Troubleshoot like a pro: How to solve bugs and reduce stress.

Introduction

When you’re new to software development, bugs reported by other teams can feel like a personal crisis. You don’t know if it’s your fault, your code, or even your system. The panic is real—but it doesn’t have to be.

Over time, I’ve learned that awareness is the first step. Not just awareness of the bug, but of your mindset, your system boundaries, and your own stress level. The rest is just process.

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1. Understand the Report (Start with Why)

When you first get a bug report—especially from another team—it’s tempting to jump right into the code. But slow down. The first step isn’t fixing anything. It’s understanding what’s really being reported.

I always remind myself to start with why:

• Why does this bug matter to the business?
• Why does it need to be fixed now?
• Why is this part of the system important?

When you re-frame “why” around business impact, you shift your focus from symptoms to priorities. This helps you triage better, communicate more effectively, and avoid wasting time on the wrong things.

I use the 4 Ws of issue management to structure my thinking:

• Who reported the bug, and who else is affected (e.g. customers, support teams)?
• What is the broken behavior vs. the expected one?
• When did it start happening, and how urgent is it?
• Why does this bug matter in a business context? (e.g. does it block sales, increase churn, or threaten SLAs?)

🧠 Thinking in terms of business value helps you align with priorities—and earn trust from cross-functional teams.

Also: the report you get probably won’t be complete or totally accurate. That’s okay. Your job is to clarify the story before trying to solve it.

🔍 Tip: Ask for logs, screenshots, timestamps, and environment details. And if something doesn’t make sense, say so. Awareness is the first step—including awareness of what’s still unclear.

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2. Evaluate Impact (Don’t Let Urgency Be Assumed)

Once you’ve clarified what the bug is and why it matters to the business, the next question is: how bad is it, really?

Not all bugs are equal. Some are true emergencies. Others just feel urgent because they’re loud or visible. Part of staying calm is resisting the pressure to treat every issue like a fire drill.

Here’s what I look for when evaluating impact:

• Is this affecting customers right now?
• Is it blocking other teams or delaying a release?
• Is it damaging data or causing inconsistent results?
• Is it happening in production or just in a test environment?

If it’s not affecting anyone critical, not corrupting data, and not happening in production, then it’s probably not a top-priority fix.

This is where I like to remind myself—and sometimes others—that the key to happiness is low expectations. That doesn’t mean ignoring problems or delivering mediocre work. It means staying grounded in reality. Just because something’s broken doesn’t mean it needs to be fixed right now.

🧘‍♂️ Managing expectations—yours and others’—is how you stay sane and effective as a developer.

Once you’ve evaluated the impact, communicate what you’ve learned. You don’t need a full fix to say:

• “I’ve confirmed the issue exists in staging only.”
• “It seems to affect just one user account so far.”
• “No customer-facing impact, but we’re still tracing the root cause.”

That kind of clarity buys you breathing room—and builds trust.

3. Define Your Boundaries (And Expand Your Circle of Awareness)

When you’re still early in your career, getting a bug report from another team can trigger an internal alarm:

“Is this my fault?”
“Should I have caught this?”
“Do they think I broke something?”

That’s normal—but it’s also misleading.

Just because a bug was reported to you doesn’t mean it was caused by you. And even if it is your team’s responsibility, that doesn’t mean you need to solve it alone.

Here’s where I lean on a concept I call the circle of awareness. It’s the set of systems, tools, and use cases you currently understand well. Inside the circle? You move quickly and confidently. Outside the circle? You slow down, ask questions, and bring in help.

🌀 Growing as a developer means expanding your circle over time—not pretending you already know everything.

When you’re debugging across team boundaries, it’s okay (and often necessary) to:

• Say “I’m not familiar with that system—can you walk me through what it does?”
• Ask for architecture diagrams, config details, or ownership contacts.
• Clarify: “Are you expecting us to fix this, or are we just helping isolate the cause?”

