Episode 06: Intro to Architecture and Systems Design Interviews

[@alexsavul]

"if you get rejected it means you were at least at the front door of that place. just keep going". this motivates me quite a lot. thanks

[@Alistair]

me too. I said "I haven't thought about this before" when the guy asked me about how to scale up database reads on my app, and he immediately moved on. I've since read about scaling up database reads and it's all very basic, common sense stuff that I had in fact kinda thought about before. Oops

[@atul6585]

Jis front door pe aap pahunche ho, use front door ke bahar to hamne apni 20s gujari hai.

[@liposoandrade]

This is probably the most "mature" systems design video I ever watched. No specifics, just handling different aspects and focusing on what's important for the outcome. Thanks for posting!

[@SohailSiadat]

Nice video. But the background music is annoying. It keeps interrupting the mind.

[@JacksonGabbard]

There's a link to a no-music version in the description.

[@SohailSiadat]

+Jackson Gabbard Thank you. Sorry, I saw it later.

[@SohailSiadat]

+Sohail Siadat Really useful video for me.

[@zdravkodonev4661]

The background music is actually helping me to concentrate on his words. Maybe it's a matter of taste. :)

[@abrarisme]

Danm I thought that was just me and I didn't wanna post a negative comment about it. But yes. So much good information. Such bad distracting music.

[@rakeshroy4338]

Motivating to say the least: "If you get rejected it means you were at least at the front door of that place. Just keep going." After getting rejected at 3 out of top 4 tech companies, feeling devastated. Thanks for this nice video.

[@AnkitKumar-rt4it]

Thank you Jack for the awesome video. I would say that this is one hell of video that mentions a lot of quality content about the interviews, architecture design and how to prepare them. Some best things discussed in the video were : 1) The person had 8 years of experience and still he was low on architecture design. May be you are not pushing yourself harder. 2) We all might not be working in the company that works on scaling the application. But we can still know what the company is doing by reading their engineering blogs. 3) You must be driving the interview and not the interviewer should be pushing every time. I was not pushing myself harder and it's better that I start pushing myself harder and start reading the blogs of big tech companies.

[@kenx8833]

Watched this a couple years ago when I switched jobs and marked it "Good" and now stumbled upon it again. Still feel that the content is awesome. Great technical details, good suggestions of strategies / approaches, and the explanations on the mindset one should have going into these interviews / prepping for these interviews are absolutely on point as well. Respect for putting out such good content,

[@jackson-gabbard]

That really means a lot. Thanks for sharing this. You made my day.

[@nagu1080]

Such a candid and down to earth video. I was not at all disturbed by background music. His voice was crystal clear

[@lokesh2608]

This is just an awesome video! It really resonates with what I tell potential candidates and friends who ask me about how to tackle a design interview. Stuff that I liked about the video: 1. Why a design interview is conducted 2. What is the interviewer looking for 3. Whats the worst thing a candidate can do. 4. Breaking apart an example problem -> mentioning the caveats that you were pulling numbers out of thin air (sorta) 5. How to get good at this (not just for the purposes of passing an interview) So pretty much the entire 50 mins. Please continue to post!

[@mustang6x]

This is literally the best thing what I've ever seen on youtube regarding the Architecutre Interviews. Thank you for sharing this!

[@liutongchen568]

Thanks a lot for your awesome video! As a self-taught engineer trying to land a job in big tech company, I find your speech really inspiring!!

[@dreabombea8057]

I wish you were still making videos. These have honestly been the most helpful and realistic explanations I have found to date. Well done. I'd love to see more about when you are working to actually level up your career. For example: devops (probably using AWS as an example since that seems to be what most use), a datawarehouse video on scalability, maybe even a video on choosing architectures themselves?

[@ElGalloUltimo]

I have watched and read almost every major video and written source on system design and this is by far the best I've seen. What you do better than the others is address the meta issues around the fact that you are making estimations and might not know everything but that the point is to keep going and keep exploring even though you don't know everything.

