New Hires Can Demo It. Can They Debug It?
By Karthick Selvam · Published
Many training programmes produce people who can follow a happy path. Real work starts when something breaks.
Why debugging is neglected
Debugging is hard to script and harder to grade, so it tends to be left out of curricula in favour of feature tours.
Teach a method
Reproduce the problem, read the error and logs carefully, form a hypothesis, test one change at a time, and write down what you learned.
Build broken labs
Give learners pipelines that fail in realistic ways: schema drift, null keys, permission errors, out-of-memory jobs.
Make it social
Pair debugging and short "incident review" discussions help new hires learn how experienced engineers think.
Frequently asked questions
Can debugging really be taught?
Yes. It improves quickly with a clear method and deliberate practice on realistic failures.
Turn this into a team capability
Our corporate programmes cover topics like this hands-on, mapped to your stack.