[HN Gopher] Troubleshooting: A skill that never goes obsolete
___________________________________________________________________
Troubleshooting: A skill that never goes obsolete
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 85 points
Date : 2025-02-25 12:03 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.autodidacts.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.autodidacts.io)
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| The skill is "troubleshooting". Not to be confused with its close
| cousin, "troublemaking".
| credit_guy wrote:
| > Realizing that I spend more time troubleshooting than I do
| building or doing ...
|
| That's not good. The problem with troubleshooting is that it
| messes up with your reward system. After you fix a hard-to-debug
| problem, you feel a sense of accomplishment. Which would be ok,
| but the problem is that this sense of accomplishment is often
| time higher than it should be. You go home at the end of the day
| thinking "well, today I didn't build anything, but it's fine,
| because I fixed that bug". You are becoming complacent.
|
| If you end up saying to yourself, like the author of this blog
| here, that you troubleshoot more than you build or you do, then
| you have a problem. Soon you'll be seen by others as a car
| mechanic. Maybe a reliable car mechanic. But reliable car
| mechanics don't get paid a lot.
|
| This might be a controversial take but here it is: being proud of
| your troubleshooting skills sits somewhere between being proud of
| your typing speed and being proud of your word document
| formatting skills. These things never go obsolete, but don't fool
| yourself into thinking they are gold currency on the job market.
| xerox13ster wrote:
| This mentality through most of my career has left me trapped as
| technical support, and it's damn near impossible to climb out
| of the pit I've dug for myself. What you say about being seen
| as a car mechanic is true.
| foo_barrio wrote:
| This played out at my last place. My boss would assign my co-
| worker to build the world's crappiest car in the least amount
| of time and when it broke down I would be the only one that
| seemed to be able to fix it (while my co-worker was busy
| building some other crappy car). I would have built a much
| better car in the first place! However I would have taken
| more time and the goal was to build and release as fast a
| possible. My boss was okay with the risk of said crappy car,
| my co-worker got promoted and I slowly burned out.
|
| It's a tough balancing to make sure you sell yourself
| correctly and fight to work on things you want to!
| rokhayakebe wrote:
| Until you start your own company, even if it is just you.
| fjjjrjj wrote:
| I feel this way about documentation. I do it, a lot. I get
| compliments and positive feedback on it. It helps me remember
| things I would otherwise forget. I hope that others would be
| inspired by my example but it hasn't happened. I could be
| selfish and horde my own documentation and let others sink or
| swim. But that hurts me too as I'd have to pick up their
| slack.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| I'm reminded of the Gervais Principle. Doing the work is
| not the way to "win," but not winning might be the better
| lifestyle. Depends on your motivations, aspirations, and
| ethics. It's easy to chase the total compensation number,
| because it's just _there_ and like what are we doing
| anyway? But then what are you doing, anyway?
| fjjjrjj wrote:
| That's been my career mindset. I've been in roles where
| my management has referred to me as a "rockstar" and it
| was a burden not a compliment. I'd rather be in a
| supportive team environment where everyone carries their
| own weight.
|
| Compensation has been decent with this approach over the
| years. I could have made more staying longer in a
| darwinian bigco but the work was not fulfilling.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| And it isn't just your _appearance_ or _pay_ you should be
| worrying about. If you fix a nitpicky bug that affected 5% of
| the users -- congrats that's a pretty big bug! But could you
| have built a new feature that would roll out to 50% of users in
| that same time? In many situations, building the new feature
| will have a bigger impact on the world than the bug fix.
| Obviously will depend on the exact circumstance. But you should
| consider the opportunity cost.
| Cpoll wrote:
| > But could you have built a new feature that would roll out
| to 50% of users in that same time?
|
| No.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| If the impact of debugging is expected to be larger than
| building something new, then debug. Else, build something
| new.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| The problem is that the real impact and the perceived
| value of each path are not necessarily the same.
|
| Building new things is sexy and highly visible. It's easy
| to say about yourself "I built that cool new feature" or
| better, to promote "I might build something of incredible
| value". You're front-and-center with decision makers,
| shaping the future.
|
| Conversely, debugging is perceived as a cost center. "I
| fixed that critical infrastructure that used to work with
| only minor interruption" or "Maybe everything will break
| and you'll need me to fix it" are not nearly as exciting.
| Worse, the best maintenance is completely invisible,
| fixing problems before they are felt. You're in the
| background, dealing with the legacy of the past.
| drivers99 wrote:
| More like: why fix a 5% bug when you can deploy a new bug
| to the other 50%
| bee_rider wrote:
| Hmm. Well, of course it isn't on any one person to fix a
| systemic issue. But, I really would not want to use a system
| where the institutional decision was made to focus on new
| features instead of fixing bugs that hit 5% of users.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| I think you may be leaning too far in the other direction.
