Copy What is a System Design Interview?

How are SDIs different from other interviews?

Like any other interview, we need to strategically approach a systems design interview (SDI). SDIs are different from the coding interviews. There is rarely any coding in this interview.

SDI is at a much higher level of abstraction where we figure out the requirements and map them to computational components and the high-level communication protocols connecting these sub-systems.

The final answer does not matter. What matters is the process and the journey that a good applicant takes the interviewer through.

As compared to coding problems in interviews, system design is much more aligned with what we will do on our job.

How to tackle a design question?

Design questions are open-ended, and they are intentionally vague to start with. Such vagueness mimics the reality in modern-day business.

Interviewers often pick some well-known problem, for example, designing WhatsApp. Now a real WhatsApp has a lot of features, and including all of them as requirements for our WhatApp clone might not be a wise idea.

• First, we will have limited time in the interview.
• Second, working with some core functionalities of the

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