We help engineering teams deeply understand their own production systems through observability
Our mission
Give all software engineering teams the observability they need to eliminate toil and delight their users.
Honeycomb was founded by a software engineer (a “dev”) and an infrastructure engineer (an “ops”). We were determined to build a world of software ownership, and saw observability as the shared understanding necessary to get there. What began as a sociotechnical problem has evolved into a sociotechnical solution, in which tool choice is simply the catalyst for improved processes and culture on engineering teams.
Our values
Our values are the “how” in how we work with our colleagues, engage with our community, and build observability software.
Fast and close to right is better than perfect
Take pride in your craft and ship relentlessly. Be like our storage engine: 99% right in milliseconds is better than 100% right in an hour. Code in production is worth two in canary.
We hire adults
Pay attention to your mind and body so you can give and get help. All of us wobble, and being transparent about that means we can support each other. Participate fully in collaboration, coaching and management. If any group of us were together in a car on a long road trip, there would be no need for a dividing line in the back seat to keep people from hitting each other.
Everything is an experiment
Don’t get attached to specific outcomes, as they can prevent you from moving forward. Construct your experiments with purpose, evaluate them with honesty, share your results, and iterate. Failure is a constant, it’s what we learn that matters.
Feedback is a gift
Give feedback freely, give gently, give timely, but give. Listen first, listen intently, celebrate each other’s growth. We are a high-trust and high-transparency team, and this requires us all to dig deep. Discomfort is temporary. We polish each other like diamonds.
Act with autonomy and ownership
Come curious. Focus on impact over output. Be generous with your ideas and use your judgment. Optimize for our collective success, not individual glory. Kill your darlings. Be bold, shake it up, don’t assume the way things are was on purpose. Do it with style.
Our customers
Our customers know that observability is key to delivering software both quickly and reliably. Engineering teams become high-performing teams when armed with Honeycomb observability software.
Our people
We think equally about building Honeycomb the product, the business, and the company. We’re committed to building a software engineering company of which our people are proud to have been a part.
Our opportunity
Observability is the future—and it’s up to us to take the lead and shape that future through observability software engineering. We believe in questioning the status quo and charting our own path. Perhaps you do, too.
Investors
We’re honored to be backed by investors who believe we’re the future of observability.
As well as Mike Krieger, Ilya Sukhar, Anamitra Banerji, Venkat Venkataramani, and a number of other angels.
Catch us at these upcoming events


Virtual
9/28/22
Hands-on Advanced Instrumentation Workshop - September
Join us for an interactive workshop with instructor-led exercises where you will be able to make changes to a sample application instrumented with OpenTelemetry to see how those modifications help you get better insights with Honeycomb.


Virtual
8/25/22
Hands-on Advanced Instrumentation Workshop - August
Join us for an interactive workshop with instructor-led exercises where you will be able to make changes to a sample application instrumented with OpenTelemetry to see how those modifications help you get better insights with Honeycomb.


Virtual
9/21/22
Hands-on Introduction to Observability Workshop - September
The workshop is instructor-led with breakout rooms and hands-on exercises. Whether you are new to observability or Honeycomb, this workshop is a great way to get started with both.