IME, because of pay, they have a hard time retaining "senior" talent, eg Nvidia, Chainguard, Amutable, Lambda, etc etc etc all have lots and lots of senior+ Canonical engineers. Especially in the age of AI, I think this is a "people-strategy" mistake.
The application process is very long and you absolutely lose great candidates because of it. Salaries are not US-tech competitive, but absolutely are Central/South America and Europe competitive. Lots of great Brazilian and Polish engineers, for example.
Also I have never seen a post on HN, Reddit etc about Canonical/Ubuntu that doesn't complain about hiring process. I think it does a pretty incredible amount of damage to the brand.
How well did you and your colleagues do at math in high school?
> Salaries are not US-tech competitive, but absolutely are Central/South America and Europe competitive.
Don't their salary bands change between countries? They're offering 55k-ish to a Senior SWE in France, which is a low-ball offer even there.
I don't know anyone at canonical personally, so I have no specific opinion. However. This smells like the same bullshit peddled by any tech company's hiring policy but executed less competently.
Made me happy I was cut loose early.
I've worked for one of these businesses before - basically staffing a daycare running a very compelling roleplay scenario so a millionaire/billionaire has an excuse to get away from their family for 10 hours a day. It works best if you're a fresh grad college kid who doesn't realize any of that for a few years and is just glad to have gotten a job.
So, the actual intent of all of their hiring circus is to ensure they don't accidentally hire someone who realizes what's going on.
EDIT: I'm shocked.
They ask for; A massive multi-choice questionaire. A massive free form list of questions. An ask for an essay. Grades from High school through to University. That's to start the process of many rounds of interviews followed by finally an interview with Mark Shuttleworth himself who's known to say no on vibes.
Personally i applied for a senior management role after ~30years working at multiple other very large and well known companies. The pay at canonical was literally 1/5th but i was curious. I was honest about my high school scores and immediately given a thanks for your time but we will pass dialog on their website after stating maths scores in year 9. I'm not even fucking kidding. Obviously i was gobsmacked. It was a blessing to get knocked back that early all things considered.
Not my post but has more detail and matches what i saw. Be amazed at the insanity in the leadership at Canonical that allows for this; https://www.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/15kj845/can...
We're talking put him in a straightjacket loony tunes type of shit when it comes to Shuttleworth. You can also look up various personal interactions. It's utterly fucking insane.
What sort of answer are they looking for here?
The knockback didn't hurt. It just made me think Canonical was lead by a lunatic and a quick Google will confirm this.
The reason more companies don't use IQ tests is that they don't work well for candidate qualification. Also, candidates hate them.
Epic actually did (does?) administer a full blown "entrance exam" - generic problem solving skills, with some basic coding and math stuff. They literally arrange with the university to administer it in a classroom setting. So yeah, kind of like an aptitude test.
See https://pigment.is/blogs/blogs/epic-systems-skills-assessmen...
I actually don't mind that, as it ensures all applicants are being judged on a level field.
It's quite rare for people graduating with a BS to be quizzed about SAT scores - the focus tends to be more on GPA, etc. But asking for SAT scores when you've been in grad school for so long...? Kind of ridiculous. And if you are going to ask, might as well ask for the GRE scores instead.
They also did (do?) a full personality quiz. You know, the type where they give you a scenario, and say are you more of A or B, and you often find yourself to be neither or both...
"Nah, let's not build up our technical street cred by doing stuff right, we'll torpedo that by making bizarre aspects of our culture stick in people's minds. Success!"
And just for full disclosure, I've never applied or have went through their process, all I know about it is second-hand through comments like these. It's just a terrible look to have that be what people think about your company.
In high school (in Australia), I went to Year 7 and 8 at one school, and did not do well (ADHD+"gifted"), and spent most of my time, it felt, in detentions, etc.
Moved to another school. Half a term of Year 9 and I was in 10. By the second week of second term I was in Year 11, and went on from there, graduating effectively 2 years early.
Canonical recruiter: "So you don't have any Year 9 grades to share? Or Year 10? Hmm, I'm not sure how we handle that, as we want to know those."
"Amusingly", when I went to do paramedic studies at a Community College in the US, high school graduation was required. Because my high school was overseas, they had to use a "translation service" to validate that my Australian high school graduation was "educationally equivalent" to the US. Never mind that whether or not it was (and I'd argue it was superior), "What about the fact that I have a B.S. (Hons)?". "Sorry, School of Health rules says we need this document for admission". (I got in, but the delays meant I had to wait until the next intake).