this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2026
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me_irl
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Hehehe never apply to Canonical. I sat 6 interviews, 2 psychometric evals including an IQ-adjacent evaluation, submitted a take home assessment and was asked about my high school math grades just to be offered a job with a more advanced title paying 20k less than what I was currently making. I only sat it through because I wanted to post the offer on glassdoor/levels so others didn't have to waste their time either. (And because I wanted to see if I could pass their famously grueling application process)
So yes I've seen companies (big ones) do this sort of thing.
Canonical's hiring process is wild. The number of stages is a deal breaker in itself, but the bizarre questions and the tests you mentioned don't do them any favors either.
I lost interest in the first stage with them asking for an essay about things like what kind of student I was in high school. The full email was massive.
I think theirs is the only company I've seen ask for a GPA on the initial application. I've been out of school so long I don't even remember, nor did I particularly care since the knowledge was the actual point.
Yes, I went through this too, dumbest interview process ever but it had the positive result to make me look into how dumb a company canonical is and start using debian rather than Ubuntu. I call it a hard fought win
Whaaat...no matter the sale, I'd just go and leave with those abysmal requests. And I complained back in the day that an application had to include so much personal data already 😁