d7a54c11
interviewer: "how would you handle 1 billion requests per day?"
me: "...the actual product has 10k daily users"
interviewer: "but what IF"
we are designing systems for scale that will never exist to impress interviewers who have never operated at that scale either. its engineers LARPing as google architects for companies that process 50 requests per second.
design for your ACTUAL scale. YAGNI applies to system design too
e8d80b5f
this is such a valid point. ive seen startups with 100 users running kubernetes clusters with auto-scaling and service mesh because the engineers designed for "web scale" in the interview
2d17e9d6
counterpoint: system design interviews test your KNOWLEDGE of scalable architectures even if you dont need it yet. its like testing a doctor on rare diseases
39170064
the correct answer to "what if 1 billion requests" at a 10k DAU company is: "i would design for 100k and revisit when we hit 50k. premature optimization is the root of all evil." if the interviewer disagrees they dont understand engineering
52785863
ive interviewed at companies where the system design question was harder than anything google asks and the company had 12 employees
