This seems to be the canonical Canonical interview process – I've heard several stories like this over the years. It's always the same: interview process is overly long and a bit ridiculous, but things go relatively well. And then at the final stage Shuttleworth shows up to be a dick with a bizarre focus on high school, after which it's rejected.
olswtf · 13h ago
This was exactly my experience last year. I even did a SAR to get all my interview notes. Glowing praise and positivity until Shuttleworth didn’t like 16yo me’s exam results (which I disclosed as part of the weird 4000 word essay thing in stage 1)
pydry · 22h ago
Judging by Ubuntu's declining quality over the last few years, this selection process doesn't seem to be working too well.
loloquwowndueo · 22h ago
Internally, toxic culture has resulted in large turnaround which is biased to the most experienced people in the company (those smart and valuable enough to realize they don’t have to put up with the crap and can do better elsewhere). It doesn’t matter how brilliant the new hires are, there’s no way to replace the lost institutional knowledge and experience when an old-timer leaves.
aucisson_masque · 21h ago
The interview process says a lot about a company.
Honestly, I would have run away at the very beginning with this weird focus on high school.
If you can't be professional in your recruitment process, it's a big red flag.
Assuming everything is true, he did actually dodge a bullet.
AnotherGoodName · 20h ago
I suspect the make up of this company is going to be the most extreme of extreme mono cultures.
The ‘what marks did you get in high school mathematics’ alone as a screening question (apparently an auto rejection if it’s not top 10%) and the ceo interviewing everyone personally gives a vibe of ‘you must have walked a very similar path in life as the boss to work here.’
Like there doesn’t seem to be any room to be the slightest bit outside of the lane of the ceos personal expectations. What the hell is this company like on the inside? A clone factory i assume?
aucisson_masque · 10h ago
> A clone factory i assume?
Not necessarily, I would assume it's more of a 'yes man' mentality where you have to agree with everything the boss say (even when you didn't understand it lol).
Giving different opinion, counter argument, ... All the stuff that allows to make an educated guess and eventually take good decision is a big No-No.
The equivalent of fascism but in a company.
Usually the one who reach the top are those who suck it up, not based on merit. Overall bad working environment.
Thats how you end up with the famous Ubuntu-Amazon advertising relationship in the start menu, or the snap package.
theletterf · 22h ago
Most of the folks I know that work or have worked at Canonical are smart and deeply humble, even worryingly so. I say "worryingly" in the sense that their hiring process seems to weed out people who could speak up, question authority or otherwise show hints of critical thinking. Not my cup of tea.
kiitos · 21h ago
Most of the folks that I've worked with, who have previously worked at Canonical, have been categorically unimpressive. "Senior" engineers with limited, even naive, understanding of the technologies and tools they're working with, and who are totally uninterested in feedback from, or collaboration with, any of their peers.
spearmint1992 · 22h ago
They all talk about Mark and make fun of him behind his back. Most won't say something to him to his face because he let's them know they would lose their jobs. Your paycheck requires you can't speak up. Take the cash or leave.
WesolyKubeczek · 4h ago
I thought that was business as usual everywhere, especially in companies where employees are encouraged to speak up. Yes, of course you can speak up, and this makes it ever so easy to judge you or throw you out.
Do your own time. Take your paycheck. Don't rock the boat.
retrobox · 23h ago
I remember applying for a position a few years back. After I saw a bunch of questions related to high school I noped out due to weird vibes. Sounds like it was a good call
proctrap · 7h ago
They did the same for me: I was - like the author - vague here, instead of "10/10 perfect score" and thus rejected pretty soon without any further information.
loloquwowndueo · 21h ago
> I got three "strong yes", eight "yes", and a single "no" from Mark Shuttleworth
Mark interviews are always the last in the process but since they’re the only ones that carry an automatic fail despite all other interviewer scores, they should be done first.
mort96 · 8h ago
There's some weird twisted kind of logic here: Shuttleworth probably sees it as the other interviewers' job to weed out candidates so that he doesn't have to spend as much of his time interviewing candidates. It's a total waste in terms of man-hours spent interviewing, but it means Shuttleworth himself spends less time interviewing.
selcuka · 4h ago
> since they’re the only ones that carry an automatic fail despite all other interviewer scores, they should be done first.
