I find that if people don't dogfood their software the software just ends up being shit.

As engineers we need to be a little grumpy. Frustrating with our software provide directions to improve it. If we're not grumpy, we don't know what to fix.

But some of this also comes from top down. Engineers also need the freedom to fix things. They're the experts. Management Also shouldn't interpret that frustration in quality as the engineer being a thorn in their side. It means the engineer cares and is willing to remove the thorns in their side. But I think there's a strong natural tendency in any organization to surround yourself with yes men. They're sneaky, telling you no when you ask them to. Maybe a reason management loves LLMs so much

At very large $companyIUsedToWorkFor, the accessibility features got a lot better once we hired a blind developer. Once it went from "we have to pass this test" as our only feedback to "Bob did this because it confused his text-to-speech program when he was looking for another bug" we got such a great success flywheel going. Very quick feedback cycles really is required for successful software development.

Heh it can stil suck even when dogfooding.

At my friend's org, they like it to suck bc that reminds them they are doing the very sophisticated work of dogfooding. No one told them they're allowed/supposed to feel good making/using the sw...

"We want to feel the same pain the customer feels" is shortened to "we want to feel pain." Instead of "neither we nor the customer feel pain."