Fantastic place to work if you love Linux and open source - Software Engineer Canonical Employee Review

5.0
Nov 16, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

When I was applying to Canonical, some of the negative reviews here and on other company review sites were admittedly concerning to me, so I wanted to come back here after almost a full year of employment to note that my experience has been entirely positive. As someone passionate about operating system software development, my role at Canonical is nothing short of a dream role, complete with work that I enjoy, major opportunity for upward growth, teammates that are a pleasure to work with, and very fun travel and career development opportunities. Having a day-to-day experience like this that contributes directly to the world's most widely used operating system for servers is extremely rewarding as well, since I know that my work has a major impact on the global compute infrastructure. If you are a prospective applicant, specifically one who is passionate about advancing Linux and open source software in a big way, Canonical is full of incredible opportunities for you. I'm extremely glad I was not swayed away from this opportunity by concerning reviews. My advice would be to pay attention to your experience with the interview process - for me, despite everything I had heard about it, it consisted exclusively of very interesting conversations about topics I am passionate about with people I was excited by the process of working with - which is precisely the experience that I have had since joining.

Cons

Some growing pains due to time it takes to hire appropriate candidates

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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