Ever tried using a product that felt like it was designed by someone who hates you? You know the feeling. The buttons are in the wrong place. The workflow makes zero sense. It feels like the developers never actually sat down and used the thing for more than five minutes. That’s usually because they aren’t eating their own dogfood.
The term is weird. It sounds gross. But in the tech world, "dogfooding" is basically the ultimate litmus test for whether a product is actually ready for the real world. If you won’t use your own app to manage your life, why on earth should I?
Honestly, the history of this phrase is kinda legendary. Most people point back to 1988. Paul Maritz, a manager at Microsoft, reportedly sent an email to Brian Valentine (who was working on LAN Manager) titled "Eating our own Dogfood." He wanted to increase internal usage of their own product. He wasn't just being colorful; he was making a demand. He wanted the team to experience the bugs, the lag, and the frustration before a customer ever did.
The Microsoft Origin and Why It Stuck
It sounds like a corporate buzzword, but it actually saved Microsoft’s reputation in the late 80s and early 90s. Imagine being an engineer at Microsoft and having to use a buggy, early version of Windows or Excel to do your actual job. It’s painful. But that pain is productive. It creates a feedback loop that you just can't get from a spreadsheet of "user requirements."
Google does this constantly. Before Gmail ever launched to the public, it was used internally for years. The same goes for Chrome. When you have thousands of the smartest engineers in the world breaking your product every day, the bugs get squashed fast. They have to, or the engineers can’t get their work done.
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It’s Not Just About Finding Bugs
Software is more than just code that runs. It’s an experience. Dogfooding reveals "friction." Friction is that annoying thing where a task takes five clicks when it should take one. You don't always see friction in a lab. You see it when you're tired, it's 4:00 PM on a Friday, and you just want to finish a report.
Apple is famously secretive, but their internal testing is rigorous. Most employees are using "beta" versions of iOS or macOS months before we see them. It's why their ecosystem feels so cohesive. They live in it. They breathe it.
When Dogfooding Goes Wrong
You can’t just force people to use a broken product and call it a strategy. Sometimes, it backfires. If the internal tool is so broken that it halts productivity, you’re just wasting money.
There's also the "Echo Chamber" problem. If your team is all tech-savvy 25-year-olds in San Francisco, they’re going to use the product differently than a 60-year-old accountant in Ohio. You can't rely only on your own team. You'll miss the blind spots. You’ll think a feature is "intuitive" just because you built it, not because it actually makes sense to a normal human being.
Facebook (now Meta) used to have a program where they forced employees to switch to Android phones. Why? Because most of their engineers preferred iPhones, but the majority of their global users were on Android. By forcing the switch, engineers finally realized how slow and buggy the Android app was compared to the iOS version. That’s a smart way to dogfood—forcing yourself out of your comfort zone to match your user's reality.
The Psychology of "Skin in the Game"
Nassim Taleb talks about "Skin in the Game" a lot. It’s the idea that you shouldn't trust someone’s opinion if they don't have something to lose.
- A chef who eats at their own restaurant.
- An architect who lives in a house they designed.
- A CEO who keeps their entire net worth in company stock.
When you eat your own dogfood, you have skin in the game. If the software crashes, it's your work day that's ruined. That is a massive motivator to write clean, stable code. It shifts the mindset from "I need to finish this ticket" to "I need to make sure this works so I don't go crazy tomorrow."
Real-World Examples Beyond the Giants
It isn't just for Big Tech. Look at Slack. Stewart Butterfield and his team were building a game called Glitch. The game failed. But while they were building it, they developed an internal communication tool because they hated email. That tool became Slack. They were their own first, best, and most demanding customers. They dogfooded a tool for a totally different project and realized the tool was better than the project itself.
Then there's Zoom. Eric Yuan famously used Zoom for all his meetings while building it, specifically looking for the "lag" that plagued WebEx and Skype. He was obsessed with the video quality because he was the one looking at the screen all day.
How to Actually Do It Without Killing Morale
You can't just dump a pile of bugs on your employees. That’s a great way to make people quit. You need a staged approach.
- The Alpha Phase: Only the developers who wrote the code use it. They know where the bodies are buried.
- The Beta Phase: The wider company starts using it for non-critical tasks.
- The "Live" Internal Phase: The company uses it for real work. This is where the real "dogfooding" happens.
If you’re a small startup, this is even easier. You should be using your own product every single day. If you’re making a fitness app, you’d better be logging your workouts in it. Making a note-taking app? Put your grocery list in there. If you find yourself reaching for a competitor's app because it’s "easier," you’ve found your first major problem to fix.
The Risks of Professional Blindness
We have to talk about the downsides. One major risk is "Internal Over-Optimization." This happens when you add features that only your employees want, but your actual customers don't care about.
Engineers love keyboard shortcuts and complex settings. Most people just want a "Go" button. If you only listen to your internal "dogfooders," you might end up with a product that is too complex for the mass market.
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Also, don't ignore the "New User Experience" (NUX). Once you've used a product for six months, you forget how confusing it was on day one. Your employees aren't new users. They’re experts. You still need outside testing to see where people get stuck during signup or the initial setup.
Actionable Steps for Your Team
If you want to start eating your own dogfood properly, don't just make it an optional thing. It has to be part of the culture.
- Make it the default. If you have a messaging tool, ban all other messaging tools internally. Force the friction.
- Create a "Bugs" channel. Make it incredibly easy for employees to report issues they find while using the product. No long forms. Just a screenshot and a quick note.
- Reward the "Whistleblowers." Don't get defensive when an employee says the product is hard to use. Reward them for finding the gaps.
- Rotate the "Normal User" perspective. Every month, have an engineer watch a non-technical employee (like someone from HR or Finance) try to use the product. It’s a humbling experience.
- Fix the "Paper Cuts." Sometimes dogfooding reveals tiny, annoying things that aren't "bugs" but are just bad UX. Fix those first. They build the most resentment over time.
Dogfooding is essentially about empathy. It's about closing the gap between the person who makes the thing and the person who uses the thing. When that gap is zero, you get great products. When that gap is wide, you get the confusing, bloated software we all hate.
Stop looking at the analytics for a second. Put down the market research. Open your own app. Try to use it to solve a real problem in your life. If it’s frustrating, good. Now you know exactly what you need to work on tomorrow.