Look elsewhere
Look elsewhere
- A lot of good ICs who genuinely try their best.
- Office perks are decent.
- Personal wellbeing allowance.
- Generous access to AI coding platforms.
- Salaries are generally below market rate. Equity inflates total compensation but is not liquid.
- Middle management prioritises appeasing senior leadership rather than advocating for their teams. Many seem to mean well, but they are hesitant to challenge leadership directives.
- Top-down decision making is valued over frontline IC expertise. Input from ICs is perceived as negativity and a hindrance, rather than being leveraged to improve the product.
- Leveling and promotion frameworks are inconsistent and broken. There is often a noticeable disconnect between levels and capabilities. Some seniors lack foundational competencies. Others are executing staff-level scope without the title or compensation. Many mid-levels are totally stuck with no path upward. A blind eye is often turned to underperformance.
- Leadership demands a startup-like velocity with an enterprise-like bureaucracy. The tooling and stack are often over-engineered, bespoke, or over-complex, which is interpreted as "maturity" and a point of pride, rather than the hindrance it often is. The frontend in particular is an unusually complex, non-standard React implementation whose guidelines often enforce known anti-patterns.
- On-call expectations are extremely demanding and poorly compensated. Engineers working on the backend are typically rostered one week out of four for a nominal flat weekly allowance. Combined with no time-in-lieu for after-hours standby or incidents, the system actively promotes burnout and shows disrespect for employees' personal time.
- Stop rewarding echo chambers.
- Empower your ICs and experts.
- Audit your compensation and leveling matrix.
- Overhaul on-call.
- Invest in tech infrastructure. Delivering features and product fast requires a lot more than just access to AI coding tools.
Additional Ratings
Was this helpful?
Canva Interview Questions
Canva Interview Experiences
Senior Software Engineer
Screening with HR. Coding interview. Second stage with 4 interviews (3 coding, 1 behavioral). Recruiter was not helpful at all. Any advice and tips did not end up being useful. Finished all the questions in the interviews but was not accepted. Reason
Senior Software Engineer
Phone Screen Coding Interview I did these twice in two years. The first time, I went through everything, but in the end, the position was closed due to an uncertain market. The second time, I received a rejection letter without even a phone call. T
Senior Software Engineer
The interview process involved a first round online test with a person from Canva. This was followed by second and third rounds onsite. During these rounds, two individuals dressed in pyjamas asked random school-level questions. They implied the can
Senior Software Engineer
New ZealandJune 14, 2023Screening with HR. Coding interview. Second stage with 4 interviews (3 coding, 1 behavioral). Recruiter was not helpful at all. Any advice and tips did not end up being useful. Finished all the questions in the interviews but was not accepted. Reason
Senior Software Engineer
New ZealandJune 27, 2025Phone Screen Coding Interview I did these twice in two years. The first time, I went through everything, but in the end, the position was closed due to an uncertain market. The second time, I received a rejection letter without even a phone call. T
Senior Software Engineer
AustraliaNovember 24, 2019The interview process involved a first round online test with a person from Canva. This was followed by second and third rounds onsite. During these rounds, two individuals dressed in pyjamas asked random school-level questions. They implied the can