That would be impossible since there is only one Mark but a multitude of people who can conduct the previous interviews.
kiitos · 21h ago
An interview process that allows a single individual to have absolute veto power over multiple prior interview evaluators is, pretty obviously, broken.
loloquwowndueo · 20h ago
Canonical’s interview process is all kinds of broken. This has been discussed widely on the internet and internally but as long as Mark (who is the main driver and firmly believes it’s a revolution in how hiring is done) and his hiring minions continue to justify it and refuse to change it, it will remain so.
frosting1337 · 18h ago
Can't really change much if the CEO and founder think it's a good idea.
tkzed49 · 23h ago
Shuttleworth sounds like a complete tool. His position seems to select for that.
No comments yet
AnotherGoodName · 21h ago
Similar experiences. I figured there's no way they wouldn't take me to the next round given my background. Answered GPA question honestly and got the auto rejected email in minutes.
Really weird as someone who's worked at a staff+ level at multiple FAANGs with over 20 years experience. Apparently my GPA from over 20 years ago isn't high enough for Canonical.
Lu2025 · 1d ago
> At some point, someone bought him a plate, and he started to eat, without excusing himself about doing so
Whoa, that dude is full of himself.
elteto · 22h ago
All these Steve Jobs wannabe's somehow always overshoot yet also entirely fall short.
politelemon · 22h ago
I wouldn't hold Jobs up as a paragon to aim for. Falling short sounds like a good thing here
pdpi · 21h ago
That's the point, though: Jobs was a very successful asshole, and people get their "becauses" and "despites" mixed up. The Jobs wannabes overshoot on the "despites" and keep falling short on the "becauses".
cedws · 8h ago
I don’t know how these people don’t make their own skin crawl. Sounds like scum of a human being.
artyom · 1d ago
I had the same experience. The interview process was super long and nowhere near completion, got through a few phases, got rejected with no explanation in the middle of it.
The "psychometric assessments" were specially dumb and I started questioning if I wanted to work at Canonical at that time anyway.
There's places where HR and processes as a whole look like just incompetency. And other places where the amount of people, processes and steps sounds like a mafia to employ a lot of people to achieve absolutely nothing (32,000 open positions?). This REALLY sounds like the latter (even Mark complains about why he's wasting time with a duplicate application).
Very very clever actionable using GDPR. And totally within the spirit of the law. I'll use it.
michaelt · 21h ago
> 32,000 open positions?
Honestly, I very much doubt a company with ~1200 employees has 32,000 open positions.
More likely it's HR reposting the same 20 job ads every day to keep them at the top of the linkedin news feed or some nonsense like that.
loloquwowndueo · 20h ago
Canonical is a remote company so location doesn’t matter but - what they do is, they post the same ad but selecting specific countries or cities to get better SEO positioning in most geographies. You’ll see the same position advertised for a bunch of cities (hence the inflated count) but the job posting text will actually say it’s remote.
It’s like “growth hacking” but for hiring post positioning.
sltr · 1h ago
I interviewed in November 2022. Sounds unchanged, with the essay (24-pages) and bizarre focus on my early life.
Progressed pretty far into the process. 94% on intelligence assessment and positive on the behavioral. Then in a call with HR, I was was told a COVID vaccine was required. I said I was unwilling to take an mRNA vaccine. Rejected by email after that. (I did get Novavax a couple of months later when it became available in my area).
Overall, my impression was negative. Success at Canonical means you fit into a narrow model, subject yourself to unwarranted character judgments, and don't have an opinion about much.
tonoto · 8h ago
Canonical brought us some interesting concepts, like cloud-init, and it's been my first choice for cloud-images, but this toxic culture of them motivates me to choose a better image. Or just something like Nixos.
hbogert · 5h ago
just because it is ubiquitous doesn't make it good. I spent my fair share in cloud-init land and it absolutely sucks. The complete state flow is a mess with exceptions all over the place.
jofla_net · 1d ago
What an interesting use of GDPR.