[@liuminghao2919]

This is the true definitive guide to system design interviews. Very informative and really helpful. I wish I saw this much earlier in the process.

[@zerosandones701]

Great advice, great outlook, and great positivity. The only comment I would make is for the engineer with 8 years of experience -- I'm also self taught, and have been a SWE for 4 years: the first 2 of that was barely trying to stay afloat, and the last 2 were finally building cool things. Still not that good at architecture, but sometimes number of years alone don't tell the whole story

[@Redspecialist300]

Thanks Jackson, I'm an incoming graduate looking at entry level positions with very limited industry experience, and I find your videos really helpful and lighthearted. Thank you very much for taking the time to make these!

[@adamzerner5208]

That transition to the squeeky voice was brilliant. It made my day.

[@kunal_tanti]

One of the best take away "If you are going through hell, keep going."

[@itsmewaqar]

Thank you Jackson for this amazing video. Being a noob at system design, this video really helped me to boost my confidence to drive the interview rather than being driven.

[@alexsalo]

That actually sounds like an interview that reflects a realistic day to day work :)

[@cyphen21]

Most insightful systems design tutorial yet.

[@TheRealMartin]

Great video, but this background music really is too loud.

[@at_tap]

Great video, it was so interesting that after a while I stopped noticing the background music which was little distracting in the beginning. Thanks for such inflammatory film

[@mtrajano973]

I was able to understand you properly but decided to read the comments halfway through and saw a bunch of people complaining about the background music and then couldn't watch it anymore haha

[@gymothybumpkins]

I have an interview tomorrow (which I have a hunch will be on system design), and I gotta say you really helped out my confidence. Thanks. Fingers crossed for tomorrow 🤞🤞

[@99progers]

success?))

[@rajasubasubramanian9365]

Jackson Gabbard, Incredibly amazing content. When I just started this video i thought you would be giving some generic tips and tricks to crack the interview - but you went in breadth and depth at some places and covered end to end. It gives a clear picture of what happens in a system design interview. At the end summarizing, with haystack story and how to build or interact with the community who builds architecture that impacts large scale is simply superb. Thanks a lot for such wonderful content :)

[@VigneshDhakshinamoorthy]

Please repost without the background noise a.k.a (music) ..this is a gold mine :)

[@RaymondChenon]

Excellent, I watched till the end. Amazon is flying me for an on-site interview in 3 days ( 8 dec ). I'm a mobile developer . I failed at a similar company on the scalability interview but aced the coding. Your video helped to get the right attitude. I'm talking with the SREs and they are happy to share how they solved the black Friday issue. I will post how it went.

[@manoharkotapati9254]

Hi Raymond, If you don't mind, Can you please share your interview experience?

[@scabbage]

Great video about general system design process. The concurrent connection analysis could go into some details on how you get concurrent users from throughput (68K user per sec). If every user stays for 1 sec and leaves, sure. You would have 68K concurrent users at any given point of time. But if visitors stay for 10 seconds on avg, then you would probably need to accommodate 680K concurrent connections (68K/sec * 10 secs) in total.

[@vishalmishra7018]

Thanks I was confused about this.

[@48956l]

This is a fantastic video that inspired and also terrified me. I'm going to be as animated and hungry for knowledge as I can be in this interview.

[@WOOOWOOO2326]

Conclusion: 1. There is no correct answer for architecture qs. 2. Performance at system design decides the final ROLE and OFFER 3. Your solution should be BROAD and DETAIL. 4. Practice by solving and thinking about real-life system that we use. 5. Find out the challenges in a given design question. 6. Breakdown the problem into smaller chunks(back of the envelope, capacity estimations etc) 7. Think about implementation details in client/server-side, different devices etc. 8. Don't let FAILURE stop you. 9. Read about tech talks and articles provided by other tech companies.

