Canonical reviews

- A dysfunctional empire (mis)managed into non profit by its founder - Poor quality senior management team who have achieved nothing of note either inside or outside the company - Constructed on a "business" model that will never deliver profit, if the founder gets bored - watch out! - Appallingly bad morale in sales, marketing, bus dev departments - the tech team seems to have a slightly better time - Huge staff turnover - the worst I have seen anywhere! - Lacks any sort of meaningful direction aside from pet projects of founder and his desire to reinvent the wheel - Huge waste in terms of costs and resources - many work out its impossible to achieve anything here and find a place to hide long enough so they can get a new role somewhere else asap! - No training or induction to speak of - expect, however, to be tossed in depth technical questions at company gatherings by an irate founder and pulled to pieces when you are unable to answer to his satisfaction.

Ubuntu has a lot of cache among techies. As a Linux/GNU operating system, that's rightfully so. But Canonical is another matter. It's a tech company where people can have good and bad experiences. A software developer's experience varies, depending on the project, the job function and the manager. For example, prior reviewers in the Lexington office expressed disappointment with "packaging" jobs. This is true. Yet at the same time, there's a lot of excitement and enthusiasm among those involved with other parts of Ubuntu. To be fair, this is true at any tech company. When I was there, I saw a rotating door for technical staff. A good number voluntarily left; others were let go. Personally what sank my commitment was the remark I heard from one technical manager, something that goes like this: "Ultimately, (software) engineers are replaceable." That last point isn't too big a surprise so long as one keeps in mind that Canonical is a for-profit company sitting atop a system built on open source sweat and devotion, huge in numbers and enthusiasm. In this situation, engineering talent is, to be blunt, cheap. At least from the top looking downwards, it appears so.