Do alcohol makers try their own products to ensure consistency day-to-day? I would hope so. I would certainly hope candymakers do too. Those are particularly bad examples.
ask yourself if you're willfully misconstruing what i'm saying in order to low brow dismiss my point.
jedberg claims he consumed ads every day in order to empathize with this customers. the obvious implication is that everyone at such a company has the obligation to "try their own products".
Your analogy is weak, so I pointed it out. Reddit created their experience a certain way; why would you go out of your way to avoid seeing your product the way your users do?
You haven't presented a single argument as to WHY an employee of a software company shouldn't experience their product as their users do.
Talking about product testing is a deliberate red herring, though. Nobody was talking about some web designer using adblock during the process of implementing ads on a site. That would be a very difficult hurdle to put in front of yourself.
Jedberg, who I know for a fact ran Reddit's infra singlehandedly for a while, claimed he consumed ads as a matter of understanding the user while holding the job. Apparently he grew a brain and decided to block ads after that job, as smart and well informed users tend to do.
I suggest turning off JavaScript for most sites, which keeps the ad blocking tasks to a minimum. Blocking trolling users is another matter entirely.