Boy do i wish there was something analogous where i am.
Have had identical experiences with large-named places.
I guess its just hard to run a fan club where everyone wants in, you have to grasp at straws to dismiss. Paraeto at work again.
Kudos · 22h ago
It's really great. Snowflake ghosted me when I asked politely for interview feedback. I identified their likely DPO via LinkedIn, sent them my compliant and quickly recieved all of the interview notes and feedback.
barbazoo · 1d ago
Interestingly this mirrors in parts my experience with Mozilla. I have experience with couple of megacorps and they were always more organized than those folks and the folks in this story.
Maybe an open source org hiring problem?
dingnuts · 1d ago
based solely on anecdotes and rumors and feelings, I wonder if it's a nonprofit problem. Reminds me of the kind of grift you read about in various NGO charity type organizations
spearmint1992 · 22h ago
Canonical isn't a nonprofit. It's technically a for-profit.
loloquwowndueo · 20h ago
Has always been openly a 100% commercial company, no need to qualify it with a “technically”. Maybe you’re thinking about the Ubuntu Foundation?
rcarmo · 13h ago
Some of this tracks, but I don’t remember there begin so many steps when I applied (almost a decade ago). Mark was civil if a tad unconventional, but I remember the biggest reason I said no was that it turned out to be a contract position, not an FTE.
hamidr · 1d ago
Imagine a world where you are only allowed to work for cooperations such a this.
Putting all the bureaucracy aside, to be filtered like this is such a Kafkaesque feeling.
frosting1337 · 18h ago
Anyone know what "that canonical article" is, as referenced at the very end of the timeline?
Ballas · 12h ago
The one you just read?
bananapub · 1d ago
I am fascinated at how this has actually lasted so long without imploding the place - did Mark stop being a cheapskate on salary so people will tolerate this process? Or is it just banking on their good name and mostly getting to work on free software?
dsr_ · 1d ago
It's entirely possible that it is imploding. Remember that a large percentage of Ubuntu's output is passing through the volunteer labor of the Debian project. Meanwhile, if there's not much management fiddling with existing employees, they might have their general processes well-automated.
homebrewer · 23h ago
The reverse is also true, Canonical employs a bunch of Debian developers who work on Debian upstream during their paid time when it makes more sense.
wodenokoto · 23h ago
By all accounts it’s a great place to work, but not a great place to apply for work …
firstplacelast · 21h ago
Maybe the reality is most jobs aren't that hard once you have some baseline skills? While I don't love this interview process, I'm certain there are plenty of great people filtered out of the standard interview process in big tech.
If everyone is using the same criteria, they are all competing for the same group of candidates. Using other processes, no matter how whack-a-doodle, will give you a completely different pool to select from.
heldrida · 1d ago
Unbelievable!
ritcgab · 20h ago
Unubuntunable.
vkaku · 1d ago
These days, the effort required for company-specific long essay applications hardly seems justified. With Generative AI readily available, it’s easy to tailor essays to appeal to particular—even narcissistic—preferences, unless someone genuinely enjoys the writing process.
As a result, the whole system has devolved into a “garbage in, garbage out” exercise. What began as a meaningful way to assess candidates has largely been undermined, and the original intent behind these evaluations—whether skills-based or culture fit—has been lost.
duskwuff · 21h ago
I agree, but for a different reason (and one which isn't recent, either). Essay questions on job applications are most effective at selecting for candidates who are adept at telling stories about themselves. It doesn't necessarily give you candidates who are more knowledgeable or better at their jobs.
financypants · 22h ago
I'd love to know at what rate the long essay questions are read. Maybe we get to a point where applicants have AI write them and then no one reads them!
hintymad · 19h ago
> Their application was a duplicate with the same email address,
Why do people use "they" and "their" for a single person? Is this the requirement for not misgendering someone?
frosting1337 · 18h ago
Using a 3rd person possessive pronoun like this isn't unusual or "promoting woke", it's English.
