Eat Your Own Dog Food

Definition

To use your own product or service to demonstrate confidence in it and identify problems. Also called 'dogfooding.' Companies enthusiastically endorse this practice while executives exclusively use competitors' products.

Example Usage

We should eat our own dog food and migrate our internal operations to the new platform before client rollout.

Origin

Originated at IBM in the 1980s; popularized by Microsoft in the 1990s; remains disturbing across all eras

Fun Fact

Tech companies famously practice this principle except when they don't, which is always

Source: Technology and product development jargon

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trade-off

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linkage

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💼 Corporate / Business

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