Where management and HR join forces to destroy your workplace - Software Engineer Canonical Employee Review

2.0
May 10, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Amazing people throughout. There are tons of people to learn from and collaborate with. Remote-first company gives great flexibility. Interesting projects to work on. Opensource-oriented company.

Cons

There are some truly terrible managers in the company. Changing teams/roles at the company is very difficult if you get into a scenario where you're not thriving where you are. Abusive peer review system that leads to punishment for employees who receive positive reviews Mark "The Dragon" Shuttleworth enjoys the pain of those around him. His DM picture being a dragon shows his immaturity and lack of respect for the people he employs.

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Canonical Response
2y
It is always great to read the positive reviews about our culture. We are totally committed to inviting the best and brightest people to be part of our journey to foster a culture of collaboration and achievement. This not only brings huge trust in each other but endless opportunities to learn and achieve the exceptional. We work hard to ensure that our globally remote environment is effective whilst offering people the chance to be part of our story regardless of location. It is disappointing to read your thoughts on our management team. As I am sure you are aware we are in the process of hiring a team to help advance our leadership skills which shows our commitment to this. Managing people in a culture of high performance is hard. Our 360 process brings real insight into the performance of our people and allows a well rounded view to be collected from teams of people. We also launched the ability to view and apply for roles internally last year to ensure these opportunities are transparent. As with many organisations, an internal move does require a good standard of performance in the current role to enable the move. We would like to wish you the best of luck with your next role and onward career journey.

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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