5 ms·

I used to work at msft too. You completely missed the point. Dog fooding at ms is eating a substandard product to provide feedback. You grudgingly use it to he

I used to work at msft too. You completely missed the point. Dog fooding at ms is eating a substandard product to provide feedback. You grudgingly use it to help the company. See internal drives to get people to use bing. How about making a product you don't need to cajole employees into? Think Google has ads to get people to use google search, or apple forces employees to use iPhones? (Or do they call it caviar-ing?) If dog fooding is the reason employees use your product you should not release it.

joosters 13y ago
Google does run ads to get people to use Google search.
- throwawaymsft 13y ago
  Inside of google? (That's what I'm referring to with dog fooding, to convince your employees to use a substandard product "for the good of the company"). Google probably has "google search rocks" internal ads. They probably don't have "hey guys could you stop using bing for a bit and try our search engine?".
  - joosters 13y ago
    Sorry, I got sidetracked from the dogfooding main point. I'm pretty sure google don't need ads to cajole their employees into using their search. I was referring to their public ads.
- georgemcbay 13y ago
  Sometimes ads aren't really to convince people to use a thing, but sort of just to reinforce an existing "brand relationship". See: Almost all of Coca-Cola's advertising, for example.
  - joosters 13y ago
    This does seem true for the google ads. An overriding theme in them does try to make Google appear more friendly and likeable, rather than to grab more user share. Although reinforcing a brand is still a big part of attracting and keeping customers. If Coca-Cola stopped advertising, they'd definitely lose sales.
marcosdumay 13y ago
Dogfooding is all about eating a possibly substandard product to provide feedback. And then, you are expected to work on the feedback, so the product is not substandard anymore. I guess Microsoft is lagging on that part. Anyway, I fully agree that if your employees are only using your product because you require it, you shouldn't release that, and that you shouldn't eat your own dogfood all the time.

joosters 13y ago

Google does run ads to get people to use Google search.

throwawaymsft 13y ago
Inside of google? (That's what I'm referring to with dog fooding, to convince your employees to use a substandard product "for the good of the company"). Google probably has "google search rocks" internal ads. They probably don't have "hey guys could you stop using bing for a bit and try our search engine?".
- joosters 13y ago
  Sorry, I got sidetracked from the dogfooding main point. I'm pretty sure google don't need ads to cajole their employees into using their search. I was referring to their public ads.
georgemcbay 13y ago
Sometimes ads aren't really to convince people to use a thing, but sort of just to reinforce an existing "brand relationship". See: Almost all of Coca-Cola's advertising, for example.
- joosters 13y ago
  This does seem true for the google ads. An overriding theme in them does try to make Google appear more friendly and likeable, rather than to grab more user share. Although reinforcing a brand is still a big part of attracting and keeping customers. If Coca-Cola stopped advertising, they'd definitely lose sales.

marcosdumay 13y ago

Dogfooding is all about eating a possibly substandard product to provide feedback. And then, you are expected to work on the feedback, so the product is not substandard anymore. I guess Microsoft is lagging on that part. Anyway, I fully agree that if your employees are only using your product because you require it, you shouldn't release that, and that you shouldn't eat your own dogfood all the time.