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A senior engineer's guide to the system design interview

interviewing.io

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Re: A senior engineer's guide to the system design interview

#111

Post by _visgean »

rednerrus wrote: post #81
operatingthetan wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We caution candidates that if we dig in and we run into something blocked by the NDA it creates challenges with our evaluation. So you're penalizing those under NDA and unecessarily limiting your candidate pool.

There’s no penalty. There are plenty of technologies that you’re working with that aren’t under NDA. We’re not asking you to diagram what you’re working on, we asking you to diagram something technical that you understand well.

When I interviewed with apple they said pretty much everything they do is proprietary and considered secret. I imagine for some of these people working there for years it would be hard to avoid breaking nda

Re: A senior engineer's guide to the system design interview

#112

Post by blue039 »

John23832 wrote: post #100

I think to be frank, this gamification of interviews is BS. I’ve built actual production systems at scale. The fact that I need to follow a guide to “demonstrate” my ability to someone who 9/10 hasn’t built (or couldn’t build) anything at scale in production shows where we are in the absurdity matrix.

Yeah, I don't think I want a job that asks such questions. I've done the webscale BS. I've done actual architecture that exists in reality. At this stage in my career there's nothing an interviewer can do but insult me.

You might say that this is hubris about my own skill but it has nothing to do with how good I am. My resume has a LOOONG track record of consistent work in the industry. Call my references, do some actual DD on me, then ask me real questions related to actual things.

If leetcode and all these other service went straight to hell tomorrow the world would be a better place. This entire "interview" industry is propped up by a bunch of leeches capitalizing on a recently extremely popular field. Then, injecting their BS to make the process harder thereby earning them dollars. The linked article is a perfect example. It's actually an advertisement if you look close enough designed by these exact leeches. This is just a reimagining of the bloodsuckers who run SAT/GRE/GMAT prep services and "ex-ivy-league recruiter consultant" bullshit. They are the same people and the only place they belong is all the way at the back of the breadline. That may be too generous for them anyway. There are better people that deserve the bread.

There's a good chance at my career phase I have more experience than the interviewer. They "level the playing field" by asking me these stupid things. That is why it is insulting. I almost want to leave the industry entirely than have to do the process one more time. I don't need a 7 phase 360 interview with everyone including the CEO's cousin to insure I am a "culture fit". It was never like this before. It needs to stop.

Re: A senior engineer's guide to the system design interview

#113

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

_visgean wrote: post #111
rednerrus wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no penalty. There are plenty of technologies that you’re working with that aren’t under NDA. We’re not asking you to diagram what you’re working on, we asking you to diagram something technical that you understand well.

When I interviewed with apple they said pretty much everything they do is proprietary and considered secret. I imagine for some of these people working there for years it would be hard to avoid breaking nda

But, if you’re a web developer you should be able to diagram what happens when a browser makes a request

Re: A senior engineer's guide to the system design interview

#114

Post by Swizec »

toolz wrote: post #97
eschneider wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

98% of what you'd be inclined to diagram out and explain for a system design interview isn't remotely proprietary. People are generally looking for a high-level overview of a system you've worked on to see a) that you've really worked on it and b) you can explain it such that it makes sense. Sure, folks will ask you to drill down here and there for more detailed info, but if someone pokes on something where the detai…

I'm not a lawyer, but wouldn't anything you or anyone else developed on company time at another company be owned by that company and thus proprietary? In practice I can't imagine the spirit of any law would be violated by doing an architecture diagram, but it seems likely (to me, at least) the word of the law would be violated.

> I'm not a lawyer, but wouldn't anything you or anyone else developed on company time at another company be owned by that company and thus proprietary?

In theory yes, in practice ... if that's true, why would anyone ever hire you for your experience? You wouldn't be allowed to use it.

Re: A senior engineer's guide to the system design interview

#115

Post by [deleted] »

jfarina wrote: post #105
toolz wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a lawyer, but wouldn't anything you or anyone else developed on company time at another company be owned by that company and thus proprietary? In practice I can't imagine the spirit of any law would be violated by doing an architecture diagram, but it seems likely (to me, at least) the word of the law would be violated.

How could you ever interview anywhere if you couldn't provide details of the projects that you worked on?

[deleted]

Re: A senior engineer's guide to the system design interview

#116

Post by emmanueloga_ »

rednerrus wrote: post #9

We've gone away from system design interview questions on my team. We ask people to diagram something technical they understand well and the team digs in and asks questions to understand depth and breadth of the candidates understanding. For us it works much better. It's a chance to see how well candidates do in following instructions. It gives you a chance to explore depth and breadth of their knowledge on something…

where do you work?

Re: A senior engineer's guide to the system design interview

#117

Post by rickreynoldssf »

First off, I'm not disparaging the content, I'm sure its good and useful in interviewing at most companies.

...that said. This kind of thing annoys me. You shouldn't have to study for an interview. Either you meet the requirement and have the experience or you don't. Reading books and stuff like this is really a cheat by the person being interviewed. You many have studied enough to "pass the test" but you really don't have a deep usable knowledge of the material and will likely forget much of what was studied.

When I do interviews I make sure the candidate is aware that studying will be a pointless endeavor and if I can tell your answers come from one of the interview prep books I'll end the interview early. My interviews ask questions that will tell me if you REALLY know the subject. For example if JavaScript is a requirement I'll throw this at you

const a = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9];

const b = a.filter(x=>1);

if(!!1 && b.some(e=>e>6)){

foo();

}

and ask you to tell me what it does. Its totally weird code and seeing that in actual code is highly unacceptable BUT if you really know JavaScript you will be able to tell me what this does in less than 30 seconds. Immediately if you're going for a Senior position.

I'm known for hiring the best engineers.

Re: A senior engineer's guide to the system design interview

#119

Post by [deleted] »

_visgean wrote: post #111
rednerrus wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no penalty. There are plenty of technologies that you’re working with that aren’t under NDA. We’re not asking you to diagram what you’re working on, we asking you to diagram something technical that you understand well.

When I interviewed with apple they said pretty much everything they do is proprietary and considered secret. I imagine for some of these people working there for years it would be hard to avoid breaking nda

[deleted]

Re: A senior engineer's guide to the system design interview

#120

Post by nonethewiser »

John23832 wrote: post #100

I think to be frank, this gamification of interviews is BS. I’ve built actual production systems at scale. The fact that I need to follow a guide to “demonstrate” my ability to someone who 9/10 hasn’t built (or couldn’t build) anything at scale in production shows where we are in the absurdity matrix.

I guess I'm not sure if you're suggesting otherwise, but gamification is not unique to interviews. It's a natural response to any system that relies on metrics or measurements. The request to design a theoretical system is gamification as much the guide for answering it is. These games exist because it elicits answers that can be used to learn about someone's real experience level.

It's great that you feel confident relying on your real world application but it takes a long time to get repetition on building things at scale in production. Practicing system design is a way to shorten that learning loop.

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