I think the guy was just priced out.<p>Companies ought to be more upfront about their salary bands. It's pretty unreasonable to have candidates jump through a phone screen, complete a homework assignment, then travel to come meet in person for the whiteboard pain session before they know if a company can even afford them. I see more companies getting this right lately but we have a way to go.<p>Otherwise, it can be a huge waste of everyone's time. In this case it sounds like whoever negotiated didn't even have authority to make a deal, which is a pretty big flub on Canonical's part.<p>The other possibility is that one of the interviewers didn't get feedback in before the negotiation. That would still be a process fail.<p>A good developer/SRE should basically be able to justify her expense and essentially write her own check, splitting the value capture with the host company. Things are way off and asymmetric in the current hiring practice.<p>Thanks for posting. It's understandable to be upset here. More companies with bad interview processes should be outed so that they can improve and the rest of us don't have to discover them on our own.
Probably a bad professional move for him to write this post and burn those bridges. It's suspicious that he didn't describe the execs interview. Normally when I've had a good technical interview the execs interview feels like just a formality, or it turns into them selling me on the company. The one time I saw a higher up override the technical manager was when the exec had a bias against consultants. Canonical being an open source company I imagine that more wishy-washy "values" criteria are given more weight.
Do not <i>ever</i> take an action (such as rejecting other offers) based on a verbal/provisional/anything. Only a letter in hand is any good, and even then you should probably respond quickly if you plan to accept.
> never interview at Canonical, never work for them, don't even entertain the idea of seeing yourself getting a paycheck while working on tools that seemingly have zero traction outside of Canonical<p>All this vitriol seems like an over-strong reaction to an executive panel rescinding his offer. Canonical should definitely have been clear about the entire process up-front, but making decisions before you have a full confirmation doesn't seem sensible.<p>When we hire we send out an offer letter after all the interviews are done, but that offer is explicitly still contingent on right-to-work checks and satisfactory references. This is normally a formality but there's always a chance something might go wrong.
> instead of getting a stipend for a work laptop you'd ordinarily have to hand in after leaving the company, you instead get an interest-free loan that's spread over the course of 3 months that's used to pay for your equipment and whatever else you need for your remote work space.<p>I am missing why this is better in any way.
If this is to be taken at face-value I'd view it as "poor show" on Canonical's part. An offer of employment was made and later rescinded. However, while a "provisional" offer might seem unusual, from a UK-perspective it would normally be down to things like eligiblity-to-work, ID checks, and references (a "provisional offer based on satisfactory references" is quite normal).<p>I'm not sure if the author would say, or know, the reason _why_ the offer was rescinded, but, on face-value, it presents Canonical's HR and recruitment process quite poorly.<p>On the other hand, if Canonical requested and could not get references, or references were negative, the offer would quite understandably be withdrawn.<p>From the article, all we know is that Canonical advertised a position, the author was provisionally offered the position, then Canonical withdrew the provisional offer.
Why would anyone associate his name forever with a failure or problems? Internet will not forget and all kinds of people will search and find it and have some fucking stupid ideas. Im missing the time when job was a job and nobody gave a fuck about what you did five years ago or who are your friends and relatives.