4 ms·
Sorry for going offtopic "How do you make sure that a celebrity's tweet reaches all of her followers in less than 3 seconds?" Looks like the interviewer has
by ing33k 6y ago
Sorry for going offtopic
"How do you make sure that a celebrity's tweet reaches all of her followers in less than 3 seconds?"
Looks like the interviewer has atleast read the first chapter of
"Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems"
If you read and understand the above book, I am reasonably sure that you can crack most of the system design interviews.
- michelb 6y agoAnd never again need that knowledge on the job you apply for.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- flak48 6y agoI would agree with you if we were talking about leetcode style data structure/algorithm questions, but system design is almost always relevant. I found 'Designing Data-Intensive Applications' to be a useful book beyond interviewing. Even if you are not working on a product that requires supporting millions or billions of reads / writes, knowing what is overkill and what isn't, for your project's use case is still useful
- matthewmacleod 6y agoNah, you use similar knowledge all the time in lots of different systems in different fields. You’re not designing a production system in an interview scenario; you are demonstrating critical thinking, showing that you understand how to break down a problem and sketch out a solution, and can clearly and thoroughly explore the different constraints that need to be considered. These are general purpose skills.
- vp8989 6y agoWhy do you think system design knowledge would not be used on the job? New systems are built all the time. Existing systems are extended/refactored all the time. System design interviews IME are very applicable/productive actually. Especially ones that put you in a non-greenfield scenario. Getting good at those requires studying topics that actually are relevant to the day to day job. The Kleppmann book referenced above is one of the bibles IMO. A software book that's actually worth the paper it's printed on.
- li4ick 6y agoThought the same. He probably saw those JOIN vs Queue vs Hybrid designs and thought that he understood the entire system. Probably never even touched a system of that scale.
- etripe 6y agoI feel ambivalent about this kind of question. You might argue that it's required general knowledge, but relying on having read any one particular book seems arbitrary and a "gotcha" question. I could be missing something about US software culture - is this considered a must-read or "celebrity" book over there?
- peruvian 6y agoIt's well-recommended in tech forum/enthusiast circles. It actually is a good book and worth reading if you're a backend dev. But the % of devs in the US that have read it is probably below 2-3%. Most of us (devs, not HN users) don't read or do code after work.
- exdsq 6y agoIt’s interesting how much of a bubble we can be in, that everyone’s coding/studying in their spare time. I do wonder what it actually looks like for the broader tech community.