1 min lesson
Run the clock
Describe what "Force yourself through five phases in order" changes in practice.
Step 1 of 3
Run the clockDrill protocol
Force yourself through five phases in order. The discipline is refusing to skip ahead to a fix the moment you have a guess.
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Full explanation
The Five-Phase Debug Method
Interactive diagram. Step through it with the Next and Previous controls below, or Tab to a region to read its detail.
Resolve/escalate is the quality gate - you don't pass it until you can name the cause.
Narrate the why behind every step, not just the step. “I'm disabling extensions first because a conflicting language server is the cheapest thing to rule out and it explains both the lag and the CPU spike.” Interviewers can't grade silent thinking. The narration is the deliverable.
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Full explanation
What good narration sounds like
What good narration sounds like
Symptom: Tab suggestions lag ~4s, only on the work laptop.
Hypothesis 1: network - corporate proxy buffering the stream.
Check: does it lag off-VPN? -> No lag off-VPN. Strong signal.
Check: is the proxy stripping chunked transfer? -> HAR shows
the response arriving in one block, not streamed.
Root cause (not symptom): proxy is buffering the streamed
completion, so nothing renders until the full response lands.
"Slow Tab" was the symptom; proxy buffering is the cause.
Resolve: allowlist the API host / disable buffering for it,
or escalate to their network team with the HAR as evidence.The fastest way to fail is to fix the symptom. If you tell the user to restart and the lag returns tomorrow, you treated a cause you never found. Restarting clears state, it doesn't explain anything. Always be able to say what was actually wrong.
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Advanced table
Score your own tape
Score your own tapeSelf-rubric
- Dimension
- Asked for environment
- Pass looks like
- Pulled OS, version, network, account in the first two minutes
- Red flag
- Started guessing fixes with zero context
- Dimension
- Method
- Pass looks like
- Clarify → reproduce → isolate → root-cause → resolve, in order
- Red flag
- Jumped straight to a fix on the first hunch
- Dimension
- Symptom vs cause
- Pass looks like
- Named the underlying cause, not just the visible behavior
- Red flag
- “Tell them to reinstall” with no explanation of why
- Dimension
- Communication
- Pass looks like
- Narrated hypotheses and what would confirm each
- Red flag
- Long silences or jargon with no plain-language anchor
- Dimension
- Clean handoff
- Pass looks like
- Escalation has repro, environment, logs and what was ruled out
- Red flag
- “Couldn't figure it out, sending to Eng” with no notes
| Dimension | Pass looks like | Red flag |
|---|---|---|
| Asked for environment | Pulled OS, version, network, account in the first two minutes | Started guessing fixes with zero context |
| Method | Clarify → reproduce → isolate → root-cause → resolve, in order | Jumped straight to a fix on the first hunch |
| Symptom vs cause | Named the underlying cause, not just the visible behavior | “Tell them to reinstall” with no explanation of why |
| Communication | Narrated hypotheses and what would confirm each | Long silences or jargon with no plain-language anchor |
| Clean handoff | Escalation has repro, environment, logs and what was ruled out | “Couldn't figure it out, sending to Eng” with no notes |
Watch the recording with this open. Mark the timestamp of every red flag.
Then redo it once. Same scenario or a fresh one, but this time fix your single weakest step on purpose. Most people find their gap is the same every run: they skip environment or they narrate the what and never the why.
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Optional practice
Practice: Run the clock
QIn a live troubleshooting round for slow Tab suggestions, what is your highest-value first move and why?