getting better at system design questions
how did you get better at system design? i really suck at this kind of interviews and i know it's holding me back.
Posted Jul 30, 2017, 6:05 PM UTC
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how did you get better at system design? i really suck at this kind of interviews and i know it's holding me back.
Posted Jul 30, 2017, 6:05 PM UTC
I feel like Systems Design - more so than algorithm/data structures - is something best learned through experience. This probably isn't the answer you want to hear, but I think the best way to learn it is to design lots of systems (taking in feedback from others of course).
This is never the answer I want to hear, but its true. I was once asked to design a rule-based report engine based on security events as input. I aced that question, it was easier than a fizzbuzz problem. Why? Because I've worked with that sort of engine for more than a year at my current job and knew the ins and outs of how it worked. In addition to simply getting more work experience, it might be useful to study the architecture of other popular systems, and perhaps implement a simple version yourself.