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0 pointsbigtunacan12y ago0 comments

I think you are missing the point of the "eat your own dog food" mantra that originated from Joel Spolsky. No one wants to literally eat dog food as we all imagine it would taste terrible. The same holds true for your product. That product you have been working on for your company, whoever it may be, is total, utter, garbage, and if you have to eat it everyday you will realize it tastes terrible.

The more you use the product, the more aware you become that your product is bad, and this is necessary to make it less bad. And this is true of every product out there; even products, services, etc... that people hold up as "good", they still have room for improvement. If the people responsible for creating that product can't put in the time to use the product so they can feel their customers' pain and improve the product, then they should just move on.

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greenyoda12y ago

It didn't originate with Joel Spolsky. "Eating your own dogfood" was already a meme at Microsoft when Spolsky arrived there (1991), and that's where he probably picked it up from. Wikipedia attributes it to Paul Maritz:

"In 1988, Microsoft manager Paul Maritz sent Brian Valentine, test manager for Microsoft LAN Manager, an email titled 'Eating our own Dogfood', challenging him to increase internal usage of the company's product. From there, the usage of the term spread through the company."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food#Origi...

bigtunacanOP12y ago

Point still stands, but thanks for the "Well Actually".

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html

jrochkind112y ago

I suspect all those employees at paypal who aren't using the paypal mobile app already know their product sucks and/or is useless, they don't need to be educated to know that.

I suspect it's the CEO who doesn't actually realize it, but maybe he does.

Still, I suppose the theory could be that if they are forced to use the shitty product, then they will be more motivated to fix it, that they currently lack motivation to fix it because they are not using it.

I doubt it will work that way, but it's a theory.

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