Layoff hit Canonical

The repercussions of Canoncial’s decisions begin to hit.

At the beginning of April when Mark Shuttleworth announced Canonical’s plans to drop Ubuntu Phone and Unity, he was known as the founder of Canonical and ex CEO. Less than a month later, he was once again the CEO. This follows the announcement that the (then) current CEO of Canonical, Jane Siber, was standing down. In a blog post ( https://insights.

ubuntu.com/?p=66110), Siber wrote that “We’re now entering a new phase of accelerated growth at Canonical, and it’s time to pass the baton.”

Siber insisted that this was not a sudden decision. She had “originally agreed to be CEO for five years and we’ve extended my tenure as CEO by a couple of years already”. Siber will remain CEO for the next three months, with Shuttleworth replacing her in June. Siber will continue to work with Canonical in a new position on the Canonical Board and within the Ubuntu community.

Canonical has also told over half the team working on Unity that if they cannot be mapped to new positions in the company, they will be made redundant. Reports suggest other departments at Canonical are being reduced, some losing 30 percent of their workforce, others up to 60 percent.

In comments reported by The Register ( http://bit.ly/2oT6O4n), Shuttleworth said of the cuts “we need to look at those things and say, ‘Could we run a marathon in six months to a year?’ and we could, but to do that we need to get a bit fit.” Being considered dead weight that needs to be shed will be little comfort to Canonical employees.