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Debugging: The Most Underrated (and Most Critical) Skill in DevOps, Cloud, and SRE

Everything breaks. Be the one who knows how to fix it.

Author

Ajit Inamdar
April 01, 2025

Hi friends,

Let’s cut through the noise for a second.

In DevOps, Cloud, and SRE roles, we are often told to master tools:

  • Kubernetes

  • Terraform

  • CI/CD platforms,

  • Cloud services galore.

And sure, those are important.

But there is one skill that is more valuable than any tool, especially when the pressure is on

👉 Debugging.

You know, the real engineering work.

It’s easy to set up infrastructure when everything goes right. But what makes you valuable is what you do when everything goes wrong.

Whether it’s:

  • A production deployment that mysteriously fails

  • A latency spike with no clear root cause

  • A misconfigured IAM role breaking your entire CI pipeline

  • A sudden spike in AWS costs with no code change in sight

The person who can calmly dissect the issue, trace it through layers of complexity, and fix it - that’s the engineer people trust.”

🔍 Debugging is a Superpower

But here’s the catch:

Debugging isn’t just knowing where to look. It’s about how you think.

Great debuggers don’t jump to conclusions. They:

  • Think in systems: understanding the chain reactions across infra, services, and applications.

  • Use observability like a map: logs, metrics, traces, and dashboards aren’t just “nice to have.” They are vital.

  • Know their stack: they have spent time in the trenches and know what “normal” looks like.

“Give me someone who can debug, and I’ll take them over someone who just knows a tool any day.”

🧠 My Take: Tools Can Be Taught. Debugging Must Be Practiced.

You can teach someone how to use Terraform.

You can send them to a Kubernetes workshop.

But teaching someone how to think when things break? That takes time, curiosity, and experience.

If you are mentoring a junior engineer, teach them how to debug.

If you are growing in your own career, start practicing this daily.

💬 Let’s Talk

What’s the hardest bug you have ever debugged?

Or - what’s your go-to approach when things break?

Hit reply or share it with me on LinkedIn. I would love to feature a few war stories in an upcoming issue.

Until next time,

Tech with Ajit