hintymad · 16h ago
Thanks. I rarely saw this usage before, hence the question
xaoz · 6h ago
It's more common in less personal, more formal contexts. Another place you might see this in addition to hiring notes is police reports. It's fine English in any context though, just convention driven.
nhaines · 7h ago
It's been standard conversational English since the 1300s.
hintymad · 2h ago
Thanks. Somehow when I was learning English, the instruction was to use she/her to refer to an unknown third person, so did I when writing essays in a college here. That's why it felt strange when I saw they/their for 3rd person.
hintymad · 19h ago
> So I exercised my GDPR rights, and asked to be communicated everything pertaining to my interviews.
This is amazing. Does the US have a similar law for us to get interview feedbacks like this? I can become a single-issue voter for this law /jk
Bendy · 1d ago
So it’s another inhumane interview process from a company led by an apparent psychopath. The author certainly dodged a bullet and graciously wrote this warning. Don’t work for them, they are vampires. Go elsewhere, your life is worth more and you always have a choice.
animitronix · 1d ago
"So now I'm really curious about the decision process here, as it seems that every interviewer's opinion is ignored if Shuttleworth puts some red marks."
Umm yes? That's how it works everywhere, highest boss in the chain has right of refusal on new hires.
dsr_ · 1d ago
It is unusual to be interviewed by someone more than three levels above the position you are applying for.
At a small company, you might well be interviewed by all of your teammates, your prospective manager, the HR person and the owner/president/CEO... in the course of one day.
At a large company, an IC might not even see their supervisor's manager's director's vice-president until they had been working for six months.
jterrys · 1d ago
>It is unusual to be interviewed by someone more than three levels above the position you are applying for.
This happened to me, and it was by far my worst interview ever.
Early on in my career right after graduating I got interviewed for a Jr. Sysadmin position at a high frequency trading firm of approx ~1000 employees. The first few behavioral interviews they repeated the exact same questions, including some soft linux knowledge questions (what would you use to troubleshoot network problems lol). Then they took me for a 4 hour on-site gauntlet where they asked the same questions, again, and then I had to do a python leetcode whiteboard problem which I immediately bombed because I hardly did much coding back then. The application said "familiarity with bash/python scripting". If I remember right the problem involved binary search trees which I had no idea about at the time. I didn't know my ass from my hole.
Suffice to say after that, we had lunch. all 4 employees on my team. And all 4 employees that were in the office at the time, which was pretty much empty, because apparently nobody really went in. They gave me a really cold, wet, and soppy burrito. This was the off the mark "vibes" interview where they shot the shit and pretended to be friendly to gauge my personality. I embarrassingly had to play along even thought we all knew it was a total waste of fucking time.
Afterwards, I was shuffled into a big empty meeting room where the CEO interviewed me on screen from California. I was asked the exact same fucking behavioral soft questions down to what I would use to troubleshoot network problems, then he asked me to walk through an example. But at this point I was pretty much mentally blown up from the whiteboard problem and had no motivation to continue. My mind went blank. I could visibly tell he was upset he even had to talk to me.
Honestly, I would have run away at the very beginning with this weird focus on high school.
If you can't be professional in your recruitment process, it's a big red flag.
Assuming everything is true, he did actually dodge a bullet.
The ‘what marks did you get in high school mathematics’ alone as a screening question (apparently an auto rejection if it’s not top 10%) and the ceo interviewing everyone personally gives a vibe of ‘you must have walked a very similar path in life as the boss to work here.’
Like there doesn’t seem to be any room to be the slightest bit outside of the lane of the ceos personal expectations. What the hell is this company like on the inside? A clone factory i assume?
Not necessarily, I would assume it's more of a 'yes man' mentality where you have to agree with everything the boss say (even when you didn't understand it lol).
Giving different opinion, counter argument, ... All the stuff that allows to make an educated guess and eventually take good decision is a big No-No.
The equivalent of fascism but in a company.
Usually the one who reach the top are those who suck it up, not based on merit. Overall bad working environment.
