I used to wonder why I see so many more bugs than most people. I easily observe hundreds to thousands of bugs per week, but most people I talk to don't notice. For a long time, I thought this had to do with how I use computers, but over time, I've realized that it's mostly that people are hitting the same bugs and don't notice.

I've done this with friends and acquaintances; just by pointing out bugs, after a few weeks, people who are so inclined tend to start noticing them as well. Because I notice these things, I've had multiple jobs where directors, VPs, and execs sometimes ask me to evaluate something when they want an actual opinion from someone likely to notice issues. More often, I find issues that fall somewhere from mild to moderate.

And sometimes, the issues are severe, to the point where one might say the thing actually doesn't work. I find this last category mysterious, as internal comments usually indicate the thing is great, but when I try it, it only works if you do non-intuitive workarounds. More likely than not, a normal user wouldn't be able to use the thing and would have a hilariously bad experience.

After seeing more cases where products launch and fail because users hit the same issues, I don't think I'm hitting bugs because I'm doing unusual things. If a product seems severely flawed when I use it, it probably is. With the magic of LLMs, I can have them act like normal users and show that issues reproduce across many scenarios.