Practice System Design Interviews

Three reasons why you should practice system design on Exponent Practice

Practice asking the right questions to drill down requirements

Clarifying ambiguities early by asking the right questions is critical. It’s been shown that candidates who spend time clearly defining the goals of the system have a much better chance of success than those who don’t.

Demonstrate your understanding of real-world tradeoffs

Sharpening your ability to discuss the pros and cons of an approach or solution is critical to demonstrate your ability to design a complex real-world system. Since there’s no single correct answer in a system design interview, leading a discussion on trade offs will give your interviewer the impression that you’re practical.

Defend your solution and adapt to new requirements

The process of explaining and defending a design is an extremely important skill for developers. A great candidate will be able to provide a working solution, adapt to new requirements, and defend their choices with valid explanations.

Practice Makes Perfect

System design interviews are considered to be the most challenging interviews to take (and give) due to the open-ended nature of system design questions. A range of questions can be asked during these interviews, such as database schema design, object-oriented design, distributed system design, and scalability. There are also many topics you should understand, such as abstraction, concurrency, estimation, networking, and real-world performance.

After practicing, you’ll be able to...

Break down a real-world problem from high-level requirements to actionable design.
Ask the right questions and demonstrate your understanding of real-world tradeoffs.
Present a working solution, adapt to requirements, and defend your choices.