Episode 06: Intro to Architecture and Systems Design Interviews

Here is the link.

In this episode, I walk through the context and goals of a systems design and architecture interview. If you're considering working for a tech company, you'll almost certainly be asked to tackle a high-scale systems design problem. This video explains why companies ask this of you, how to prepare for this interview mentally and emotionally, and what success or failure might look like.

Here is the transcript.

I like to share my most favorite reading in the following:

At any point if you’re looking to your interviewer for guidance about how to proceed, you’re losing points. Now, don’t get me wrong on this point. Needing to bounce ideas off the interviewer or get clarification is fine. Also, you might be legitimately stuck on the problem. If so, by god man — ask for a pointer. I’ve seen many interviews that resulted in a job offer include feedback like “The candidate started off strong but needed a small pointer on X. After that, she did really well.” Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Still, you should bear in mind that the more help you need, the more likely it is that you’re showing lack of experience, creativity, and/or technical leadership.

Another no hire by a director level. 

Mental math

When the interview feedback made it up to the director level, the director stopped us and rejected the candidate. I was confused. Turns out the director did some mental math that I didn’t have the foresight to do. Yes, the coding skills were good and the candidate was a reasonably good communicator, team player, etc.. However, he was lacking in design/architecture ability. This on it’s own is no failure, but the candidate had 8 years of industry experience. He had worked in a strongly technical company for that long without ever taking on enough leadership to get good at reasoning about large scale systems. That is a red flag.

Actionable Items

I also think about a few mistakes I made in 2019; Google map offline story in Oct. 4, 2019, I spent over three hours to drive from Seattle downtown to Botholl, my friend's house. 

If I have strong analysis how Google map works, I should expect myself to learn that offline map is a must. The user chooses a route to the destination, Google map does not automatically save the map in the memory. Driving direction is lost once the internet is not available.