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LeetCode for System Design

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Re: LeetCode for System Design

#42

Post by jorvi »

danpalmer wrote: post #28
ddimitrov wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've failed system design interview where they repeatedly asked me to design "for scale" but all the volume and latency requirements I could get from them could be handled by a single HA pair running a monolithic server+ external managed data store. They also seemed annoyed that I am asking them questions that are not part of the problem statement instead of getting down to drawing a fancy diagram. I'm sure they hire…

Latency and volume aren't the only requirements, perhaps you failed to discover the other requirements of the system? - In a fast system most of the latency will come from geographical distance, an HA pair can't serve the whole world with low latency. - How do you handle new releases? You can do HA with 2 machines, or you can do safe rollouts with blue/green machines, but you can't do HA and safe rollouts with just 2…

You forgot to design a new energy grid, in case a freak solar flare knocks out most of the world's grids. How can you deliver at scale if there is no scale?

What about new tax policy to encourage people having more children? How can you deliver at scale if the scale is shrinking?

Really, you should think of all factors..

Re: LeetCode for System Design

#44

Post by rbajp »

eranation wrote: post #43

How is this different from a “you are an expert system designer, please generate a system design interview question for {COMPANY}” OpenAI API wrapper?

Well, its in very early stages still, but the main benefit looking forward will be the problem bank and the diagramming experience.

Re: LeetCode for System Design

#45

Post by supriyo-biswas »

baq wrote: post #39
godot wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Right now, preparing for these interviews is really gatekept – either you need friends in big tech willing to help you practice, or you have to pay hundreds of dollars for one-on-one sessions. So I'm probably not your target audience (I haven't had to interview for a software eng job for at least 7-8 years), but from my past experiences in these interviews from that time, system design is typically the most sensibl…

> Looking at it from this lens, I'm not sure what a leetcode for system design adds in value, that a system design interview book doesn't already give. What does leetcode for code add if you can read a book about algorithms? Rhetorical question, obviously. Practice makes perfect, reading about practice doesn’t. Interviews are not even close to what an engineer’s job looks like, so interviews need to be approached jus…

> What does leetcode for code add if you can read a book about algorithms?

Quite a bit actually.

Even if one is familiar with various algorithms, many questions rely on some sort of critical insight or intuition that is difficult to unlock within that short span of time, and most importantly, satisfy the constraints of the problem being asked*.

Unfortunately, said insight can differ based on the problem, which is why the "Leetcode grind" is a thing; it is a process to train yourself to see the plethora of problems that may be asked.

* As an anecdote, I was implementing autocompletions on top of a text editing component for a personal project some time ago. While I was able to come up with an initial solution involving a binary tree, working out the individual cases allowed me to understand that my approach couldn't have been used as is. Upon some research, I found that there exists a similar thing called a "rope", although there's no way I could have come up with this solution in the context of an interview and would have been disqualified.

Re: LeetCode for System Design

#49

Post by danpalmer »

eunos wrote: post #36
danpalmer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Latency and volume aren't the only requirements, perhaps you failed to discover the other requirements of the system? - In a fast system most of the latency will come from geographical distance, an HA pair can't serve the whole world with low latency. - How do you handle new releases? You can do HA with 2 machines, or you can do safe rollouts with blue/green machines, but you can't do HA and safe rollouts with just 2…

From reading your response it suggest me the riddridiculousness of the System Design interviews. Are folks are supposed to design a planetary scale system in <1 hours?

Yes, I would expect people to be able to discuss all of this and more, with trade-offs, in 1 hour. I'm not expecting any code, I'm only expecting a box diagram at best, and it won't be a finished design, but the whole point of system design is being able to come up with designs to meet exactly this sort of thing.

Re: LeetCode for System Design

#50

Post by danpalmer »

jorvi wrote: post #42
danpalmer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Latency and volume aren't the only requirements, perhaps you failed to discover the other requirements of the system? - In a fast system most of the latency will come from geographical distance, an HA pair can't serve the whole world with low latency. - How do you handle new releases? You can do HA with 2 machines, or you can do safe rollouts with blue/green machines, but you can't do HA and safe rollouts with just 2…

You forgot to design a new energy grid, in case a freak solar flare knocks out most of the world's grids. How can you deliver at scale if there is no scale? What about new tax policy to encourage people having more children? How can you deliver at scale if the scale is shrinking? Really, you should think of all factors..

The difference of course being that I deal with the issues I listed on a daily basis and would interview for it, while I have yet to deal with solar flares, tax policy, etc in my role as a software engineer.
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