It's been almost 6 months I've been interviewing and it's safe to assume that it has been nothing less than a Fiasco. Getting rejected from everywhere. I Don't want to mope around and want to get help regarding resources I am using for system design preparation. Reading: 1. Web Scalability For Startup Engineers by Artur Ejsmont DONE 2. http://book.mixu.net/distsys/ DONE 3. Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann IN PROGRESS Youtube: 1. Tech Dummies https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn1XnDWhsLS5URXTi5wtFTA 2. Gaurav Sen https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRPMAqdtSgd0Ipeef7iFsKw 3. Jackson Gabbard https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcdCkJKXlRoXVD03eo-q8mQ Just wanted to check with folks here If there any superior source for system design preparation which I should check out ? Are these resources enough ? Is there a place where I can go through some mock interviews to get a better understanding of what I am doing wrong ? Since most of the organisation ghosts you after interviews it's really hard to get some constructive feedback regarding system design interview performance. #google #facebook #amazon TC: 45L YOE: 10 Years Location: Bangalore, India
Grokking the system design interview
I've found Tech dummies youtube channel to be more informative than Grokking the system design interview course. But yeah, I can revisit it and try to find something I missed last time.
Grokking is pure crap. It's only for l3/4 engineers who have 0 real world experience. If you are 5/6 you should be using your actual experience. They will dig much deeper and there is no substitute. Ddia is a great resource but it's just a fundamental layer. At that level you are a goldfish in a bowl, if you can't pass the system design this much I honestly think there is nothing that will help. It is so obvious from SD interview if someone is just going off a month of prep from books or if they've actually designed such systems.
It could be not system design anyway. Your delivery, the way you engage with the interviewer, how you communicate...
How to learn that :(
Try to do more mock interviews
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9vLsnF6QPYuH51njmIooCQ I found this channel to be better. Very detailed.
will check it out.
10 years of exp and prep'ing from gauravsen channel ?
Yep, I treat it as a refresher course. Kindly suggest others if you know any.
I knew there wouldn't be a reply to my comment 🙂
Watching tech dummies is counter productive
Some of his videos are not that informative, like the rate limiter one. But some of them are ok. Kindly suggest others if you know any.
I'd recommed against Tech Dummies for sure. I watched one of his stock system design and used his proposal, got laughed at by engineers in an interview. CodeKarle seems to be doing better (high level) but doesn't go into the details. If you are aiming for L5/6, I'd watch InfoQ, Strangeloop, you know videos from real companies who talk about the scale of the problem and how they solve it.
https://github.com/donnemartin/system-design-primer Check this out . It helped me with some of my interviews
I would also suggest regularly looking at big tech companies blogs.. Like Netflix, Facebook, Uber engineering etc. You might pick up some interesting problems and how they went about solving it. InfoQ is also *sometimes* a good source for problems n solutions related to big data and scalability... One of my buddies from School took a different route - He spent some time on linkedIn and found some senior architects and technologists from the companies he was looking to interview for.. He then reached out to them asking for mentorship. One of the folks actually replied positively and my friend says he has learned a huge amount just by talking to his mentor... I know this is like a left field idea and might not really work out but just thought of sharing it.
Really appreciate your comment, thanks buddy.
How do you know that system design is the one which is leading to rejections? Did you get any feedback to that effect from multiple companies? It could as well be coding and myriad of other things ranging from body language, confidence, communication skills, behavioral skills etc. You can look at gainlo blogs and educative.io (not free) as well for system design.
Most of the organisations surprisingly were not asking Algo/DS questions per se. Except 2-3 organisations all of them exclusively asked system design questions.
Yoe ?