Yet another company in the whole wide world - Software Engineer Canonical Employee Review

1.0
Jun 25, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Remote work opportunity - Learning budget

Cons

- Awful micromanagement. Everything is supervised and dictated by the executive and HR. Disgusting to see and feel that HR has a lot more power than any other team. - Interview process takes around 6 months in average, even internal applications like promotion or team change take 3-4 months. - Promotion depends 99% on how other people sees and evaluates you, so if you are a person who prefers to focus on their job instead of making friends, licking some and speaking more than doing, then good luck! - Sometimes it feels like there is no defined scope of work, whatever brings money in, you do it. - It's almost impossible to survive if you are a new joiner. There's this system where they easily fire you depending on others' views. They compare you with other roles, teams and even levels. That's applicable to all, but many senior employees have already formed groups, where they just give good reviews to each other and protect themselves. - A big ratio of employees are seriously demotivated and do their job as a best effort yet nobody raises their opinion, because no one believes something would actually change, so people eventually become really toxic and ignorant. - Unfair work environment and salary matrix.

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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