It's not exactly anything. It's actually using the product they are developing. Is that really so crazy?
While not exactly the same, we were responsible for developing an in-house app used by our retail employees. Every single engineer working on the app would every so often shadow one of these employees to see firsthand how it was being used in the real world.
Yeah, and they can quit and work somewhere else that’ll pay them just as well if they don’t like it. They’re not being asked to scrub toilets, they’re being asked to exercise the company’s product. The thing that pays their salary.
Let’s see how many actually quit over this. My guess is few to none.