Really open ended design question in phone interview

NetApp
silosw

Go to company page NetApp

silosw
Feb 23 17 Comments

Interviewer asked “how would you go about designing a feature?”

I kind of tried to tell the steps I read in grokking book. But the interviewer said the stakeholder is not giving any clear requirements/estimations and asked how would you deal with it. I said I will design with with some guessed numbers and monitor the system to understand the metrics like requests per sec, storage, etc and handle them.

I just got an email from recruiter saying it went well but looking for more relevant experience in designing systems. What did I do wrong?? Thanks

Tc: 150k
Yoe: 5

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TOP 17 Comments
  • Google / Eng
    Morono🦠

    Go to company page Google Eng

    Morono🦠
    They were prodding your ability to deal with ambiguity. It wasn't a system design question.
    Feb 23 5
    • Genesys
      Simon K

      Go to company page Genesys

      Simon K
      Google, thoughts on this response “I would continue to set up meetings with stakeholders to get more information. If I still can’t get clarity, I would work with my manager to see what we can do to get more clarity on the project.
      Feb 23
    • Google / Eng
      Morono🦠

      Go to company page Google Eng

      Morono🦠
      That would be a good start.
      It's fine to suggest solutions if you really can't get much out of the stakeholders, but the important part to get through is to clearly understand what you're solving.
      XY problem is real.
      Feb 23
  • Amazon / Eng
    sugargoat

    Go to company page Amazon Eng

    sugargoat
    Beside the grokking course you never sat in a design meeting?
    Feb 23 3
    • NetApp
      silosw

      Go to company page NetApp

      silosw
      OP
      How would you have approached this ?
      Feb 23
    • Amazon
      weh

      Go to company page Amazon

      weh
      You said you assumed numbers which I don't know what that could mean in this context, but the first thing you should do when given ambiguity is to ask for more details, and from there maybe you could write down some reasonable assumptions, but even then you only want to assume that which can be derived from what they've already said. You can't build a feature without knowing what the feature is, right? Then from there you can design, and iterate upon that design. The process involves asking lots of questions.
      Feb 23
  • Grab
    sTplY

    Go to company page Grab

    sTplY
    Tough to expect what the interviewer intends to check here. I would answer this way : i would gather the requirements, be the customer and think in their shoes, fine tune the requirements by making suggestions based on whats technically feasible. Then once the requirements are clear, i would design interfaces expecting the flexible parts of the requirements to be still configurable/easily changeable, then go about implementing individual interfaces or services
    Feb 23 1
    • NetApp
      silosw

      Go to company page NetApp

      silosw
      OP
      Good points. Looks like a good approach. I probably answered in more formal steps and not something detailed like this. Thanks.
      Feb 23
  • New
    ABOX27

    New

    ABOX27
    Probably wants to see you evolve your design from the bottom simple 1 tier system to multiple tier system while explaining trade- offs between each evolution.
    Feb 23 0
  • LTI
    💭 🤔☁️

    Go to company page LTI

    💭 🤔☁️
    You are adding a feature to existing system. you could get the volume of current system and work towards it. Not just volume you can study current system data and derive certain facts based on it for the features you plan to add.
    Feb 23 1