Comment by Hasz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Hasz | Hacker News Reader

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I worked there for a couple years. IMO, the hiring process holds Canonical back from scaling like a typical tech co, but they probably don't want to. It also attracts a very specific type of person; everyone I personally worked with was very bright and capable.

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.

> It also attracts a very specific type of person; everyone I personally worked with was very bright and capable.

How well did you and your colleagues do at math in high school?

Well if they work at canonical we know they did very well

I wonder why these bright abd capable people didn't join a company that actually pays reasonably.

> 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 wonder why these bright abd capable people didn't join a company that actually pays reasonably.

Sounds like they do when they get the chance. I've worked for a company that didn't have quite as crazy a hiring process but they had the same basic profile - very good at hiring for potential in juniors, but underpaid for the ability they wanted. As a result they really struggle to hire seniors and are often a stepping stone to a better paid position. They do manage to keep some people until retirement, though (a very bimodal distribution - generally either brilliant but don't care to work anywhere else, or utterly useless and can't get a job anywhere else)

If they're so bright and capable why can't they patch their OS?

> It also attracts a very specific type of person; everyone I personally worked with was very bright and capable.

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.

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