How Sam Fraser Went From Datadog Intern to Software Engineer
Upon completing Datadog’s internship program in 2022, Sam Fraser finally felt like he could call himself an engineer.
The experience provided Fraser with ample opportunities to strengthen his technical skills, so when asked if he wanted to join the company full-time, the answer was an easy “yes.”
Now, as a Software Engineer II, Fraser is on Datadog’s Event Management team, where he and his teammates build systems that help customers cut through alert fatigue.
“As an engineer, I love working on products that other engineers use,” Fraser said.
What Does Datadog Do?
Datadog’s AI-powered monitoring and security platform enables digital transformation, cloud migration and infrastructure monitoring across companies’ technology stacks. The company’s solutions include Datadog Application Security, which helps teams detect vulnerable open-source libraries and custom code-level vulnerabilities during development and in production, as well as Datadog Event Management, which helps centralized operations teams discover and resolve issues faster.
Apart from achieving professional milestones, Fraser has also grown as a person since joining the company, finding a sense of community through Datadog’s LGBTQ+ employee resource group, Rainbowdogs, which he now supports as a co-lead. He believes that being a part of Rainbowdogs has enabled him to be true to himself while at work.
“Being able to bring myself to work helps me feel human and grounds me in the fast-paced work,” Fraser said.
Read on to learn more about Fraser’s experience at Datadog and how the company promotes professional and personal growth.
What Does Datadog’s Event Management Engineering Team Do?
The engineering team Sam Fraser works on handles Datadog’s Event Management solution. By aggregating and consolidating alerts from Datadog and third-party tools, the engineers provide users with a consistent view of incidents and reduce the time needed to resolve them.
How Sam Fraser Has Grown at Datadog
It all started because another teaching assistant at my university who worked at Datadog suggested I apply, so I did. I started as an intern in 2022, and through technical exposure and mentorship, I finally felt like I could call myself an engineer for the first time. I worked on incident products for a while, and then joined the event management team, where I’ve been for the last three years.
When I joined, a mentor told me that the best thing to do early in your career is to make decisions whose ramifications you have to deal with later on. They were right. Years into my career at Datadog, I’m now seeing the full lifecycle of software I’ve touched — from initial decisions and creation through deprecation or retirement — and that’s really special. It’s taught me lessons I wouldn’t have learned if I’d left Datadog or even switched teams. I’ve been given a lot of control over the projects I work on and the impact I can have, which has made my promotion timeline clear. I have the freedom to take on more when I’m ready for it and pitch new work to my team.
Often, product and engineering have a hierarchical relationship where product tells engineering what to do, but at Datadog, it’s a partner dance with product, where we work together toward a common goal. We’re in lockstep when it comes to sharing ideas and making suggestions. Our software and user stories are closely tied to the work I do on a day-to-day basis. I’m targeting a senior role next year.
Why Fraser Chose to Join Datadog Full Time
The people and the culture. The culture is very vibrant; it’s a place where I feel like I can express myself wholeheartedly and my opinion is valued by my peers. Being involved in the community guilds is something I love, too, and I’ve recently become the co-lead of Rainbowdogs, a role I take very seriously. The community and people I’ve connected with made the past three years so worthwhile. I get to work with incredible and very thoughtful engineers every day. I see Datadog as a hotspot for very competent people.
“The culture is very vibrant; it’s a place where I feel like I can express myself wholeheartedly and my opinion is valued by my peers.”
I say ‘competent’ because I think that competency comes with humility. People at Datadog are great because they’re great at what they do, but they’re also humble. Finding that balance is what gives employees at Datadog a more well-rounded approach to their work. Those are people I want to surround myself with, as that groundedness goes into the product. That humble culture comes top-down from our leadership, who are also very grounded.
How Datadog Supports Engineers’ Career Growth
From day one, managers have consistent conversations with their direct reports about career development. Every few weeks, my manager and I have a call about my career, where they make sure I know what is expected of me in order to get a promotion and we talk about whether I am on track or not. We go through the engineering framework, which shows what’s expected at different levels, and it’s like a checkpoint on a video game. Progression at Datadog is very structured. There are no surprises.
My biggest advice for employees navigating career conversations is to be their own advocate.
