Decent - Software Engineer Canonical Employee Review

3.0
Jun 12, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Remote work. Plenty of software technologies.

Cons

Micromanagement. People are affraid of managers. Engineers overloaded with hiring process.

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Canonical Response
3y
Hello. We are glad to see that you enjoy remote working. We have put a lot of thought into how we enable our people to do their best work and effectively communicate with other team members. We think we have got pretty good at this especially given it's been our normal environment for so long. And we are definitely a place to be if you are an Engineer looking to work on, or have exposure to, many different technologies. We are so glad you are enjoying this aspect. We want to suggest that you reach out to the People team on your comment regarding managers. This is really something that you should raise internally here for us to be able to help and investigate further. It is difficult for us to take action from this site but we are ready and waiting and hope to hear from you on this. On hiring, we monitor activity carefully. We still have a little way to go on this but the good news is that we are about to train 82 new members to join our hiring leadership team! We are also in the final planning stages of rolling out our interview training. Watch this space! If you want to discuss this further, or have ideas, please do connect with our Head of Talent Science.

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.

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