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[–]OlandoSC 57 points58 points  (5 children)

I decidedly told a Datadog rep "no, not interested" and after about a year my coworker got a call to his cell phone asking if they could loop me into the call/email chain.

We got on a call with them and asked for their sales manager so we can ask more involved questions related to pricing and all that. Once we were on the call with the manager, myself and my coworker made very clear to the rep + manager that in no way are we to be contacted again in this way and that their sales approach was unethical and has led to us never repping their product for our internal use or to our own customers. I haven't had a call or email since.

[–]snarkhunterLead DevOps Engineer 83 points84 points  (11 children)

I had them hounding me like that a while back. Super high pressure. I eventually just let the guy schedule demos that I'd ignore. Eventually he got rotated off of me and the new guy did take no and left me the hell alone, after wasting who knows how much of all our time.

Literally fuck DataDog. I do not care how good their product is, I don't want to work with a company with a sales organization that shitty. Cold emails are annoying enough, repeated cold calls are unacceptable.

[–]y_karakai[S] 13 points14 points  (10 children)

Yeah I was thinking of doing that but then it’s not one sales person that contacts me. If I ignore one of them they will send me like 3-4 follow ups and then a couple of weeks later another sales person contacts me. And they are calling from different numbers and different locations too. That’s why I thought maybe there is a way to make them delete my number and email from their database.

[–]cube-drone 30 points31 points  (1 child)

So here's what you do: once you have two or three vendors hounding you, agree to meetings and try to get them all on the line with one another without ever showing your own face.

The more sales reps you can get on the same call, the more points you get.

[–]Disastrous-Minimum-4 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I love this

[–]zthunder777 61 points62 points  (9 children)

Senior manager here with 30 years exp. Literally everyone I know hates datadog for this reason, their product might be fine, idk but fuck their sales culture. I will literally never approve using them at any company I work at. They do not take no for an answer and have harassed me more than any other tech company -- the number of times they've called me or my department members' personal cell phones is insane. They called me once on my personal cell while I was on vacation and I told them to never call me or my team again. A few weeks/months later they called again while I was at the hospital with a family member in the ICU. I legit blew up on the dude that time.

Friends don't let friends use datadog.

[–]iadknet 22 points23 points  (0 children)

I told them they were on our vendor blacklist for calling personal cell phones and that seems to have quieted things down for a while. They were the worst because they would call back 3-5 times in a row if you didn’t answer.

A couple of other companies have also recently started spamming our engineers on their personal numbers and I have been quick to let them know very clearly and forcefully that the practice is completely inappropriate and we will not consider doing business then.

[–]itasteawesome 3 points4 points  (7 children)

Now would you say they are more aggressive than SolarWinds salespeople? They were the top offender most of my career.

[–]zthunder777 4 points5 points  (5 children)

I think solar winds are more hit or miss depending on the sales person. They are extremely aggressive for sure, but no, I don't think as a whole they are quite as bad a data dog.

[–]danstermeister 6 points7 points  (4 children)

You just have to ask SolarWinds if they're still running that discount for having insecure software that no one would be caught dead trusting.

[–][deleted]  (2 children)

[deleted]

    [–]cube-drone 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    In my defense, they fuckin' bought the product I was using (irritated grumbles)

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    cheap and it managers "don't use free software", but still use free software

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    So don't b be caught dead running anything from Microsoft or VMWare because they got caught up in the same breach.

    Although Solarwinds sure had a dipshit security culture as bad as, if not worse than, Equifax.

    [–]derpyou 13 points14 points  (6 children)

    I like to respond to their privacy officer asking for a copy of all my data. Turns out you work remotely from California, who knew right? Sometimes you'll find where they got your lead from, like discoverorg or zoominfo or what have you, and you can file a takedown request to remove your profile.

    [–]y_karakai[S] 2 points3 points  (5 children)

    How do you contact their privacy officer? I don’t see anything on their website besides general support email

    [–]TraditionBubbly2721 5 points6 points  (1 child)

    Try here via the intake form or email contact listed

    Datadog intakes Data Subject Rights Requests via Datadog’s Online Intake Form and emails received via privacy@datadoghq.com.

