Why Are We Doing This?

Developer Experience (DX) is a big factor in how productive and happy software teams are. When DX is good, teams work faster, write better code, and feel more satisfied. But when DX is bad, it leads to frustration, delays, and burnout.

As companies get leaner, having clear processes and good communication is more important than ever. Developers often struggle with poor feedback from leadership, unclear goals, and slow workflows.

We're building Sweetr to fix these problems by giving teams the tools they need to improve DX, make work smoother, and keep leadership involved in a productive way.

What Problem Are We Solving?

Engineering teams often struggle with inefficiencies that slow them down and cost companies time and money. Some of the biggest problems include:

• Bottlenecks and delays: Work gets stuck in review, waiting for approvals, or buried under competing priorities. Without visibility into these slowdowns, companies waste valuable developer hours, leading to missed deadlines and frustrated teams.

• Lack of meaningful feedback: Many engineering leaders don’t have the right tools to give developers constructive feedback. Without insights into what’s working and what isn’t, coaching becomes reactive instead of proactive, and developers miss opportunities to grow and improve.

• Unpredictable delivery: Leaders struggle to answer basic questions like "When will this be done?" because work is managed in an ad-hoc way. Without a clear understanding of where things slow down, teams keep making the same mistakes, making planning unreliable and costly.

• Misalignment between leadership and developers: When leadership doesn’t understand the development process, they focus on the wrong metrics or push for changes that don’t actually improve efficiency. This leads to unrealistic expectations, unnecessary pressure, and poor decision-making.

These problems are expensive. Wasted developer time leads to higher payroll costs, slower releases mean lost revenue opportunities, and poor processes drive burnout and attrition, which makes hiring and retaining top talent even harder. Sweetr is built to help teams fix these inefficiencies, making engineering teams more effective while reducing hidden costs for companies.

Why Now?

Most tools out there today have serious downsides:

• They're expensive and locked behind proprietary software.
• They have bad UX and are bloated with metrics, making them hard to use.
• They encourage toxic management practices, providing data that can be misused to rank developers against each other instead of improving team efficiency. Many tools push vanity metrics that don't reflect real contributions, leading to unfair evaluations, unnecessary pressure, and a culture of micromanagement rather than collaboration.

Sweetr is different. We're building an open, self-hostable tool that is free to use. Our focus is on a simple, useful interface that doesn't overwhelm teams with data they don't need. We also believe in community feedback, so users can suggest improvements and contribute directly to the project.

Sweetr is here to help teams work better, without the headaches of bloated tools or toxic metrics. We hope you'll join us in making software development smoother, more productive, and just a little sweeter.

Join Us

We're just getting started, and we'd love for you to be a part of it. Here’s how you can help:

• Try Sweetr – Give our app a spin and see how it can improve your team's workflow.
• Star our GitHub repo ↗ – Show your support and help us grow by starring the project.
• Contribute – We welcome feedback, ideas, and contributions from the community. Whether it's reporting an issue, suggesting improvements, or submitting a pull request, your input makes a difference.

Join us in building a better way to work. Let’s make engineering teams more productive, more efficient, and more developer-friendly together!