Eat Your Own Dog Food

Employees at software companies often use whatever software the company builds to do their work. This is practice is given the not-so-appetizing name of dogfooding, or “eating your own dog food.” The story goes that the CEO of Kal Kan Pet Food would eat a can of the company’s dog food at the annual shareholder’s meeting, and suddenly the idea of consuming your own product had a name. I don’t recommend eating dog food, but I do recommend using the software you are building for its intended purpose. If you know that you have to rely on your software, your motivation to build a high-quality product increases.

When I worked as an accountant, I hated keeping track of my billable hours, but I had to do so accurately to be able ...

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