I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Datadog in Aug 2024
Difficult interview
Application
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Datadog
Interview
The Interview is long and difficult. I put a lot of time and effort into preparing a packet and then creating and delivering a presentation, taking time from my current role to do so and working on the packet and presentation on weekends. However after delivering my one hour presentation I was completely ghosted by the recruiter and the sales manager. Emails to them got no response. I feel like the entire interview process was a waste of time as they apparently didn't have the decency or professionalism to communicate after all the efforts I made. Very disrespectful and I would not recommend anyone waste their time with this company.
1. Recruiter Phone Screen
2. 30 min Meeting with hiring manager,
3. Take Home Exercise in HackerRank. This needs technical knowledge on kubernetes, nginx etc. They provide a VM in hacker rank to do the exercise and you are supposed to deploy datadog agent and create and deploy some metrics with python. Their documentation has the steps to follow but you only get 3 hours. Other than that there were questions about REST APIs. It's open book so you can use docs, AI or anything to complete the exercise.
4. Panel Interview with Hiring team.
I completed take home exercise then the panel interview. After panel interview I reached to recruiter and recruit coordinator several times but they never got back to me with feedback. It would be great if they could provide me update without ghosting. I had accepted a better offer during this time so i withdrew from the process at that stage. It is disappointing that after spending hours to complete take home exercise, they didn't provide me any update after panel interview. I don't think anyone who doesn't desperately need a job should apply for DataDog given that it's one of the few companies who ask to spend time on completing highly technical take home exercise on their product just to be ghosted at later stage. The panel interview had two team members but they didn't ask any good questions to understand my skills or experience. Honestly speaking, after the panel interview i also felt that this is not a good role for me as interviewers failed to build interest about the role to me.
Please train your recruiters to get back to candidates with updates whether its positive or negative.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Customer Experience, Situations Questions, Tools and Technologies I have used, Technical Evaluation Lifecycle i follow in current company etc.
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Datadog
Interview
1. Talk with recruiter 2. Technical screen via HackerRank (1 regex log parsing question, 1 Docker configuration question, 1 REST API parsing question, 1 Datadog setup question) - not too challenging, just cross your fingers that it actually works and there are no errors in the setup that cause problems with your ability to complete the assignment. 3. Talk with the HM (my HM was a cool person but showed up late, didn't read my resume beforehand, and didn't seem professional) 4. Technical talk with team (you will be told that a website has slowed down significantly (very vague question/prompt) and they will ask you how to go about debugging the website. It's a 2 tiered architecture as in a client and a database. One of the guys that interviewed me was a total dbag who kept interrupting and wouldn't let me finish my train of thought). After this step I was rejected but it's ok. DD is going downhill as a company but they're a fine place to treat as a warmup for better companies interviews. Slight arrogance to the employees and a lot of first time managers makes this a red flag role IMO.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Datadog in Apr 2022
Interview
People is great during interview, but I think they should have a filter earlier in the process, it is a long one to end saying "We do not think you are the right match"