This is also a good point to reflect on expectations:

The key to happiness is low expectations—and that includes being honest about what’s realistic for your current knowledge, time, and responsibility.

Boundaries are not excuses—they’re tools. They help you focus your energy where it’s most useful, instead of spinning your wheels or chasing bugs in systems you don’t own.

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4. Investigate Systematically (Think in First Principles)

Once you’ve clarified the bug and mapped out what you do (and don’t) own, it’s time to dig in. This is the part junior devs often rush—but going slow here actually saves time later.

I try to treat every investigation like a detective story. You’re not just looking for where the code goes wrong—you’re testing your assumptions, one by one.

My favorite technique at this stage is first principles thinking.

Strip away your assumptions. Ask:

• What should this component do?
• What data does it receive?
• What data should it produce?
• What do I know is true based on logs, tests, or direct observation?

When I get stuck, I go simpler. I test a small piece in isolation. I hardcode a value to see what changes. I ask: “What would this system do if it had no bugs?”

This helps you move from vague symptoms to clear mechanisms.

Here are some tools and tactics I lean on:

• Logs: Can you correlate user actions with backend events?
• Metrics: Do error rates or latency spike during the problem?
• Version control: What changed recently in this area?
• Reproduction: Can you trigger the bug locally or in staging?

And one of the most underrated debugging techniques:

Just explain it out loud. Whether to a teammate or a rubber duck, talking through the logic often reveals the flaw.

Remember: you’re not trying to guess the answer. You’re testing theories and eliminating possibilities. That’s the scientific method—and it works just as well in software.

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5. Solve and Safeguard (Fix It Once, Defend It Forever)

When you finally understand the root cause of a bug, there’s a real temptation to patch it fast and move on. And sometimes, you have to. But if you have the time—and you usually do—this is your moment to leave the code better than you found it.

Think of your fix in two layers:

• ✅ The solution: What’s the smallest, safest change that makes the problem go away?
• 🛡️ The safeguard: What can you add so this class of bug is easier to detect (or avoid) next time?

This second layer is where junior devs can really shine. Here are some options:

• Add a unit or regression test to catch this condition automatically.
• Improve logging at key decision points—especially if the logs were missing or misleading during your investigation.
• Add a metric or dashboard to track error frequency or unexpected behaviors.
• Update documentation or internal playbooks if something was confusing.

🔍 Debugging is expensive. Safeguards turn that cost into long-term value.

And if the root cause was genuinely hard to find, take five minutes to leave clues for the next person—because the next person might be you.

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✨ Pro Tip:

If you’re still unsure about the fix, ask yourself:
“What evidence do I have that this change solves the root cause?”
A patch without understanding is a risk. A patch with observability is a win.

6. Close the Loop (Share the Fix, Spread the Clarity)

Once the bug is fixed and defended, don’t just merge the code and move on. The last step is about communication and learning—both for others, and for your future self.

Here’s how I close the loop:

• ✅ Follow up with the reporting team:
  Let them know what the issue was, what you did to fix it, and whether they need to take any action (like retesting). Keep it clear and short. Confidence builds trust.
• ✅ Capture what you learned:
  Add a note to your team’s internal documentation, a project postmortem, or even just a Slack thread. Especially if this was a tricky bug—help others benefit from the effort you just put in.
• ✅ Reflect briefly:
  What helped you debug this faster? What slowed you down? Was there a gap in your circle of awareness that you can start closing?

Every bug you work through gives you a clearer map of your system—and more tools for the next one.

And remember: if you started this process feeling stressed, unsure, or overwhelmed, you’re not alone. Most bugs feel that way at the start. But by the end, there’s a moment when it clicks—and that’s when things shift from chaos to clarity.

Awareness is the first step, and the process does the rest.

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Final Thought

Being the person who calmly works through bugs, communicates clearly, and builds systems that learn from failure—that’s not just good engineering. That’s leadership.

And you don’t need a senior title to do it.