Which tracing/observability tools have you used in the last 6 months? Select all that apply.
- OpenTelemetry
- Jaeger
- Zipkin
- Honeycomb
- Datadog
- New Relic
- AWS X-Ray
- Grafana Tempo
- Elastic APM
- Other
How familiar are you with tracing sampling concepts?
Attention check: To confirm you’re reading the questions, please select “I am paying attention.”
- I am paying attention
- I am not paying attention
- Prefer not to say
Which sampling approaches have you implemented or configured in the last 6 months? Select all that apply.
- Always on (head, 100%)
- Head probabilistic (trace-level rate)
- Rate-limited sampling
- Tail-based sampling
- Adaptive/dynamic sampling
- Per-endpoint or attribute-based rules
- I'm not sure / None
If you use tail-based sampling, what most often triggers retaining a trace? Select the primary trigger.
- Error status codes
- High latency percentiles (e.g., p95/p99)
- Specific endpoints or attributes
- Adaptive scoring from backend
- Business events or SLO breaches
If you do not use tail-based sampling, what are the main reasons? Select all that apply.
- Implementation complexity
- Infrastructure/resource constraints
- Cost concerns
- Data protection/compliance constraints
- Not needed for our use cases
- Lack of expertise or guidance
- Tooling/vendor limitations
At peak hours, approximately how many spans per minute does your system generate?
Allocate 100 points across the objectives below to reflect their relative importance.
Indicate your agreement with these statements about sampling in your environment.
Rank the signals you most want sampling to capture reliably (1 = highest priority).
Scenario: A consumer API averages 10k RPS with traffic spikes and a strict budget. Which baseline strategy would you start with?
- Head probabilistic at a low fixed rate (e.g., 0.1–1%)
- Rate-limited head sampling with per-service quotas
- Tail-based triggers (errors/high latency) with a minimal baseline
- Always on (100%) to maximize coverage
- There isn’t enough information to decide
Briefly explain your choice for the scenario above.
Max 600 chars
Where are sampling decisions primarily enforced today?
How likely are you to adjust your sampling strategy in the next 3 months?
What is your primary role?
How many years have you worked with distributed systems?
Approximately how large is your organization?
Which region do you primarily work in?
Any other feedback or context about your tracing and sampling strategy?
Max 600 chars
Welcome! This short survey focuses on tracing sampling strategies over the past 6 months. Please answer based on your current or most recent environment.
AI Interview: 2 Follow-up Questions on your sampling decisions
Thank you for participating—your responses are greatly appreciated!