Bug Reports Are Gold

- 2 minutes read - 233 words

Me: Hey, I’m experiencing an issue with your software. Here’s a detailed bug report.

SAAS Engineer: What you’re describing isn’t possible.

Narrator: But it was possible.

This is a frustrating, unproductive snippet of a conversation I’ve had a few times in my career. What can we learn? Treat bug reports like gold.

For every person who takes the time to fill out your support form, there are many more who just gave up, found a janky workaround, or possibly abandoned your product altogether. It costs them nothing to move on. You might not like the message, or how it was delivered, but you are still lucky that they spoke up.

It doesn’t matter if the reporter isn’t a paying customer. They may be reporting a bug that paying customers are experiencing. Or one that paying customers will someday experience, at scale, when it’s a lot more expensive to fix.

When I find a potential bug with a software product, I learned from Steve Klabnik to always open a ticket, even when abandoning the product. We get so much for free in this industry and opening a ticket takes minutes. We’ve all been on the other side, building something and wondering if anybody cares. Or deeply stuck, and so grateful to find a ticket that validates our situation, and maybe even offers a path forward.

Bug reports are gold. When you get one, listen.