Become A Debugging Master [Part 8] - Write Down All The Context

One of the easiest ways to massively speed up your debugging (and make yourself look way more senior) is simple: write things down early and often. Here are the core points from the lesson:

- Don’t wait for clarity to write—writing your thoughts down is what *creates* clarity and uncovers next steps
- Always document repro steps, failed attempts, blast radius info, and hypotheses while debugging
- Writing things down improves your retention, narrows the search area, gives credit to others, and makes handing off bugs much smoother
- Even half-baked notes are powerful because they build momentum, reduce confusion, and help you communicate progress to others effectively

Become A Debugging Master [Part 7] - Understand The Blast Radius

One of the biggest mistakes software engineers make is jumping straight into fixing a bug without first understanding the full impact. Here are the core points from the lesson:

- Before fixing anything, assess and document the “blast radius” by asking when the issue started, who and where it impacts, and what product versions are affected
- Think ahead to the post-mortem by tracking detection, notification, response, and mitigation details early, even while still gathering info
- Communicate frequent updates to leadership and stakeholders—even if there’s no fix yet—to maintain trust and reduce panic

Become A Debugging Master [Part 6] - Reproduce The Issue

It's crucial to thoroughly reproduce a bug before attempting to fix it - This can be often trickier than engineers think. Here are the core points from the lesson:

- Reproducing a bug requires systematically testing different versions, languages, devices, network conditions, experiments, and user paths—not just trying once and giving up
- Bugs might appear intermittent or path-dependent, so multiple attempts and thoughtful investigation into what *wasn’t* captured in the bug report are essential
- Understand the broader categories of software failures (functional, usability, integration, concurrency, security, performance, user error) so you can better diagnose the true underlying problem
- Strong debugging starts with deeply understanding when and why the bug occurs, forming the foundation for prioritizing and fixing it effectively

Types of software bugs: <https://www.browserstack.com/guide/types-of-software-bugs>

Become A Debugging Master [Part 5] - Prioritization

Once you find a bunch of bugs, the next critical skill is knowing how to prioritize them. Here are the core points from the lesson:

- Use a framework of frequency vs. severity to quickly assess whether a bug is urgent, trivial, or somewhere in between
- For ambiguous cases, combine metrics (how many users impacted, company priorities) and your own judgment to make a strong recommendation
- Proactively get input from teammates with more context, and be prepared to justify why you’re working on a bug—or why it’s not worth fixing
- Developing this prioritization skill is key to advancing into senior and staff engineering roles, where you guide not just your own work but the team’s direction

Become A Debugging Master [Part 4] - Where To Find Bugs

Finding and fixing bugs proactively is one of the most underrated ways to accelerate your growth as an engineer. Here are the core points from the lesson:

- Great engineers don’t wait for bugs to be assigned—they actively hunt for them through QA reports, user feedback, crash logs, dashboards, and on-call alerts
- Proactively surfacing and solving bugs builds trust, reduces last-minute surprises, and makes you a more reliable and promotable team member
- Attending SEV (severe incident) reviews, learning from outages, and applying those lessons is a major career hack for fast growth
- Engineers can approach bugs at different levels of ownership, from simply reporting them to fully owning the investigation, fix, and communication
- Creating scope by finding and fixing high-priority bugs—even without being asked—can dramatically accelerate your career trajectory and reputation

Become A Debugging Master [Part 3] - Debugging Is A Premium Skill

Debugging is one of the most difficult yet valuable skills you can develop as a software engineer. Here are the core points from the lesson:

- Debugging isn’t just one skill—it involves asking sharp questions, deductive reasoning, clear communication, systems thinking, and holistic understanding
- As AI-generated “vibe coding” becomes more common, engineers who can deeply understand and fix code will become even more valuable
- Successful debugging requires patience and true technical mastery, far beyond just prompting an AI or relying on automated solutions
- Beyond fixing bugs, top engineers also prioritize which bugs matter most, combining technical problem-solving with smart decision-making for maximum impact

Become A Debugging Master [Part 2] - Why You Should Love Bugs

Bugs are often seen as a nuisance, but in reality, they offer one of the highest-impact ways to grow and succeed as an engineer. Here are the core points from the lesson:

- Junior engineers often avoid bugs to chase “cool” feature work, but experienced engineers recognize bugs as critical for making meaningful product impact
- Owning and fixing bugs can accelerate your career growth, even to senior levels like Staff or Senior Staff Engineer, by demonstrating deep technical skill
- Debugging teaches you to dive across teams, codebases, and systems—skills that are rare, valuable, and highly rewarded
- Fixing bugs ensures real, lasting impact compared to feature work, where many experiments and launches often quietly fail
- Mature engineers view the endless supply of bugs as opportunities to create visible, undeniable value by removing problems that directly affect users

Related resources:

- Code quality course: [Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/level-up-your-code-quality-as-a-software-engineer/)
- [Girish Patangay: The billion versions of Facebook you’ve never seen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXGgc79sGwY)

Become A Debugging Master [Part 1] - How This Course Works

Most software engineers groan when they get hit with a random bug task while they're in the middle of feature development. However, this is actually the completely wrong reaction reaction to have - It should be the opposite! This course is here to teach you why bugs are a deeply underrated growth opportunity and how you can become amazing at fixing them fast.

Here are the core parts of the lesson:

- Your instructor [**Rahul Pandey**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rpandey1234/) walks you through his extensive 10+ year Silicon Valley background with rapid career advancement, ending up as a high-performing Staff Engineer \[E6\] at Meta. Most importantly, he talks about how becoming a debugging master led to him getting to Meta E6 and boosting his total compensation to $800k+!

