Ask HN: Why system design interviews are focused on services then components?

2 pointsstriker_axel3y ago1 comments

So, recently i started giving out interviews. I have 7+ years of experience so one or two design rounds are expected. Keeping that in mind i revised my concepts on distributed system and read few famous papers on distributed system. it was fun visiting those concepts again. Also, as advised i watched few scaling videos on youtube (i.e Design Uber etc.)

I have experience building system from scratch and depending upon the requirement i have scaled few services in my organization.

So, my expectations from the design round was to have open-ended discussion with interviewer on certain component and discussing drill-down component architecture, scaling issues, drawbacks etc.

But For me at least, reality is quite different. I was asked to design BookMyShow ( Movie booking system ) in full. I mean the interviewers expectation was to just draw the components, write the api and design schema. He will understand my work by looking into it.

I have given 5+ interviews as of now ( got offer from some of them). But i feel like design round wasn't justified.

1 comments

jstx13y ago

I think the process you're describing ("Design this service") is quite common and well established. I'm looking at the chapters in System Design Interview - every one after chapter 3 is titled like "Design a chat system", "Design Youtube", "Design Google Drive" etc. So it seems more like your expectations were off rather than the interviewers giving you something weird.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse