[nostrademons]

As a side note - I wish more interviewers would ask debugging related questions. I had a couple coworkers at Google who would try them ("Here's some code with some bugs in it. Identify them, or talk me through how you would identify them"), but they were definitely in the minority. Debugging is its own skill, very different from writing green-field code, and yet a large portion of the time we spend as professional software developers is spent debugging.

[MichaelCrawford]

I understand that ten times as much time and money go into maintenance work, than in writing the original product.

Now some of that is adding features but much of it is fixing bugs.

I work very very hard to promote myself as a debugging specialist, but it is quite uncommon for potential employers to even care.

The most common requirement for "Debug" - not "Debugging" just "Debug" - is for really low-level embedded work. Not even kernel nor device driver work, stuff like board bring-up.

However I have gotten a few jobs specifically as a debugger. My very first retail coding job got me the title of "Product Development Manager", but in reality I was hired to debug a product that my predecessor made a smoking crater of. I've also been a "Debug Meister" for Apple, and a "Man in Black" for Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, where I worked on what is now the Sony Mobile XPeria Play.

[MichaelCrawford]

Cisco had a written test in which I was asked to debug a C++ program that had thirty lines or so of source.

Note that I did this with paper and a ballpoint pen - no computer.

That same test also had me reverse-engineer a network protocol packet, given a hex dump.

I have only had one other written test that I can recall. With that one I was given the assembly instruction architecture for a hypothetical CPU, then the source to a program, with the problem being for me to write down what the output of the program was. It was a huge PITA, and took me several hours, due to multiply-nested loops, recursion and the like.

I didn't get an offer from Cisco, but I did at that other company. The owner never tells anyone how they did on the written test though, other than that you get a job offer or you don't.