What job title should I look for?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I love programming - just love it. I love looking at code, seeing how it works and makes the system dance to its commands.

However, there’s one small problem - I suck at it. I can read and understand several different languages, but trying to write a program of my own - you can put a gun to my head and I’ll crank something out but a) it won’t be very efficient, b) it’ll be fugly, hacky code and c) no guarantees that it’ll work right (or keep working right). I’ve tried for years - I’ll try a language for a couple of years, keep plugging away at it like you’re supposed to, but I just am not able to create code out of whole cloth in anything close to a reasonable amount of time - let alone at a speed good enough to hold down the crappiest of coding jobs.

However #2 - I can debug the crap out of code that’s already created. I can find/create bugs that others can’t, and I can spot logic/syntax errors almost intuitively, and I love doing it. It’s weird. One time, a former manager at a departments store I worked at 20+ years ago was taking RPG III classes and brought in a stack of 120-column printouts. He handed a sheet to me, said “I’m trying to create a report that looks like this” and handed me a nice tabled report, “but all I’m getting is this” and handed me the same data all in one long column. I took a look at the code printout and after about 10 minutes I found the logic error that was causing the error. The interesting thing is that up until that point, I had never seen RPG III code before in my life.

One final issue is a slight educational one - I don’t have a college degree or any certifications of any kind, but I have spent the last decade in IT - mostly in Tech

My question is posed in the title - what kind of job title/keyword/buzzword should I look for? I suck at programming, but I can debug the crap out of code - what are the kinds of jobs that would suit me, and if I find a prospect, what should I tell the interviewer? Should I be honest and explain that I can’t code for crap? I’ll say now that even if it might be detrimental to me, I usually prefer complete honesty, so I guess I’m actually asking how I should pose it rather than if I should.

A secondary question (and maybe one better suited for GQ?) would be - is this unusal? Being able to debug - even in languages I’ve never seen, but not able to create my own code?

2

Try Quality Assurance. I was a QA Analyst for seven years, and I’ve seen job descriptions where they wanted someone who can read and fix code. Your lack of a college degree might be an issue for some employers, but given ten years of tech experience, I don’t think it would be a significant barrier for most. Especially if you network your way into the position. Lots of places say they want people with QA certification, but at least where I am, you basically can’t get it, so don’t worry about that in the job descriptions.

That said, how happy would you be if you had to do the testing through the GUI to find the defects and weren’t just handed the problem to fix? Or if you were responsible for writing and maintaining scripts to run tests against the GUI? Those tasks are also typically a large portion of most QA jobs.

You could also look for a developer position in a client support group. At least where I work, that means you’ve got a significant amount of client contact and rotate through after-hours support. But it’s definitely a job that is focused on fixing problems in the existing code instead of building new functionality.

3

I have been cutting code since 1969 (FORTRAN) and working solidly in IT for 20 odd years.

You are a gem - you are a maintenance programmer. Developers sneer at you but you can work forever. Start your learning here.