Datadog

Senior Software Engineer Interview Experience - France

December 1, 2022

Positive ExperienceNo Offer

Process

Recruiter call, Tech screen, Recruiter call, Virtual onsite (coding 1, 2, behavioral). All in all, this process stretched out over two months, so it was the most extensive of any I had encountered.

Questions

Standard LeetCode stuff - easy/medium.

I found coding to be frustrating in a web IDE (no autocomplete, docs, poor language support, etc.).

The first coding exercise didn't go as well as I hoped. I realized I should have solved it recursively, which would have been much cleaner.

The second coding exercise went much better, although the interviewer hurried me through it and didn't have much patience for me dealing with the web IDE quirks. I had a working solution, but apparently it wasn't good enough based on the feedback I received.

By and large, the interviewers were great, except for the last one.

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 37 interview experiences for the Datadog Senior Software Engineer role in France.

Success Rate

51%

Pass Rate

Datadog's interview process for their Senior Software Engineer roles in France is on the easier side as most engineers get an offer after going through it.

Experience Rating

Positive73%

Neutral11%

Negative16%

Candidates reported having very good feelings for Datadog's Senior Software Engineer interview process in France.

Datadog Work Experiences

Glossy on the surface, not so great underneath

Senior Software Engineer • Former Employee

New York, New York, United States

Pros: Aggressive pay rates that aimed to compete with top-talent companies (Google and Facebook were routinely called out). Stable company that appears to be able to weather turbulent market conditions without massive layoffs.

Cons: Leadership was very divorced from the day-to-day work of employees, which translated to a lot of needless frustration and crunch on behalf of bottom-level workers. Company culture around DEI was shockingly poor (especially with regard to women's issues), and top-level leadership was flippant at best about these problems. While they theoretically support remote work, in practice their benefits, IT, and HR teams are entirely focused on the main HQ locations, meaning remote employees are often left floundering on their own for even basic issues. Crunch time was a constant expectation, especially for those lower in the hierarchy: on-call shifts of 3 weeks out of 4 was the norm, and most engineers are expected to contribute extra hours towards interviews (often multiple per week).

Glossy on the surface, not so great underneath

Senior Software Engineer • Former Employee

New York, New York, United States

Pros: Aggressive pay rates that aimed to compete with top-talent companies (Google and Facebook were routinely called out). Stable company that appears to be able to weather turbulent market conditions without massive layoffs.

Cons: Leadership was very divorced from the day-to-day work of employees, which translated to a lot of needless frustration and crunch on behalf of bottom-level workers. Company culture around DEI was shockingly poor (especially with regard to women's issues), and top-level leadership was flippant at best about these problems. While they theoretically support remote work, in practice their benefits, IT, and HR teams are entirely focused on the main HQ locations, meaning remote employees are often left floundering on their own for even basic issues. Crunch time was a constant expectation, especially for those lower in the hierarchy: on-call shifts of 3 weeks out of 4 was the norm, and most engineers are expected to contribute extra hours towards interviews (often multiple per week).

Smart Team, Great Benefits

Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee

New York, New York, United States

October 22, 2024

Pros: * Great benefits * Very smart and helpful coworkers

Cons: * 401k match could be a better %

Smart Team, Great Benefits

Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee

New York, New York, United States

October 22, 2024

Pros: * Great benefits * Very smart and helpful coworkers

Cons: * 401k match could be a better %

Solid company with room for growth

Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee

Pros: - A solid company that is pushing the frontier on observability and AI - Well-scoped work, focusing on well-being and avoiding burnout - Plenty of room for learning, growing, and experimenting

Cons: - Priorities might shift suddenly or at the last minute at the beginning of the quarter - Internal reorgs happen from time to time, but there are no layoffs

Solid company with room for growth

Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee

Pros: - A solid company that is pushing the frontier on observability and AI - Well-scoped work, focusing on well-being and avoiding burnout - Plenty of room for learning, growing, and experimenting

Cons: - Priorities might shift suddenly or at the last minute at the beginning of the quarter - Internal reorgs happen from time to time, but there are no layoffs

Glossy on the surface, not so great underneath

Senior Software Engineer • Former Employee

New York, New York, United States

Pros: Aggressive pay rates that aimed to compete with top-talent companies (Google and Facebook were routinely called out). Stable company that appears to be able to weather turbulent market conditions without massive layoffs.

Cons: Leadership was very divorced from the day-to-day work of employees, which translated to a lot of needless frustration and crunch on behalf of bottom-level workers. Company culture around DEI was shockingly poor (especially with regard to women's issues), and top-level leadership was flippant at best about these problems. While they theoretically support remote work, in practice their benefits, IT, and HR teams are entirely focused on the main HQ locations, meaning remote employees are often left floundering on their own for even basic issues. Crunch time was a constant expectation, especially for those lower in the hierarchy: on-call shifts of 3 weeks out of 4 was the norm, and most engineers are expected to contribute extra hours towards interviews (often multiple per week).

2.0
Glossy on the surface, not so great underneath
Senior Software Engineer • Former Employee
New York, New York, United States
March 11, 2024
Pros: Aggressive pay rates that aimed to compete with top-talent companies (Google and Facebook were routinely called out). Stable company that appears to be able to weather turbulent market conditions without massive layoffs.
Cons: Leadership was very divorced from the day-to-day work of employees, which translated to a lot of needless frustration and crunch on behalf of bottom-level workers. Company culture around DEI was shockingly poor (especially with regard to women's issues), and top-level leadership was flippant at best about these problems. While they theoretically support remote work, in practice their benefits, IT, and HR teams are entirely focused on the main HQ locations, meaning remote employees are often left floundering on their own for even basic issues. Crunch time was a constant expectation, especially for those lower in the hierarchy: on-call shifts of 3 weeks out of 4 was the norm, and most engineers are expected to contribute extra hours towards interviews (often multiple per week).

Smart Team, Great Benefits

Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee

New York, New York, United States

October 22, 2024

Pros: * Great benefits * Very smart and helpful coworkers

Cons: * 401k match could be a better %

5.0
Smart Team, Great Benefits
Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee
New York, New York, United States
October 22, 2024
Pros: * Great benefits * Very smart and helpful coworkers
Cons: * 401k match could be a better %

Solid company with room for growth

Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee

Pros: - A solid company that is pushing the frontier on observability and AI - Well-scoped work, focusing on well-being and avoiding burnout - Plenty of room for learning, growing, and experimenting

Cons: - Priorities might shift suddenly or at the last minute at the beginning of the quarter - Internal reorgs happen from time to time, but there are no layoffs

5.0
Solid company with room for growth
Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee
Madrid
August 3, 2026
Pros: - A solid company that is pushing the frontier on observability and AI - Well-scoped work, focusing on well-being and avoiding burnout - Plenty of room for learning, growing, and experimenting
Cons: - Priorities might shift suddenly or at the last minute at the beginning of the quarter - Internal reorgs happen from time to time, but there are no layoffs

Datadog Interview Questions

Coin Change

Given a set of coin denominations and a target amount, find the minimum number of coins needed to reach that amount. You can assume you have an unlimited supply of each coin type.

Dynamic Programming

Most Common Word

Find the most frequent word in a given paragraph, excluding a list of banned words. Return the most common word after performing case-insensitive comparison and removing punctuation.

Maximum Depth of N-ary Tree

Find the maximum depth (number of nodes along the longest path from the root) of an N-ary tree. Each node can have multiple children.

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