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IntermediatePROBLEM_SOLVING
Tell me about a time you found a difficult bug in an existing codebase that you did not originally write. How did you approach reading and understanding the code, isolating the issue, and verifying the fix? What tools or debugging techniques did you rely on?
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Sample Answer

On a previous project, I inherited a reporting service where monthly invoices were occasionally off by 1–2%. The codebase was about 50k lines and I hadn’t touched it before. I started by reproducing the bug using production-like data and adding a failing unit test around the invoice calculation path. Then I traced the flow from the API layer down, using the IDE debugger and strategic log statements with correlation IDs so I could follow a single request across five services. Git blame and past PRs showed a recent change to a rounding utility. Under concurrency, some values were being rounded twice. I wrote a small load test in JMeter to simulate 1,000 parallel invoice requests and confirmed the rate of discrepancy (about 3.5%) matched production logs. After simplifying the rounding logic and centralizing it in one place, the discrepancy dropped to 0% over two billing cycles, and support tickets about invoice mismatches went from ~15 per month to zero.

Keywords

Reproduced the bug with realistic data and a failing testUsed debugger, targeted logging, and git history to understand unfamiliar codeEmployed load testing to mirror production concurrency issuesVerified success via metrics: 3.5% discrepancy to 0%, tickets reduced to zero
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