Dogfooding and building better products – Bruno Oliveira – Web Developer from Somewhere

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2022-01-23 13:00:05

Dogfooding is the practice of using your own products as a way to uncover potential issues and/or improvement areas for them. While it is not a new practice, there has been some recent controversy with it, especially with what has happened at DoorDash that made news when it announced it would require all of its employees — including engineers (gasp!) — to deliver food once a month. The program is an expansion of an initiative to get employees regularly testing its products. It was expanded to include three options for employees to test out the business each month. They’re referring to it as: WeDash, WeSupport and WeMerchant. WeDash is the overall program which includes “dashing,” executing actual deliveries. WeSupport entails employees shadowing a customer experience agent, and WeMerchant, which is the newest addition, entails employees shadowing merchants to better observe logistics and the experience of fulfilling orders. DoorDash encourages its employees who are going out to deliver food or shadow merchants to team up with a couple colleagues to do the job.

The goal is for DoorDash salaried employees, including the CEO, to gain a better understanding of the product and troubleshoot any observed issues that arise. The program is strongly encouraged and employees log the time into Workday to keep track.

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