Datadog

Great pay. It’s a tech company formed in the late aughts that blossomed right before the pandemic. Salary is great. They try very hard to be seen as a good company to work at.

This is just my situation, but it is a doozy. I was contacted by one of their recruiters, looking to hire for the position since the person who had that position got promoted.

The interview was fine, except for one senior-level person who the recruiter warned me was an odd person. Little did I know how odd.

I got the position and took the job. The immediate team and manager were fantastic, but there was some cult-ish and strange sense that I could not shake.

Almost two years into the position, it became very clear just how thin-skinned the senior-level manager really was. If management even gets a hint of a worker who has a mind of their own, be prepared for surveillance.

I was contacted by a senior person in the HR (People Ops! Naturally!) department telling me to take my TikTok account down because it seemed like I was speaking negatively of the company. Meanwhile, the senior person who had just become my manager recently was actively looking at ways to get rid of me.

Eventually, it came to a place where there was just no way to be at the company and maintain my sanity. But it is amazing the lengths at which HR will go to bat for bad leadership and make excuses.

I heard from other employees during my tenure how bad things could be, and I am sad to learn that no one exaggerated just how bad things can be.

The CEO and his co-founder are pretty aloof for all their talk of how much they consider themselves part of the team. Which is fine, they’re both worth multiple billions. But their pretense that they are just like us – that’s not an honest picture.

For all their talk of being a very modern company, sadly Datadog is just as “corporate” as 100+ year companies.