If You Want to Talk Like a Silicon Valley CEO, Learn This Phrase

Example: “Dude, they should have spent more time dogfooding that app! It barely works.”
Who uses it: Stanford students/hackers/generations of Microsoft employees

When tech behemoths like Apple and Google need to work the bugs out of their latest miracle creation, they want eyes on it, pronto. And that means everyone from the CEO to the lowliest intern is going to be eating a lot of dogfood.

“Eating your own dogfood,” or “dogfooding,” as it’s more commonly phrased, means using the software you make, often in beta form, to work out the kinks. The first recorded usage was in 1988, when Microsoft executive Paul Maritz was desperate for customers to try a new product and e-mailed a colleague, “We are going to have to eat our own dogfood and test the product ourselves.” They created an internal server called “\\dogfood” and sent it out to staff. Read more...