Canonical reviews

3.2

48% would recommend to a friend

(440 total reviews)

Mark Shuttleworth

39% approve of CEO

45% positive business outlook

Canonical has an employee rating of 3.2 out of 5 stars, based on 440 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Canonical employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

440 reviews
2.0
May 4, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Canonical is really well placed to do amazing work in the tech world at large. There are many diverse products that we produce. It's a great place to learn a ton about many areas of software development, and about open source. Canonical has many great people who are strongly principled. This makes it a joy to work with people lower down in the organization.

Cons

From the very top of the company there is a culture of high-pressure, low empathy or understanding and an unwillingness to listen. The CEO and CTO appear to believe strongly in their own superiority. Opportunities to have your ideas genuinely heard from the top are rare, and the company leaders are rarely interested in taking critical feedback to their ideas. Strong, alpha-male-type personalities are required to survive for any length of time at the VP-level. This culture trickles down the organisation, leading to many toxic interactions the closer you get to the top of the company. (When Jane Silber was CEO, company culture was a lot better)

1.0
May 16, 2022

One of the worst companies I have ever worked for

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The ability to leave the company

Cons

You will be told Canonical is 'changing' within your interview process. Please do not believe this. The CEO continues to be overly controlling and creates one of the most toxic cultures you will ever experience. He thinks it's completely appropriate to fire people on the spot, he will tell you he cares about diversity and inclusion and yet he strives to create an elitist, type A, culture. He's surronded himself by people that will never say no to him. Why would they? They would be fired instantly! Please can I sincerely ask you to reconsidered joining this organisation! If you are good, you'll be resigning within two years.

2.0
Aug 24, 2023

Awful management

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Remote work - Opportunity to have a decent tech company on your CV. - Good income

Cons

- The hiring process itself takes 2 months at minimum or over 6+ months. - When you're new: Depending on the team/department you're in. Good luck with getting the support you need to onboard and succeed. You'll be thrown into 5-10 spreadsheets, 5 Google docs and 1 onboarding Google doc to help you with that. It will take about 6 months for an average person to learn how to assimilate. - On the job description it says "agile". It's not, employees are incentivized to overwork and become bottlenecks. Slowing down the workflow significantly. - The expectation of you as an employee is to deliver high-quality work regardless of constraints or conflicting information from different stakeholders. When they say constraint it's lack of resources and support. - You will be forced to do HR work by "being part of the hiring process". Spending an amount of your day reading interviews, or interviewing people. They will also ask you to work faster in the midst of this. - No transparency. People aren't allowed to talk about their pay scale. - High employee churn. It's not weird to see 2-5 people say goodbye every week.

avatar
Canonical Response
2y
Thank you for highlighting both the positives and negatives of your personal experience. Remote working opportunities, our brand name and our compensation are often sighted as big pluses so we are glad you recognise them too! In January 2023 we launched our on-boarding platform which provides our new starters with lots of information ahead of Day 1. We also run an induction week for all new starters in person. 'On the job' induction plans are managed by each team so I would actively encourage you to raise your ideas and suggestions to make this better in your team. Sometimes it takes a combined effort to make our processes perfect.
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Glassdoor has 509 Canonical reviews submitted anonymously by Canonical employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Canonical is right for you.