“My experience with Canonical’s interview process”

A short while ago, we talked about the hellish hiring process at a Silicon Valley startup, and today we’ve got another one. Apparently, it’s an open secret that the hiring process at Canonical is a complete dumpster fire.

I left Google in April 2024, and have thus been casually looking for a new job during 2024. A good friend of mine is currently working at Canonical, and he told me that it’s quite a nice company with a great working environment. Unfortunately, the internet is full of people who had a poor experience: Glassdoor shows that only 15% had a positive interview experience, famous internet denizens like sara rambled on the topic, reddit, hackernews, indeed and blind all say it’s terrible, … but the idea of being decently paid to do security work on a popular Linux distribution was really appealing to me.
↫ Julien Voisin

What follows is Byzantine and ridiculous, and all ultimately unnecessary since it turns out Mark Shuttleworth interviews applicants at the end of this horrid process and yays or nays people on vibes alone. You have to read it to believe it.

One interesting note that I do appreciate is that Voisin used their rights under the GDPR to force Canonical to hand over the feedback about his application since the GDPR considers it personal information. Delicious.