No direction - Anonymous employee Canonical Employee Review

1.0
Aug 31, 2015
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Some fun stuff to do and shipped reasonably widely. Good if you have ADHD and love consistently changing focus.

Cons

No focus at senior management level. Constantly jumping on the Next Big Thing without ever producing anything mature enough to ship and gain acceptance. Hoping for blind revenue wins without ever following through so uncertainty for company's future. Work-life balance nonexistent because everything always done in blind panic and rush before moving on to the next next next next next thing.

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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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