> They said that the hardest part was studying for the system design portion because they did not have experience with system design Your friend is not alone,

> They said that the hardest part was studying for the system design portion because they did not have experience with system design Your friend is not alone, and I don't understand what separates us. Even when I was early career, system design was my favorite. My biggest issue is performance anxiety when there's a concrete problem to solve that I've never seen before, so coding sessions are absolute hell. Inability to focus, forgetting approaches I've known forever, etc. Ask me to do system design though, and it's generally freeform, I can talk about different approaches, deep dive on the fly, and draw a nice diagram or many nice diagrams, and interviewers love me and think I'm smart. I've had interviewers who were suspicious after my bad coding performance try to nail me on esoteric implementation details but because I have actual, hard-earned experience I can pretty much explain any approach in my niche and then tell you all the tradeoffs. I can also quickly code up examples, etc. Never had a bad feedback on this portion. Something about the complete detachment of the coding problem from real life is such a huge mental block and I am continuing to fight it 15 years into my career, after dozens of similar interviews.