just want a place to hang out for a year or two and not work very hard. But no if you really care about growing your career and learning something." Embedded in that counsel is this: it's kind of like a club, not a real company, and clubs can be fun.

Cons

Business plan suffers from serious ADHD. Never focus on anything long enough to really test whether it will work. Instead, out of fear of failure, the company invests in everything that looks remotely trendy, and so never really gains traction in anything. Sure, they'll point to the "market share" they have, but that's never on paid adoption, and always on free-riding users. Of course people are going to use Ubuntu for test projects if they don't have to pay. But they use RHEL when they're serious. While peers tend to treat each other well (except at the senior executive level), the top-down management style can be caustic, at best. It's a place you'll want to wear an asbestos suit, when the criticism should mainly be reflective.

Explore other reviews about Canonical

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.

29
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All