I lasted about 18 months at Canonical (thankfully I didn’t have to deal with this interview process) and I can say that this description of an interaction with Shuttleworth rings true. The poster really did dodge a bullet by not getting hired. Enough time has passed that this now gives me amusement instead of making me feel outright angry. Shuttleworth is an autocratic micromanager who sprinkles arbitrary mandates into every aspect of the business, which accumulate to make it impossible to deliver anything effectively. The promise of the project was huge (this was over 10 years ago) and he hired many brilliant people but then largely ignored their expertise in favour of his own whims. You may notice that the things Ubuntu does well are mostly things that he didn’t find interesting enough to interfere with.