Canonical Is At Around 437 Employees, Pulled In $99M While Still Operating At A Loss

[AndyChow]

Not having looked at the docs(assuming they break down the costs), where does the bulk of the costs go? You'd have to pay each employee 100k each to hit 43.7 million. I can think of some things, but nothing that gobbles up another 40+ million in costs? I guess there's a fair amount of staff on more than 100k?

It's right there in the document. They paid their staff 62 million. Of course, you don't just pay the staff. You rent offices, need to have phones, computers. This varies geographically, but where I am, the infrastructure cost is more than the salary of most employees.

Ubuntu also has a huge amount of debt, which I'm sure has interest. The document quotes 173K, but I'm not familiar with UK financial reporting, so unsure if they could have reported some of the debt payments as administrative expenses.

In any case, good job Ubuntu.

[jacob]

The Unity8 team got fired. GNOME team got hired. Less CLA, less fragmentation. Life’s good.

Frankly I don't get this obsession with Canonical's CLAs. They only ever come into play if you want your code to be merged by Canonical. You can still develop patches, fork, maintain your own version etc. without having to worry about a single CLA.

[Anvil]

a) Red Hat didn't get any money from IBM, Red Hat's shareholders got the money (okay Red Hat may have owned some of it's own shares, but really it's not like Red Hat suddenly has 34B).

b) why would you buy Canonical?

Dave.

i was pretty much Joking around when i said that, as i knew it would stir the pot,

[Anvil]

I think Canonical pretty much did most of that on their own :-)

+1 to that

[tjaalton]

Not having looked at the docs(assuming they break down the costs), where does the bulk of the costs go? You'd have to pay each employee 100k each to hit 43.7 million. I can think of some things, but nothing that gobbles up another 40+ million in costs? I guess there's a fair amount of staff on more than 100k?

That number (of employees) doesn't include all the independent consultants around the world not directly employed by Canonical.

[polarathene]

An employee costs more than just their salary, usually add a bump of 25%.

Varies depending where you work in the world. What sort of costs are those additionally covering? Health insurance?(that's not common where I'm from)

I wouldn't think each staff member is earning in the six figure range either, but apparently the 40-ish million estimate at that was way off since it's over 60 million spent on staff..

That number (of employees) doesn't include all the independent consultants around the world not directly employed by Canonical.

Feel free to throw that figure on top of what is apparently 62 million to staff costs. Are they paying for that many consultants that the costs are drumming of millions annually? If so they might benefit from hiring more talent if there's a common set of expertise they were getting consulted from.

It's right there in the document. They paid their staff 62 million.

I said I had not looked through the document, literal disclaimer straight off.

Of course, you don't just pay the staff. You rent offices, need to have phones, computers. This varies geographically, but where I am, the infrastructure cost is more than the salary of most employees.

Yeah sure, and I said I could think of some things that contribute to the cost but not anywhere near another 40+ million. Leasing offices isn't going to cost you tens of millions for a company that size per year :/

Computers aren't something that'd be refreshed every year either, you buy the hardware and enjoy benefiting from it via asset depreciation when it comes to dealing with tax. Infrastructure wise, at their size and proficiency/expertise, I'd assume the staff were capable of doing that in a cost effective way as well, such that it shouldn't be costing in the tens of millions annually either...

Sometimes it's just the case of not caring as much about spending. I've seen plenty of companies spend more on equipment than they should because they plan to use it for tax reasons or don't want to put in additional effort to reduce costs, one company just kept paying for several subscription services that were never used because the paperwork to resolve them was too much of a hassle. Some just make ill informed purchases because they opt for solutions that can be solved by throwing money at them rather than utilize expertise strategically.

And then there's the upper management, whom I've seen plenty of times in various companies take funding away from others so that their own income doesn't have to suffer under financial pressure. They can also be known to spend budget on assets that aren't required so that their department does not get a budget cut and appears like they can justify asking for a budget increase instead.

Another is handled by accountants, which when you have multiple companies such as Canonical has, you can shuffle the debt/tax around. Operating at a loss can have it's advantages when it comes to tax, it may have been more advantageous to adjust financials based on how other parent/sibling companies and the like are dealing with their own financial years, claim the maximum tax benefits.

[starshipeleven]

An employee costs more than just their salary, usually add a bump of 25%.

Lol that's an employer paradise. Depending on nation, that % can go up to 50% or even more.

[lucasbekker]

Stocks don't work that way. Shareholders don't get shit as long as they don't sell their stocks. Technically Red Hat can use the money to invest in buying Canonical if they want to.

But the Red Hat shareholders sold their shares to IBM...

[jacob]

jacob People don’t want to fork, people want to work together. So the upstream need to be neutral ground. So no CLA.

The upstream decides what it wants to do, that's also part of the freedom. If they want a CLA, then either 1. no one really cares and just gets along, or 2. someone forks it, establishes a neutral ground with no CLA required when the CLA opponents can work together, and puts the onus on the former upstream to either join in on the new terms, or risk becoming marginalised. The trouble is that there are many whiners who are on one hand incapable to actually execute a plan like that and are happy to just get a free ride on Canonical's development (which is perfectly fine, by the way), but at the same time they feel immensely entitled and want Canonical to change, to suit them personally. But that's just not how the world works. You don't like it, don't use it is the rule. In the FOSS world, we also have an alternative solution: you don't like it, fork it. But don't whine.

[timofonic]

Canonical corporate structure seems too weird to me.

Are there ny geek deeply into financial and business stuff is able to explain all this? Please, it's something that blows my mind.