I’m the kind of person that just assumes customer service is going to be bad. I gird myself whenever I have to call a company and just deal with their gauntlet with patience, knowing the trick is to outlast them. It costs them money every time you call. I’ll often tell them I know that and assure them I will continue calling until the matter is resolved. It’s not fun, it’s just the way things sadly are.

My old man, however, still feels some kind of righteous indignation when he spends his hard earned money and doesn’t feel he’s getting what he paid for. He loves to give a piece of his mind to the companies that mistreat him, and he always says “And I hope my comments are being recorded for quality assurance!”

I agree with the broader point, but I'm perplexed when the author talking about dogfooding as a "sacred practice in the tech industry" in the context of customer support. Among big tech companies, customer support usually isn't seen a part of the product. If you work at Facebook, Google, or Microsoft, you don't try to go through the non-existent consumer support channels to resolve issues with the product or with your account.

Yeah well economies of scale matters more than your sanity

currently on the front page the post directly beneath this one was 25 years of eggs

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47427224

a happy coincidence.

My farts always smell good to me.

Dogfooding was a virtuous cycle for user and service provider alike, because incentives were aligned.

Then growth - excuse me, metastasis - came along.

Thanks to metastasis - excuse me, enshittification - we've outgrown dogfooding. We'd used it as a kind of UX gyroscope, something that works to keep us balanced without too much institutional thought or effort. It made us more efficient at competing. Now that the biggest firms are the least threatened by competition, why would they subject themselves to the indignities of the User?