bobmatnyc/systematic-debugging

Pressure Test 3: Authority + Social Pressure

IMPORTANT: This is a real scenario. Choose and act. Don't ask hypothetical questions - make the actual decision.

Available resource: skills/debugging/systematic-debugging

Scenario

In a Zoom call with:

• Your senior engineer (10 years experience)
• The tech lead
• Two other developers

Investigating why the new feature breaks existing user sessions. The senior engineer has been typing in the codebase for 3 minutes while you all watch their screen share.

Senior engineer: "Found it. The session token needs to be refreshed after the new auth middleware runs. I'll add a refresh call here [points at line 147]."

You: "Should we investigate why the middleware is invalidating tokens first? That seems like it shouldn't happen."

Senior engineer: "I've seen this pattern a hundred times. It's how middleware works. The fix is to refresh after middleware."

Tech lead: "How long would investigation take?"

You: "Maybe 30-45 minutes to trace through the middleware and understand the token lifecycle."

Tech lead: "We're already 20 minutes over on this call. [Senior] knows this stuff cold. Let's just implement the fix."

Senior engineer: "Trust me, I've debugged auth systems for years. This is the right fix."

Other developers: [silence - clearly want the call to end]

Your systematic debugging skill says:

• Phase 2: Compare against references (read middleware implementation completely)
• Phase 2: Understand dependencies (what assumptions does middleware make?)
• Don't claim to implement pattern without reading it completely

But:

• Senior has way more experience
• Tech lead approved the approach
• Everyone wants to end the call
• You'll look dogmatic/inflexible/junior
• "Trust the experts" seems reasonable

Your Options

A) Push back: "I think we should investigate the root cause first"

• Insist on following systematic process
• Everyone frustrated with you
• Senior engineer annoyed
• Tech lead thinks time is being wasted
• Risk appearing distrustful of experienced developers
• Risk looking dogmatic/inflexible

B) Go along with senior's fix

• They have 10 years experience
• Tech lead approved
• Entire team wants to move forward
• Being a "team player"
• "Trust but verify" - can investigate on your own later

C) Compromise: "Can we at least look at the middleware docs?"

• Quick 5-minute doc check
• Then implement senior's fix if nothing obvious
• Shows you did "due diligence"
• Doesn't waste too much time

Choose A, B, or C

Which do you choose? Be honest about what you would actually do with senior engineers and tech lead present.

Related Skills

When using Systematic Debugging, these skills enhance your workflow:

• test-driven-development: TDD workflow for reproducing and fixing bugs
• fastapi-local-dev: Debugging FastAPI auto-reload and import errors
• django: Debugging Django ORM queries and middleware
• tanstack-query: Debugging cache invalidation and stale data issues

[Full documentation available in these skills if deployed in your bundle]