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System Design Interview Questions: The 5 I’d Prepare First, Plus the ChatGPT Bonus
WhatsApp, Google Docs, Excalidraw, Amazon and live comments, each with the one hard part interviewers wait for. Then the AI chat app.
Plenty of people prepare system design questions as diagrams to memorise, then freeze when the interviewer changes one requirement.
I have cracked more than 25 system design interviews at different product-based companies, and these five keep coming up, plus a bonus question that matters more every month. I listed them in a 60-second YouTube Short. A Short can show the boxes, but not the moment the interviewer asks “what happens if…”. This is the long version.
My take on these system design interview questions: each one hides one hard part, and much of the interview is whether you find it early. The boxes (gateway, queue, cache, database) look almost the same in all six. The hard part changes every time.
The Hard Part Map
This is the map I use. Each question, and the one thing I’d expect a good interviewer to push on:
- WhatsApp: getting every message to a phone that might be offline, once and in order.
- Google Docs: two people…
