Olivier Pomel

Despite AI productivity gains allowing "projects that would have taken three extremely expert engineers six months to build" to be done "in a couple of weeks with one person and a coding agent," Datadog continued expanding workforce. Grew from 7,779 employees in 2024 to 8,154 in 2025 (4.8% increase). CTO Alexis Le Quoc stated: "For that, we need people. I don't see how coding agents are going to obviate the need for software engineers." No AI-driven layoffs announced.

On AI and software engineering, Pomel stated he envisions an inversion: "You used to mostly write, sometimes automate, and now you're going to mostly automate, sometimes write." Acknowledged "rise of AI written code" across Datadog customers and internally but said "I don't think this is going to replace all our software engineering." Rather than cutting R&D, higher productivity "would enable the company to build more products, deepen existing offerings and address adjacent markets." Grew workforce 4.8% to 8,154 employees in 2025.

Datadog requires 3 days/week in-office attendance. From November 2022, new hires no longer offered remote positions and must work in office. Management stated goal to bring remote employee share back to pre-COVID levels. While senior engineering positions may still get remote exceptions, standard policy enforces hybrid 3-day minimum. Company expanded to ~8,100 employees across offices in New York, Paris, and other locations by 2025, emphasizing in-person collaboration.