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Frequently asked questions

Is Multitudes another creepy monitoring tool?

We get it – a lot of us have been burned by tools that reduced people down to lines of code written, PR's opened, or some blackbox “efficiency score”. We don't do that – not only are these measures not useful, they can be harmful for people.

Instead, our focus is on helping teams create the right conditions for people to do great work. Are people getting enough support? Is anyone working long hours? When we do look at “performance” measures, it’s at a team level – for example, looking at the Lead Time for the whole team. We never show individual performance metrics because they're not useful. PRs are a team sport, and we know that individuals do their best work when they’re in an environment that’s supportive and good for people’s wellbeing. You can learn more about what we measure and why.

We also know hold ourselves (as a team) to rigorous standards of ethics and consent. We’ve publicly shared our data ethics principles, and we welcome feedback on how we’re doing.

And finally, if you’re someone who’s been burned in the past and don’t have the energy for a tool like this, we get that too! If someone on the team feels uncomfortable with Multitudes, we recommend that the team not use us. Our goal is to support team trust and collaboration, so we recommend that the team make a unified decision on whether our tool is a fit.

How is Multitudes different from other engineering effectiveness tools?

At Multitudes, we know that PR's are a team sport. People dynamics are what determine team performance, so even if we only wanted to improve team performance, we would still need to provide insights & coaching on how the team works together. (As evidence of this, see Google’s Project Aristotle research, which showed that psychological safety is the number one determinant of team performance.) That’s why we look at things like collaboration trends and wellbeing on top of the team performance metrics that you often see in other tools.

Our second key point of difference is our focus is on empowering teams, not on micromanaging them. Our goal is to give teams, including individual contributors, the insights they need to make their own decisions about how to work together. As part of that, we encourage transparency – everyone on the team should have access to their own Multitudes data. We do this for our own team, and we've seen how useful it is for building trust and supporting behavior change.

Does Multitudes ingest my codebase?

No. Multitudes pulls in code metadata from GitHub; our app does not ingest your codebase. This metadata includes information about pull requests (such as when they were created, who the author was, commits made on the pull request, number of lines changed, etc.) and about comments (including comments written on pull requests and reviews submitted). When you set up the GitHub installation, you can see the full list of permissions that Multitudes requests.

Multitudes also gets some data from teams about the team structure, e.g., which teams people are on, their roles, and their seniority levels.

Can I introduce Multitudes without disrupting my team’s workflow?

Yes! Multitudes uses passive data from GitHub, so once you’ve installed the app, your team works as normal and Multitudes pulls out insights based on team interactions.

A person who may be interested in team performance and diversity and inclusion in the workplace.