|
| I'm a troubleshooter. I fix problems. I keep my head straight
| in a crisis. Every job I've had across 3 decades, regardless of
| my actual title or formal responsibilities, I'm the
| firefighter. People call me when they can't figure something
| out. People call me when something big breaks and needs to be
| fixed urgently. Even if I'm not an expert in the broken thing,
| they call me in. They call me because the experts are often
| floundering and not making any progress because they can't
| troubleshoot their way out of a wet paper bag.
|
| I do not feel this has held me back professionally. I have been
| loved by management and peers in all of these jobs. When I
| nearly left a prior employer because much of the work wasn't
| aligned with what I wanted to do, management created a new role
| with better aligned work and higher pay to convince me to stay.
| In my current role, I'm very happy with my salary, working
| environment, management, and team.
|
| I wish troubleshooting skills were as common as typing and
| document formatting skills. I wouldn't need to help out nearly
| as many people because they could handle their own crises.
| rokhayakebe wrote:
| In fact you could easily be the guy they keep on a monthly
| retainer just for peace of mind.
| lurk2 wrote:
| The word retainer has an appealing mercenary quality to it.
| The dream is that your knowledge of an esoteric system set
| up in the 1980s gets you warehoused in a data closet at a
| mid-sized organization, where you can spend the rest of
| your days browsing Hacker News and watching pirated films.
| K0balt wrote:
| After 3 years the finish gets dull, but it's still not
| bad. Not the worst contract I ever worked.
| dblohm7 wrote:
| > I do not feel this has held me back professionally. I have
| been loved by management and peers in all of these jobs.
|
| If only your experience was universal in that regard! I once
| had that role in an early-career job -- but I was looked down
| upon by peers and management because I was doing mostly
| maintenance work. The "good" developers, in their minds, were
| the ones shipping the most new features -- the irony being
| that those features would then blow up out in the field, at
| which time they landed on my desk to turn them into
| production-worthy code.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| > I'm a troubleshooter. I fix problems. I keep my head
| straight in a crisis. ... People call me when they can't
| figure something out. ... Even if I'm not an expert in the
| broken thing, they call me in. They call me because the
| experts are often floundering ...
|
| This describes a sizable portion of my career. It's
| lucrative, it's gratifying, and it's fun. It's as close as
| I'm going to get to being a "kick-ass mercenary".
|
| Seeing new environments, new applications, and new problems
| never gets old. The stories that come from the work are
| priceless, too.
|
| > I wish troubleshooting skills were as common as typing and
| document formatting skills.
|
| When I conduct interviews this is the main skill I screen
| for. I think it can be taught, but somebody who already has
| it and is missing some particular technical experience is
| vastly more valuable.
| pryelluw wrote:
| Funny. Sounds like you're troubleshooting their reward system.
| theshackleford wrote:
| > don't fool yourself into thinking they are gold currency on
| the job market.
|
| I must have gotten lucky then because I've built most of my
| career off my incredible troubleshooting capacity and my
| communication capability.
|
| I'm not earning Silicon Valley money (because thankfully I
| don't live there) but I'm at the top end for salaries in my
| country. I out earn the vast majority of devs/devops people I
| know.
|
| Maybe it's a bit unfair though because I troubleshoot at a very
| different level to most I suspect.
|
| _edit_
|
| Or maybe I've been applying the wrong word to what I do my
| entire career...or misunderstanding why I'm valued. This is
| more possible than it might seem.
|
| _edit_
|
| For further context, i've held a wide variety of positions now
| within IT, including executive management. The problem is
| still, and I know this will sound stupid, I don't know how it
| is I got here, or why people valued me enough to keep me
| promoting me. I never even asked for the promotions they
| just...happened. This has made applying for new jobs harder,
| because I've never actually been entirely sure what my value
| is, so I often take jobs that are lower than my last job, but
| then everytime its not long before I end up well above that
| again.
|
| I eventually assumed it must be my troubleshooting capacity. I
| asked a CEO I worked with once at a smaller startup why it is
| he kept promoting me, and I got this story about how by just
| being in the room, everyone around me wants to do better work.
| Not because they are being told to do so, but because the work
| I do apparently just inspires people around me to do better. I
| was the truest example he had seen apparently of 'lead by
| example.'
|
| It's been very problematic because despite earning good money,
| and having never struggled to find, retain or advance in a job,
| I still don't truely know what it is exactly i'm good at.
|
| I think im terrible at explaining this. Every time I have tried
| to talk to someone about it in real life they just end up
| telling me I have impostor syndrome. Of course I do, I don't
| really know what the fuck it is I do.
| jemmyw wrote:
| > But reliable car mechanics don't get paid a lot
|
| I dunno, the mechanic I go to is reliable and so busy it's hard
| to get a slot these days, and he seems to be doing very well
| for himself. So many mechanics are unreliable
| imglorp wrote:
| If you are debugging your work too much, maybe it's you.
|
| Obligatory Kernighan's law: "Debugging is twice as hard as
| writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write
| the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not
| smart enough to debug it."
