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As a mobile dev, would I be expected to design a system beyond an App client in an interview for L5+, E5+, etc? More broadly, are you expected to be familiar with the broader stack of a large product like Twitter or YouTube when interviewing at large or FAANG level companies? I know server side stuff to the extent I know what the server has to deal with to get the client what it wants and I know some MVC architecture for REST and some sql, but that’s about it. Nothing to scale and nothing overly complicated. TC: 180k YOE:4 #engineering #systemdesign #interview
In my experience, there will be a design round but specific to the role.
If I were you I’d propose having a neutral third party pick the question. In addition the job of the interviewer would also be on the line. Seriously, it may not be related to anything you’ll work on, the interviewer would have rehearsed and googled the answer to death. Good luck.
Mobile dev here. Mobile interviews are mobile focused. The most you’ll have to know about backend is what kind of API you will be hitting. Basically what params you’ll give and what it will give back.
Ok that makes sense and is thankfully within my wheelhouse. Appreciate the response!
API design, data models, and scalability/performance will be critical for you on client design interviews.
The first two are very natural, but let me dig in with a question on the third. Would you say scalability/performance from my perspective should be on how to structure requests/responses so that they’ll be performant at scale or are we talking full on backend scalability with the database, load balancers, etc because that feels pretty extreme for a client side dev to know.
More towards client scalability and performance based on how you structure responses as you called out, and also caching, batching, etc.
System Design interviews are usually domain specific.
Not necessarily. Most SWE SD interviews are random.
Well, I say usually, not always. If you interview for generalist or backend SWE, it's very likely you're asked knowledge beyond your stack.