Talk:Eating one's own dog food

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Business and economics Portal
This article is within the scope of the Business and Economics WikiProject.
Start rated as start-Class on the assessment scale
Low rated as low-importance on the assessment scale

My entire experience with the phrase "eat one's own dog food" has been in a positive light. Companies love to say that they eat their own dog food.

I don't understand the need to say that the phrase can be used pejoratively by saying that a company doesn't eat its own dog food. For example: if we were explaining the phrase "shoot for the stars" as an expression of putting effort into succeeding, would we need to explain that the phrase can be used disparagingly by saying that a company does not shoot for the stars? Or if we were defining the term "high quality" would we need to mention that it can be used disparagingly by saying that something is not of high quality?

Also, while I have heard the phrase used most often in the computer industry (which makes sense, because a clothing or dining company would not want to be associated with the idea of dog food), it is not true that its use in computing carries a negative connotation.

Brian Kendig 03:10, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

This was a minor mistake on my part, I should have removed the "common" sentence in any case, whether it be true or not, in order to give balance.
Whilst the term is not always used negatively in computing, my experience with the use of the phrase has been used in a negative connotation.
You may want to not basically revert things also. It's not pleasant, as my changes are not completely inappropriate. I will not edit this page again for a while, you do what you think is best with it. Dysprosia 06:20, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I edited your edits because I disagreed with your assertions that the phrase is "somewhat pejorative" or that it has "two connotations" (negating a phrase does not give it a new connotation). I have added back a mention of the negative use of the phrase. Please don't refrain from editing; go ahead and tweak the article if you feel it can be improved (or let's talk about it here if you'd rather); that's what Wikipedia is all about. By the way, I found an in-depth discussion of the phrase here; it might be useful to bring some of that information into this article. Brian Kendig 13:26, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Which dog-food company?

Read allegation it was FM foods, and sales reps trying to get grocery stores to carry pet-food. Since pets got table scraps, and selling pet food was an innovation.
~ender 2005-04-26 16:08:MST

I had heard that the phrase originated at Kal Kan pet food company. Each year the president would eat a can of dog food in front of the entire company to show the quality of the dog food and that in fact, he could eat his own dog food. SAL - 2005-12-22

[edit] Microsoft

Are you sure that Microsoft eats its own dogfood? I was under the impression (from the Jargon File) that the whole point was that Microsoft doesn't eat its own dogfood - hence the general opinion that its software is awful. Hence the negative connotations about not eating one's own dogfood: the bugs don't get fixed because the author's don't know what's wrong.

Anyway, could somebody please clarify this matter?

  • the jargon file? that's authoritive. I was under the impression that MSFT was the origination of the term. Not only does MSFT eat dogfood within its product groups but it gives dogfood builds to other product groups to encourage them to use it. Even critical corporate infrastructure gets put on major dogfood server builds of Windows, Exchange, SQL, etc. SchmuckyTheCat 14:28, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Some groups at Microsoft definitely eat their own dogfood, although it's possible they didn't when the Jargon file was first written. See [1] and [2] for recent discussion of dogfood as far back as Windows 95 development. It's also not likely a company-wide requirement. It's hard to eat your own dogfood when you write video games, for instance. -- Plutor 17:03, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
According to rumors, Microsoft is not using their Visual SourceSafe source control program internally (for a good reason too, it's outdated and buggy). In any case, I am not sure why we would want to use a specific company here, without even providing any details; does Microsoft need promotion or something? Cema 17:15, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
Uh, because Microsoft is probably the largest proponent of the saying? And yes, SourceSafe is used within the company for projects of the size it is meant to work with. SchmuckyTheCat 17:20, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
Did Microsfot ever get Hotmail coverted over to any Windows platform? I seem to recall it got to be a big deal 2 or 3 years after buying them that that they were still running some flavor of Unix (not Microsoft's Xenix).[3] Ewlyahoocom 14:06, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Origin

I have just reordered the page, and found that it contains 2 (mutually exclusive) indication of origin for the sentence Eat one's own dog food. Does anyone has any source indicating which one is most likely to be correct ?Schutz 00:38, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure we spoke of "eating one's own dog food" in Silicon Valley and elsewhere long before the dot-com era.

[edit] Too much geek

This whole page seems much too highly focused on computers and the software industry. While dot-com businessmen may have helped popularize the phrase in recent years, it's already noted in the page that it was likely in use long before most people knew what a comupter was.

Moreover, the concept is a common principle that is applicable to almost any business. I, for one, was surprised not to see a mention or cross reference to Sy Sperling of the Hair Club For Men and his unavoidable TV sales pitch: "I'm not only the President, I'm also a client". (I'd add it myself, but given the page's current geek-centric nature, I can't seem to find a place where it fits.) I'm sure there are many other examples of the principle in action outside the technology field that could be listed here as well.

[edit] Not a blogger neologism

I heard this phrase used often while I was a computer science grad student at a major university. This was before blogs even existed. Take it to AFD if you want, and the article certainly could use improvement and better citations, but it's a notable phrase/concept. Let's improve the article instead of deleting it. I removed the PROD tag. SparsityProblem 21:23, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] No POV Problem

The dispute seems to be over tech vs. non-tech usage.

  1. There's lots of non-tech content here
  2. There's no evident history of disputes over tech/non-tech content
  3. The term probably sees genuinely more usage in tech settings.

The article needs cleaning, but not a POV scrub. Can we change tags? I will if nobody vouches for the {{pov}} tag.

--- tqbf 22:18, 12 November 2007 (UTC)