The Scoop #47: Datadog’s $65M/year customer mystery solved
The Scoop #47: Datadog’s $65M/year customer mystery solved
Also: Shopify’s deep cuts, Microsoft’s reduced compensation targets, and senior engineer salaries trending downwards in Ukraine.
The Scoop is a bonus series covering insights, patterns, and trends I observe and hear about within Big Tech and at high growth startups. Have a scoop to share? Send me a message! I treat all such messages as anonymous.
Today's topics are:
Datadog’s mysterious $65M customer. In an earnings call, the observability company shared that a very large customer has reduced its spending – a whopping $65M contract. The internet has been speculating ever since about whether that customer is Coinbase. I talked with engineers at the crypto business to find the truth. Exclusive.
Will Shopify migrate onto an in-house observability tool? Shopify decided to build its own observability platform and migrate off Datadog. This plan looked certain until Shopify cut the very engineering teams that built its new platform. What happens next? Exclusive.
Microsoft cuts its compensation targets. Almost exactly a year ago, Microsoft employees received a welcome surprise: they could expect higher-than-usual compensation increases. Yesterday, another unexpected email came, but its contents were the opposite of last year’s. I talked with managers and engineers at the tech giant for their reaction to disappointing compensation news. Exclusive.
Shopify letting go most staff in Germany. As part of cutting 20% of staff, most people in Germany were made redundant. These layoffs happened a week before a Works Council election in Germany. Is this unlucky timing, or is there more behind the move? Exclusive.
Senior compensation trending down in Ukraine. Ukraine is one of the few countries for which we have access to nationwide data, through job site Djinni. Data for the first part of this year are in, and they point to something not seen recently: senior engineers are making less. Is this a local trend, or could we see it happening in other countries? Analysis.
A follow-up to this week’s public tech company compensation article. Why was Netflix lower down the list than many software engineers expected? Plus, new details about Roblox and why Jack Dorsey’s total compensation is $2.75. Follow-up.
The Scoop sometimes delivers first hand, original reporting. I’m adding an ‘Exclusive’ label to news that features original reporting direct from my sources, as distinct from analysis, opinion, and reaction to events. Of course, I also analyze what’s happening in the tech industry, citing other media sources and quoting them as I dive into trends I observe. These sections do not carry the ‘Exclusive’ mark.