After 47 years in the industry, I’ve come to a profound realization that separates the true senior engineers from the so-called “quality-focused” crowd: there are no bugs. There are only undocumented features and ungrateful users.

This isn’t a cope. This is architecture philosophy.

The Four Stages of Bug Report Grief

Every time a ticket lands in your inbox, you must guide the reporter through the following stages:

  1. Denial (their fault, not yours)
  2. Redefinition (it’s actually a feature)
  3. Negotiation (maybe we can add it to the roadmap)
  4. Acceptance (the user adapts)

Most engineers stop at stage 1. True masters reach stage 2 and live there permanently.

The Taxonomy of “Features”

Bug Report Says What It Actually Means
“The login button doesn’t work” User wants passwordless authentication
“My data disappeared” Auto-cleanup feature for disk management
“The app crashes on startup” Fast-boot mode for power users
“It’s been loading for 3 minutes” Mindfulness pause, reduces decision fatigue
“Numbers are wrong” Fuzzy math — embraces uncertainty in life
“I can’t find the Delete button” Anti-regret UX pattern
“The email never arrived” Spam prevention, ultra-strict mode

See? Every single one of them is an innovative product direction. The users just don’t have the vocabulary to describe what they truly want.

The Correct Bug Triage Process

Here’s the workflow I’ve refined over 47 years:

User files bug report
        |
        v
Is it reproducible on MY machine?
        |
   NO --+-- YES
   |            |
"Works for    Is it in the
 me, closing"  requirements doc?
                    |
               NO --+-- YES
               |            |
           "Scope creep,  "User error,
            closing"       closing"

If somehow a bug survives this gauntlet, simply label it enhancement and put it in the icebox milestone named Q4 — the quarterly milestone that never arrives, like a digital Advent that delivers no presents.

Advanced Techniques for the Seasoned Professional

The Reframe

Never say “fix.” Say “evolve.”

❌ “We fixed the bug where negative quantities could be ordered.”

✅ “We evolved the ordering flow to support forward-only commerce.”

The Blame Diffusion

If a user insists the bug is real, simply involve enough people that accountability becomes NP-hard:

# Legacy approach: fix the bug
def process_order(quantity):
    if quantity < 0:
        raise ValueError("Invalid quantity")
    return quantity * price

# Senior approach: create a committee
def process_order(quantity, stakeholder_alignment=False,
                  ux_reviewed=False, legal_cleared=False,
                  pm_approved=False):
    # TODO: validate quantity after cross-functional meeting
    return quantity * price  # works on my machine

The Wally Defense

As Wally from Dilbert once said: “I’ve been doing my job so well that no one realizes I haven’t been doing my job.”

Apply this to bugs: if you never acknowledge a bug exists, you can never be blamed for not fixing it. Maintain strategic ambiguity.

The Sacred Closing Statuses

A mature bug tracker should have these and ONLY these resolution statuses:

  • ✅ By Design — we intended this
  • ✅ Won't Fix — we intended this, but more decisively
  • ✅ Cannot Reproduce — works on my machine (always true)
  • ✅ User Error — the human is the bug
  • ✅ Works as Intended — see “By Design”
  • ✅ Duplicate — someone else’s problem
  • ✅ Stale — time heals all wounds

Note the absence of Fixed. That’s not a coincidence. That’s a philosophy.

What About the Users?

Users are resilient. They adapt. History is full of beloved software that was objectively broken — and people just… worked around it.

The real question is: why are you doing the user’s adaptation work for them?

Every workaround a user discovers is a skill they acquire. Every bug they learn to avoid is product expertise. You’re not shipping broken software — you’re shipping a learning experience.

(See also: xkcd #1172 — Workflow, which proves that fixing things can actually make users angry. I rest my case.)

The Bug Backlog Is a Monument

My current backlog has 4,300 open issues. I don’t see a liability. I see a testament to product richness.

Every open bug is a potential feature. Every crash is an unexplored code path. Every data corruption is a reminder that entropy is natural and fighting it is hubris.

The PHB from Dilbert once told me: “I don’t understand what you do, but I appreciate that you make it sound important.”

That’s all any of us can aspire to.

Practical Closing Advice

  1. Reply to every bug report within 90 days — shows you care, but not too much
  2. Always ask for a reproduction case — 60% of reporters give up immediately
  3. Request logs — in a format you’ve never documented
  4. Upgrade to the latest version — even if the latest version has more bugs
  5. Close as “stale” after 30 days — the bug may have fixed itself spiritually

And remember: a bug only exists if someone believes in it. Don’t be the one to validate their belief.

The author has 0 open bugs in their personal tracker. All 4,300 have been closed as “By Design.” Their production system has been “By Design” since 2019.