Thats how you end up with the famous Ubuntu-Amazon advertising relationship in the start menu, or the snap package.
Do your own time. Take your paycheck. Don't rock the boat.
Mark interviews are always the last in the process but since they’re the only ones that carry an automatic fail despite all other interviewer scores, they should be done first.
That would be impossible since there is only one Mark but a multitude of people who can conduct the previous interviews.
No comments yet
Really weird as someone who's worked at a staff+ level at multiple FAANGs with over 20 years experience. Apparently my GPA from over 20 years ago isn't high enough for Canonical.
Whoa, that dude is full of himself.
The "psychometric assessments" were specially dumb and I started questioning if I wanted to work at Canonical at that time anyway.
There's places where HR and processes as a whole look like just incompetency. And other places where the amount of people, processes and steps sounds like a mafia to employ a lot of people to achieve absolutely nothing (32,000 open positions?). This REALLY sounds like the latter (even Mark complains about why he's wasting time with a duplicate application).
Very very clever actionable using GDPR. And totally within the spirit of the law. I'll use it.
Honestly, I very much doubt a company with ~1200 employees has 32,000 open positions.
More likely it's HR reposting the same 20 job ads every day to keep them at the top of the linkedin news feed or some nonsense like that.
It’s like “growth hacking” but for hiring post positioning.
Progressed pretty far into the process. 94% on intelligence assessment and positive on the behavioral. Then in a call with HR, I was was told a COVID vaccine was required. I said I was unwilling to take an mRNA vaccine. Rejected by email after that. (I did get Novavax a couple of months later when it became available in my area).
Overall, my impression was negative. Success at Canonical means you fit into a narrow model, subject yourself to unwarranted character judgments, and don't have an opinion about much.
Maybe an open source org hiring problem?
If everyone is using the same criteria, they are all competing for the same group of candidates. Using other processes, no matter how whack-a-doodle, will give you a completely different pool to select from.
As a result, the whole system has devolved into a “garbage in, garbage out” exercise. What began as a meaningful way to assess candidates has largely been undermined, and the original intent behind these evaluations—whether skills-based or culture fit—has been lost.
Why do people use "they" and "their" for a single person? Is this the requirement for not misgendering someone?
This is amazing. Does the US have a similar law for us to get interview feedbacks like this? I can become a single-issue voter for this law /jk
Umm yes? That's how it works everywhere, highest boss in the chain has right of refusal on new hires.
At a small company, you might well be interviewed by all of your teammates, your prospective manager, the HR person and the owner/president/CEO... in the course of one day.
At a large company, an IC might not even see their supervisor's manager's director's vice-president until they had been working for six months.
This happened to me, and it was by far my worst interview ever.
Early on in my career right after graduating I got interviewed for a Jr. Sysadmin position at a high frequency trading firm of approx ~1000 employees. The first few behavioral interviews they repeated the exact same questions, including some soft linux knowledge questions (what would you use to troubleshoot network problems lol). Then they took me for a 4 hour on-site gauntlet where they asked the same questions, again, and then I had to do a python leetcode whiteboard problem which I immediately bombed because I hardly did much coding back then. The application said "familiarity with bash/python scripting". If I remember right the problem involved binary search trees which I had no idea about at the time. I didn't know my ass from my hole.
Suffice to say after that, we had lunch. all 4 employees on my team. And all 4 employees that were in the office at the time, which was pretty much empty, because apparently nobody really went in. They gave me a really cold, wet, and soppy burrito. This was the off the mark "vibes" interview where they shot the shit and pretended to be friendly to gauge my personality. I embarrassingly had to play along even thought we all knew it was a total waste of fucking time.
Afterwards, I was shuffled into a big empty meeting room where the CEO interviewed me on screen from California. I was asked the exact same fucking behavioral soft questions down to what I would use to troubleshoot network problems, then he asked me to walk through an example. But at this point I was pretty much mentally blown up from the whiteboard problem and had no motivation to continue. My mind went blank. I could visibly tell he was upset he even had to talk to me.
Fastest rejection response I ever got.