Datadog co-founder and CEO Olivier Pomel reflects on the most important operating lesson he has learned while scaling Datadog.
Insight
Pomel: Culture flows from leadership actions, not written value lists
“What we said instead is culture flows from the top. So we exemplify the culture, we hire, we promote, we hire based on the culture, and today, that still works.”
Insight
Pomel: Inquiring on random support messages forces managers to stop managing up
“Well, what I do is I just pick up those random emails or, you know, Slack or whatever, and I just reply with a question, you know. I was like, I don't understand what's going on. And then, you know, and then, you know, the, what happens is that, there's two th…”
Insight
Pomel: A manager's job is knowing their domain, not pleasing their boss
“Your job is not to understand what I want, As a boss, your job is to understand what's happening within your span of control, and understand it very, very precisely. What's, what's working and not working?”
What-if
Pomel: Solo engineers using AI do six months of work in days
“We saw like literally, I mean, absolutely excellent developers, like not beginners, but people rebuild whole systems in a couple of days alone that were absolutely amazing. Things that would have been possible, but, you know, done by a team of six, over six mo…”
Insight
Pomel: European startups must enter the US market immediately after PMF
“On the other hand, I think it's absolutely critical
to go after the US market as soon as you can.
So as soon as you have a product with some form of market fit go after the US market.”
Insight
Pomel: Established companies initially dismissed Amazon's cloud as an unusable toy
“The premise for the company, which was let's bring Dev and Ops together into one platform was actually completely central to the explosion of the cloud. And we also completely underestimated the explosion of the cloud with, oh, that's interesting. There's this…”