| zem wrote:
| > Soon you'll be seen by others as a car mechanic. Maybe a
| reliable car mechanic. But reliable car mechanics don't get
| paid a lot.
|
| this argues for a messed up reward system for the company, not
| the engineer. all sufficiently large systems have bugs and
| performance issues, and adding a measure of reliability,
| stability, and speed is just as important as adding features.
| fatbird wrote:
| My skill at troubleshooting has caused me to be the goto guy in
| every project, which lends great credibility and opportunities
| for leadership. Your pride in your troubleshooting skills isn't
| pride in a side-quest, it's pride in having a deep
| understanding of how systems work in general and in the
| specific.
|
| "Good troubleshooter" might not look great on a CV, but all of
| your coworkers naming you as the most valuable member of the
| team, and a natural leader, is worth more than any feature
| launches.
| linza wrote:
| The value is in leadership, and being able to avoid certain
| classes of bugs from appearing in the first place.
| Troubleshooting just happens to be the skill that allows you
| to gain the knowledge to lead.
| fatbird wrote:
| Exactly:
|
| "I found the root cause and corrected it. It may be an
| issue in these other two places so we should check there as
| well."
|
| "Great. How do we avoid issues like this in the future?"
|
| "By doing X thing a different way, and ensuring that Y
| thing is also in place."
| pklausler wrote:
| Some kinds of troubleshooting are pretty important, though
| (e.g., medicine).
| linza wrote:
| It's even worse than that.
|
| Making troubleshooting skills a profession in itself makes
| reliability a property of a specific person or team and not a
| property of the system. The former doesn't scale.
| ConspiracyFact wrote:
| You'll never be able to build a (large, complex) system that
| is consistently, inherently reliable over time and in
| response to change. You want to _aim_ for such reliability
| but you _still need troubleshooting ability_.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > But reliable car mechanics don't get paid a lot.
|
| If you're a wizbang mechanic working for an import car repair,
| you can get paid a lot more in hourly labor fees than some of
| us make.
| hooverd wrote:
| You get more credit for putting out fires you started than
| building something that doesn't catch on fire in the first
| place.
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| I have found myself to be someone that loves learning a little
| bit about various tech disciplines, but I've ended up as a
| "master of none" because I get bored quickly. Any advice for a
| career path that would reward such a thing?
| esafak wrote:
| CTO :)
| dotancohen wrote:
| > reliable car mechanics don't get paid a lot.
|
| Actually, they do. It's the unreliable car mechanics that need
| to swindle.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Reliable mechanics have high rates and long waits everywhere
| I've lived.
|
| Hell, I've seen some that are so busy that they won't take
| new customers!
| glitchc wrote:
| I'm not sure that I agree with this, not that I'm big on
| troubleshooting, but experienced SREs (Site Reliability
| Engineers) are worth their weight in gold and get paid an
| insane amount of money. Perhaps the key is to debug a vendor's
| solution rather than an in-house one.
| willturman wrote:
| User credit_guy advocates for technical debt.
| Curiositry wrote:
| This is a fascinating take. I have been thinking about your
| comment for two days.
|
| I think you're right in some cases (when working in a field one
| has mastered, for example), and I think I could probably go in
| the direction of getting it right the first time.
|
| But the way I see it, any time I'm doing something new or
| innovative, I'm doing something I don't know how to do, which
| takes trial and error; and troubleshooting is basically
| figuring things out by trial and error, in a systematic way.
|
| Though a lot of time it is used for fixing bugs, I think
| troubleshooting as a skill and mindset is equally useful for
| creating new things, where you are solving for something.
| ge96 wrote:
| time dilation
| msie wrote:
| They should troubleshoot the long loading times for the site.
| wpm wrote:
| Hugged to death for me right now, here's an archive link:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20250228192142/https://www.autod...
| Curiositry wrote:
| Thanks for posting an archive link. My site has survived
| previous HN traffic spikes on Fly.io's free tier, but 256mb of
| RAM wasn't _quite_ adequate this time :)
| nioj wrote:
| The site appears to be hugged to death for me.
| Curiositry wrote:
| Yes, sorry. I have scaled up my hosting and it's back :)
| bob1029 wrote:
| > Don't assume it's complicated
|
| There are problem areas where it is a lot easier to assume
| everything is a 10/10 monster.
|
| If you start every journey with "power cycle the device" and
| always wind up with a bridge call between 3 vendors, you might as
| well get the bridge warmed up the moment something throws a
| warning.
|
| Oftentimes, getting someone on the phone can be a bit of a circus
| act regardless of what the contracts say. Over reacting early on
| can minimize total time to resolution.
| ConspiracyFact wrote:
| This strategy will also make the rank-and-file at your vendors
| hate and distrust you, so proceed with caution.
| RedNifre wrote:
| What do you think will be the last skills/jobs to go obsolete?
|
| I think it's "Wanting the right thing" (This includes figuring
| out what the right thing is) and "Being able to articulate your
| wish clearly" (This includes clarifying your thoughts).
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-02-28 23:00 UTC)