CSMs are capped on bonus payout at 100%. You are bringing in a ton of revenue for the company but not seeing any return on that because CSMs are not paid like sales people, and yet are expected to hit static revenue targets regardless of book of business composition. Sales targets are 100% your primary focus, but less than 1/4 of your variable payout. Leaders will say that’s not the case, then proceed to ask about your pipeline and where to fill the gaps. If you are a sales-driven CSM or Account Manager, you should look for an org where your potential isn’t capped from a financial perspective. Instead of overachieving, you will be sandbagging for the next quarter to scrape to get 100% of your payout. This CSM role demands more work day-to-day than any CSM role I have ever seen, but the financial recognition (or lack thereof) is not worth the amount of effort, sweat, and tears you will have to put up with on a weekly basis. You handle billing and support because you handle all billing tasks, manual effort to reconcile billing each month, and the support team did not scale quickly enough to meet the rapid scale of customers. Escalations and support tickets can take weeks, if not months, to resolve. It is incredibly demanding and high-stress, and you will often be the sounding board for customer frustration. I would highly advise looking elsewhere because I can guarantee you that most CS roles are higher-paying and less demanding and stressful than the environment at Datadog. Do yourself a favor and find a culture that supports its CS teams, ICs, and managers, and one that takes input from the front lines. Last but not least, career pathing is minimal. It’s poorly defined and band aid solutions have been put in place to be able to say that feedback has been taken, but segments are locked and you can’t move between segments without it being lateral.