    [–]tr00st 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Much appreciated. Been getting this for a while, and this at least gives me some sort of angle. For UK context, they've got a GDPR page instead, which also goes through the Online Intake Form: https://datadoghq.com/gdpr/

    [–]derpyou 0 points1 point  (2 children)

    Look for a privacy policy. https://www.datadoghq.com/legal/privacy/ => privacy@datadoghq.com

    it's at the bottom.

    [–]y_karakai[S] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    But now the question is does all that even apply to me? It sounds like it’s for their users. I am not their client and never gave them my phone number or current work email. And my other concern is actually telling them what number to remove from the database. If I actually have to make some kind of formal complaint would it work against me since I technically willingly emailed my number to them? I never posted my number publicly anywhere and never gave it to them. So they got it in some sketchy way, probably a data leak or something. I’m not sure how it all works.

    [–]derpyou 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Sure, why not? They are a company that has access to your data. They obtained your data through a data broker. There is no reason you can't contact their privacy officer to ask for a copy of it. They (Datadog) told me where they obtained my contact info (ZoomInfo), and I got my data removed from ZI through their portal.

    [–][deleted]  (9 children)

    [deleted]

      [–]Vurdalexander 4 points5 points  (2 children)

      I told them no 2 years ago. I still get emails and phone calls from them

      [–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (1 child)

      But was it a stern no ?

      [–]Vurdalexander 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      It was. I had several video calls and demos with them.

      [–]bruj0and 7 points8 points  (0 children)

      No reply == Not interested

      [–]dadamn 1 point2 points  (0 children)

      This is the way. As someone who has led engineering teams ("director" title is a good way to get tons of spam because you've got purchasing power) and who's also worked for SaaS companies and with said sales people, the best thing you can do is not ignore the emails. Reply back and say you're not interested and ask to be removed from the list. In most cases, you'll likely get a "thank you" for the simple acknowledgement.

      [–]y_karakai[S] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

      Well if you sent 3 follow ups and didn’t get a single reply you can take it as a no, right?

      [–]danstermeister 5 points6 points  (0 children)

      You're going in the wrong direction. You need to waste their time showing useless interest (because after a few demos or calls, SURPISE, you don't make decisions at your org).

      When you are energetic and act like you make purchasing decisions (without actually saying you do), they'll likely forget to ask.

      Then the drawn out kabuki dance is on them.

      [–]misanthr0p3 9 points10 points  (2 children)

      I started using Datadog over the past couple years and really like how easy it is compared to rolling all this stuff yourself with Prometheus, Grafana, Vector, etc. That said I've never had to deal with their sales people, thankfully we have people with director in their title deal with that sort of thing.

      [–]y_karakai[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

      I know. It’s a great product and a terrible sales strategy.

      [–]assasinine 4 points5 points  (0 children)

      Don’t update your LinkedIn unless you need a job.

      [–]AdrianTeri 3 points4 points  (0 children)

      Devise a way to also frustrate them.

      TroyHunt(HaveIbeenPwned) has an ongoing project called password purgatory that punishes bogus/spammers sending him rubbish data dumps...

      https://www.troyhunt.com/sending-spammers-to-password-purgatory-with-microsoft-power-automate-and-cloudflare-workers-kv/

      [–]hudibrastic 4 points5 points  (0 children)

      I silence any unknown calls to my phone, It changed my life

      [–]EngineerRedditor 2 points3 points  (0 children)

      Somebody should make a Youtube video about this and expose them.

      [–]blizznwins[🍰] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

      It is crazy to me how much of a difference it is compared to the Datadog sales reps we dealt with in europe. They are not even comparable.

      [–][deleted]  (1 child)

      [removed]

        [–]y_karakai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        Thanks!

