Boost confidence in Sys Design Interview

HPE
πŸ‘‹h

Go to company page HPE

πŸ‘‹h
Jul 22, 2019 8 Comments

I have been interviewing for last couple of months and I keep on bombing every single system design interview. I do read a lot of articles, blogs and YouTube videos related to scalable systems but cannot build up confidence out of these efforts. At my current work, I don't work on any distributed systems technology. There must be people who would have aced the interviews even after working on the non-distributed systems. I am facing chicken and egg problem here. Nobody lets you in without system design knowledge and to gain knowledge you need to have hands on experience.

I know there are options such as open source contributions and personal projects but that seems a long path given a full time job.

Need your advice/help in tackling this dilemma.

YoE 3.5
TC 150k

8

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 TOP 8 Comments
  • Have you tried Grokking the System Design Interview? It’s a course on Educative.io A lot of ppl recommend it. Secondly you can ask the recruiter to adjust the system design interview based on your experience. For example, in Facebook, there is a different system design interview for front end ppl compared to backend ppl.
    Jul 23, 2019 2
  • Maybe reading articles or books without practicing works for somebody, but not for me. If I read about something without practicing or discussing, I forget it very fast. I think, if you have somebody to discuss architecture of various systems with, then it could help. Also, prototyping could help to better understand one design or another.
    Jul 23, 2019 0
  • HPE
    πŸ‘‹h

    Go to company page HPE

    πŸ‘‹h
    OP
    How do you guys manage to remember technology to solve some well known issues such as db choice for read or write heavy system and what queuing sol is required for what situations.
    Jul 23, 2019 1
    • Amazon / Eng
      mm..

      Go to company page Amazon Eng

      PRE
      Amazon
       mm..
      Experience in my case. Most of the time I have compared various options in my professional life for various trade-offs. Not sure what method works for others.
      Jul 23, 2019

  • This comment was deleted by original commenter.

    • HPE
      πŸ‘‹h

      Go to company page HPE

      πŸ‘‹h
      OP
      System design is part of the interviews irrespective of the level. I am not trying for senior swe roles yet.
      Jul 22, 2019
  • PayPal
    🐲ninja

    Go to company page PayPal

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    Google
     🐲ninja
    If possible, try mock interviews with friends. It’s the best way to prepare in short time.
    Jul 23, 2019 0