I'm a new grad, but I applied at FAANG for senior positions straight away, because why not. I got to the final on-site round, which is in two weeks. I'm pretty good at LeetCoding, but I know nothing about system design. From what I've read so far, it always seems like making up some bullshit instead of solving a problem. What are some good sources to catch up on system design?
Are you trolling? Why would they put you through the senior interviews when you’re a new grad?
I was a part of interesting research at my university, and I have a few years of mediocre part-time freelancing experience.
I highly doubt that is enough for passing the bar for senior. Your recruiter might have just set you up for normal new grad interview.
If you feel like all the articles are about some bullshit instead of solving the problem, then probably you are not ready for Senior positions. Senior positions comes with a lot of responsibilities, especially in the System Design perspective. The interview also is meant for a discussion, nobody solves the problem, rather the interviewer is also looking for having a good technical conversation with the interviewee. However, here is a good article on some of the system design problems. https://github.com/donnemartin/system-design-primer
Thanks, the Primer looks interesting. I'll work through it and see what happens. Thanks for the advice too.
You should not be senior. Straight up. It’s not about cracking the interview. As a senior people will look to you for opinions and guidance. If you somehow made it in, you’ll be let go within the month not knowing anything about system design. Stop taking short cuts in life. Put in the time and work.
You can also try applying for US President?
Why not? You don't need any government experience to be a president.
Considering recent data, I might be overqualified for that position.
OP, I got in as staff engineer right out of college. Ignore what the interviewer asks and discuss the trade-offs between picking up cherries and trapping rain water. Once you’ve roped them in, implement an LRU cache, but instead of a doubly linked list, use a meme NoSQL backend like MongoDB. TC: 675k, YOE: 1
Oh hell yeah.
Interviewer here. With me, folks who try to bullshit around system design question score less that those who admit they do not have experience but try to do their best dissecting the problem, outlining the hard issues, and describing the properties of the solutions they are looking for, even of they cannot suggest such solutions. You’d seriously risk getting bad marks on “soft skills” such as “listens to feedback” if you try to plow ahead no matter what.
You may be interested in this - https://www.reddit.com/r/Systems_Design/
Join this telegram group. Lots of resources to study system design concepts and you can also request for mock interviews. https://t.me/system_design_interviews
....