- We walk you through the course objectives. By the end of the course, you will:

  - 🧠 Learn how to **properly** **prioritize** debugging

  - 📋 Understand the **necessary prep work** before the fix

  - 💡 Develop a **mental framework** to fix any bug

  - ✅ Understand **the difference** between good and bad fixes

  - 🏆 Be able to **get maximum credit** for debugging

Joel Spolsky's wisdom: <https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/>

Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech [Part 21] - Go Deeper: Follow Through

Join Taro events here: <https://www.jointaro.com/events/>

See upcoming Group Office Hours with Alex here: <https://www.jointaro.com/p/alex-chiou/>

Start a discussion in the Taro forum here: <https://www.jointaro.com/questions/create/>

Related courses:

- [Effective Communication For Engineers](https://www.jointaro.com/course/effective-communication-for-engineers/)
- [Ask Great Questions That Get Great Answers Quickly](https://www.jointaro.com/course/ask-great-questions-that-get-great-answers-quickly/)

Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech [Part 20] - Everyday Is Networking Day

Networking doesn't need to be hard. In fact, it should be easy. This lesson teaches you:

- What networking should feel like when you're doing it properly
- Why networking shouldn't feel like a hard, conscious, extra effort
- Ways to make networking seem more natural
- One of the most common mistakes engineers (and introverts in general) make when it comes to networking and maintaining relationships

Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech [Part 19] - Common Mistakes To Avoid

Networking is really easy to mess up as there's a lot of toxic mentalities you can fall into. This lesson teaches you:

- The #1 way people mess up networking
- How to strike a balance between being pragmatic (having shields up) and being idealistic (helping people)
- Why going outside of your comfort zone is critical for networking
- What fake networking looks like, shown with a very common example among engineers

Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech [Part 18] - Give Deep Thanks

"Thanks" is a magic word but only if you play your cards right. This lesson teaches you:

- Why basic thanks (what many software engineers do) is so ineffective, especially in the context of networking
- Ways you can give deeper thanks, shown in order of intensity
- An incredibly powerful way to give deep thanks in the context of a work setting

Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech [Part 17] - Ask Good Questions

The most basic way to get help is to ask a question. This has huge implications on networking and relationship building. This lesson teaches you:

- Why it's extremely punishing to ask bad questions
- How asking good questions can actually be an asset and make you look *better* to other people, earning you respect and trust
- The difference between a good and bad question, demonstrated with an in-depth example

Take the question asking course here: [Ask Great Questions That Get Great Answers Quickly](https://www.jointaro.com/course/ask-great-questions-that-get-great-answers-quickly/)

Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech [Part 16] - 1 on 1 Meetings

Want to make someone like you? Go talk to them privately! This lesson teaches you:

- Why 1 on 1s are the most important vehicle for deepening relationships
- A simple 2-step framework to make a relationship incredibly powerful, centered around 1 on 1s
- The core mindset you need to have in order to make 1 on 1s effective
- How to think about the frequency of your 1 on 1s
- Basic tactics to get far more value from your 1 on 1s, especially with more senior people

Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech [Part 15] - Have Their Back

Disagreement is everywhere in tech, and it's often quite stressful. However, it's also a prime time for you to deepen your network and relationships. This lesson teaches you:

- Why having someone's back in times of disagreement is so powerful
- The main avenue to have someone's back
- How engineers completely waste the meetings they go to
- How having someone's back against yourself is insanely powerful
- Where so many engineers go wrong when it comes to their mentality around being right

Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech [Part 14] - Easy Ways To Earn Trust

Gaining trust is always harder than losing trust, but that doesn't mean it needs to be slow. This lesson teaches you:

- How you can earn trust simply by doing your work
- A very natural and technical way to earn trust as an engineer specifically
- Powerful ways to earn trust while scaling up your influence
- The immense power of a $5 coffee ☕️

Related resources:

- Learn how to do good work with our code quality course: [Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/level-up-your-code-quality-as-a-software-engineer/)
- The Instagram oncall revamp case study: [\[Case Study\] Revamping Oncall For 20 Instagram Engineers - Senior to Staff Project](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/esVxIGXYC5BdgxXUkO6H/case-study-revamping-oncall-for-20-instagram-engineers-senior-to-staff-project/)

Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech [Part 13] - Lead With Kindness

Many engineers get impatient when it comes to networking, frustrated that it takes so long to get someone to provide meaningful value to them. It doesn't need to be this way. This lesson teaches you:

- A very simple way to understand networking and how to convert it into something that provides concrete benefits
- Why leading with kindness is the most powerful mindset you can have to build trust *fast*
- How leading with kindness really isn't that difficult, especially if you're smart and on the lookout for disproportionate activities
- What it means to lead with kindness, explained with an in-depth example that is very relevant to Taro

Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech [Part 12] - Build In Public

It's way easier to have people come to you instead of you having to go to them. This lesson teaches you:

- The difference between inbound and outbound
- Why building in public is such a powerful technique to generate inbound (i.e. talented people coming to you)
- Different ways to build in public

Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech [Part 11] - Identifying Fit

Some people simply aren't meant to get along, and you will run into a lot of these people across your career. This lesson teaches you:

- Why finding right fit connections is so important for networking, particularly with your efficiency
- How professional networking really isn't that different from making friends "in real life" (IRL)
- Solidarity angles you can leverage to find good fit connections

Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech [Part 10] - "Good To Know" People

You never know who's going to come in and completely change your career for the better. This lesson teaches you:

- What "good to know" connections are
- Why networking with these connections can actually be quite easy
- The most powerful way to identify "good to know" connections

Tech Career Growth Videos

Our instructional videos provide software engineers with insights needed for career growth. Masterclasses go incredibly in-depth on a specific tech topic while case studies are real examples from established engineering leaders.