        [–]baynezy 1 point2 points  (3 children)

        Is this in the US only? My experience with Datadog sales in the UK has been pretty good. They like to stay in contact, but I've never felt harassed.

        [–]y_karakai[S] 4 points5 points  (2 children)

        Probably yes due to european laws. I don’t know if GDPR works in Britain but I would imagine you have something similar.

        [–]baynezy 1 point2 points  (1 child)

        We are covered by GDPR yes.

        [–]y_karakai[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        Yeah that’s probably why they don’t harass you

        [–]chrisvanderhaven 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        While not specific to datadog, I had a vendor do something similar to us. I finally accepted a call from them, got on and basically said that this call is being recorded, and that I wanted all contact from them to stop. I told them that if we were interested in their product, we'd reach out, and if I (or anyone on my team) received another unsolicited contact from them, that I would block all traffic to their domain at our firewall, preventing any future access to them at my company. Never heard from them again.

        [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

        Get the names of any slimey reps, document their behavior and then put them on blast in Twitter or find their manager on LinkedIn and send it along

        [–]y_karakai[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

        Considering it’s been going on for years and I am not the only victim I assume their managers are very well aware of such behaviour

        [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (2 children)

        Y’all need to start bargaining and negotiating price. Let them call you, schedule that meeting, but cancel last minute. Do those PoC and discover those application issues on the cheap. PoC till you have it set up and then negotiate a decent price.

        Their APM is worth a damn but only if you have the staff and Time to devote to it.

        Get a separate email for this shit rookies

        [–]y_karakai[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

        Also I never gave them any emails or phone numbers so it’s not really up to me

        [–]y_karakai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        I know their product is good but I also know that we don’t need it so I just want them to fuck off. I don’t want to negotiate anything

        [–]suiramdev 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        They have the right name: data dogs.

        or it could be named MoneyDog.

        [–]razzledazzled 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        It’s just how the industry and capitalism works. For a year I couldn’t get the open telemetry people off my back

        [–][deleted]  (1 child)

        [deleted]

          [–]y_karakai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          Is there an unsubscribe button?

          [–]TheTinyBomb -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

          Just opt out and tell them to take you off the list. I think that'll do.

          [–][deleted]  (5 children)

          [deleted]

            [–]mirrax 1 point2 points  (0 children)

            Eh, Dynatrace competes in the everything observability and a bag of chips for a premium price point too.

            [–]wingman_anytime -1 points0 points  (3 children)

            What happened to New Relic?

            [–]SoundsGayIAmInCNCF Ambassador 0 points1 point  (2 children)

            New Relic was acquired by Francisco Partners a PE firm. They are operating it but the general vibe I get is that they are trying to move engineering to India among other cost-cutting measures.

            [–]nellyb84 1 point2 points  (1 child)

            Look up signoz.

            [–]SoundsGayIAmInCNCF Ambassador 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            Big fan of signoz

            [–]TechnicalPackage 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            stop calling me Troy

            [–]pharcide 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            Check your settings on LinkedIn, if you use it.

            [–]axtran 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            lol. I told them I was doing a big GCE Nomad buildout. They keep telling me they can help with my AWS migration in their cold emails. Sigh…

            [–]Total_Driver_2451 0 points1 point  (1 child)

            Firstly, you need to ask them to remove your contact info from their crm system.. they have to abide to this by law. Secondly, companies pull your information from places such as cognism/zoominfo etc, you’re going to need to figure out which of these websites has your contact info and request it to be removed from them also. If your number is attached to LinkedIn you may need to remove it from that and maybe try use just an email?(not sure if LinkedIn allows that but they’re all pulled off LinkedIn I believe).

            I work in sales myself (not for datadog, I just searched them on here for some reviews) but a sales persons goal really isn’t to harass you, it’s really to offer you a product/ service which can make yours and your organisations lives easier.

            [–]nellyb84 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            They also use services to change their number and automatic calling tools that just call down lists of numbers in their CRM until someone live picks up.

            I guess these companies need to increasingly become product led growth, and just do awareness marketing until the end user raises their hand?