The reason that I say that is because managers change, reorgs happen and the corporate world can be messy. The only consistent thing you can control is yourself. It’s a good idea to keep a “brag document,” where an employee records their wins, accomplishments and growth. The document provides context so that if my manager left, anyone who read that document would know whether I deserved a promotion and when. Artifacts are the key to self-advocacy.
How Fraser Built New Skills Through Engineering Experience
I learned how to deal with operational emergencies while remaining calm. When I first started, I was not OK if something went wrong. My stomach would get upset, I’d be so nervous, and I would start opening a million tabs.
Now, I’ve been an incident commander for multiple high-severity incidents where I had to share updates with an exec on call — sometimes overnight. Over the course of those experiences, I have learned how to deal with them calmly in the Datadog way: to mitigate impact, communicate to customers proactively and create the best customer experience possible, despite a potentially negative situation. Having that calm mindset has really empowered me.
The second thing I’ve learned is understanding how long something will actually take me to complete. I love talking about the planning fallacy. We often plan for the best-case scenario, but rarely do we plan for things to go wrong. By accounting for the planning fallacy and giving myself a bigger buffer, I’ve learned how long it takes me to finish certain tasks, like delivering features to customers — even if something breaks.
How Datadog Fosters an Inclusive Culture
Being a co-lead for Rainbowdogs, Datadog’s community guild for LGBTQIA+ employees, is what keeps me human as an engineer. Especially with the increased usage of AI and so much fast-paced, heads-down work, being able to bring my full self to work makes me feel human and grounds me.
What Is Rainbowdogs at Datadog?
Rainbowdogs is Datadog’s community guild for LGBTQIA+ employees. Fraser co-leads the group, which helps employees connect, advocate for their community and bring more of themselves to work.
Development cycles are so fast — you finish one thing and move on to the next. It requires a lot of energy. If I had to mask certain parts of my personality, it would drain my energy and prevent me from working sustainably.
To be a part of a village, you have to be a villager and engage with the events and people in your community. Our community guilds celebrate the diversity and the diverse experiences employees bring to Datadog and our product. Now, as co-lead, I create a community and advocate for its members. In the few months since I’ve stepped in, we’ve started looking at how to best change some of Datadog’s policies to better support our community, and this is something welcomed by Datadog leaders, too.
We help employees feel heard and make change while making our advocacy more visible, too.
How Datadog Helps Engineers Focus on Impact
Something one of my managers instilled in me was to be impact-driven and impact-hungry. I could put in eight hours a day doing all the things that could possibly be done, but without rigorous prioritization, those eight hours might not be spent in the most impactful way.
As an early-career engineer, I was hungry to do anything and everything. I was always eager to do things for other people on my team, answer questions and accomplish smaller tickets, but rarely did I step back and ask, ‘What is actually the most impactful work I could be doing right now?’ It was easy to be consumed with less impactful things, and even though they needed to get done, that energy could have been spent working on more impactful work for our customers. Now, I encourage young engineers to ask themselves: “What is the most important thing I could be doing right now?”
It’s not that some work doesn’t get done; it’s that engineers like myself can be more intentional in how they prioritize the work.
How Fraser Has Grown Since Starting as an Intern
I’m really proud of the engineering work I’ve accomplished and the confidence I have in meetings. I’m also proud of how I am able to disagree with coworkers in a way that’s collaborative and pushes us to do the best engineering work possible. I’m confident in my decision-making, but if my choices are wrong, I own up to them and don’t lose confidence in my abilities as an engineer.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Datadog do?
Datadog provides an AI-powered monitoring and security platform that supports digital transformation, cloud migration and infrastructure monitoring across companies’ technology stacks. Its solutions include Application Security, which helps teams identify software vulnerabilities, and Event Management, which helps operations teams discover and resolve issues faster.
How does Datadog support new engineering hires?
Datadog supports early-career engineers through hands-on technical experience, mentorship and structured career development. Managers hold regular career conversations with employees and use an engineering framework to clarify expectations for advancement. Engineers also have opportunities to take ownership of projects, propose new work and develop their technical skills.
What does the Event Management engineering team at Datadog do?
Datadog’s Event Management engineering team builds systems that aggregate and consolidate alerts from Datadog and third-party tools. These systems provide customers with a consistent view of incidents, reduce alert fatigue and help teams identify and resolve issues faster.