[@MrSoloboii]

In contrast to what everyone else is saying about the background music, I thought it made the entire talk easier to listen to than without

[@JDiculous1]

Can't thank you enough for making this, found it extremely helpful. Shame you stopped making videos!

[@TheDborgir]

Your video made me understand that I am never going to make it into a top-tier software company.

[@krutomjer]

Not with that attitude

[@capcapTap]

I was already watching this at 1:25X and you went flash at 32:00

[@alanrice9935]

thanks for sharing. architecture is way less discussed since it's more open ended but imo shows a developer's experience much more. the bass line of the background track is also very funky

[@gluxoff]

Remove music please!!!

[@slippinchillin]

I can’t agree enough on this!

[@AkshayPsCET]

Watching 28:30 in 2021 from a small town in India on my 300Mbps JioFiber connection which only costs $20 a month :D phew.. time flies.

[@jackson-gabbard]

Haha! Indeed -- that part of the video definitely did not age well. 🤦🏻‍♂️

[@radkan1440]

I liked the saying "If you are going through hell, keep going!" Although I don't agree to a few things like even if in your current job, you didn't get exposure to architecture etc. but there are so many courses out there and people do really well after taking those courses so then it's not really about your experience because it's something you can learn and ace the interviews. There are blogs of people who did exactly that and after failing initial interview took the courses like grokking the system design, etc and then were hired eventually

[@jamess5330]

Very helpful! Study vidoes like this and then practice at Meetapro with mock interviews will help you land multiple offers.

[@opkarthik]

I was going to add a comment about the background music, but then i see a bunch of those already here. No more music please and thank you!

[@harsandeep]

one of the best videos on system design interview

[@chrisbell8207]

Loved the video, you've earned my subscription. Super helpful as someone getting ready to leave their first job. MOAR!

[@CODcanbefornoobs]

eyy you're still with us! please don't leave.

[@MrW3iss]

Laf. Had me there for a minute with the pitch correction. Was thinking "wtf is wrong with this guys balls" 😂 Thanks for the videos, man!

[@getmeon4]

Thank You! Great piece of advice. I urge you to continue doing this. And that you walked through a problem and ways to approach it in a real world-> that was the most useful part!

[@ligeialovelace]

This was very helpful, thanks. Although it's a very depressing message that people stuck in crappy jobs after school will be unlikely to ever get a chance to join the "A-list" companies.

[@r4riaz]

OMG, what an awesome video. I wished I watched it long time ago. There is so much to learn. This must be shared again and again. @Jackson you are so awesome in explaining things. Thank you so much.

[@Yan-rv8mi]

Update: please disregard my following comment. I just saw you mentioning level 5 (at Facebook) is a "comfortable" level to stick with. It kind of shocks me when the Facebook director refuses to hire that 8-year experienced person. I was expecting that he would still get hired, but just be offered a lower level of job since he's architecture skill is at that level. I don't know if it's just Facebook or a norm in FANG companies that would harshly expect a person to grow to a certain technical level in a certain amount of time (years). I am under the impression that there's a sweet sport in these large companies. For example, in my company (a well-known Bay Area tech company), it only expects the engineers to progress in a certain timeline for the first to IC levels. But when an engineer reaches level 3, it's at their own discretion whether they want to push themselves forward to the next level (level 4 is probably tech lead kink of role). I am thinking after level 3 (some company would have a different threshold), the company would hire people based on their skills which corresponds to how much value of work they can deliver, regardless of how fast they have been progressing in their career.

[@amirziarati7693]

that was awesome jackson. happy I found this piece of valuable video. nothing helped me more than this to know what a intrviewer wants me in a system design interview.

[@mannepalliutube]

Too good and you are a great communicator of your ideas. Just loved it.

[@senthilandavanp]

Thanks for sharing the knowledge with us.I think i need to watch twice to understand

[@Leersam]

Thanks Jackson, great video! However, the music was as loud as your voice and it made me drift away from what you were saying at times. Maybe lower the musci volume next time? Best of luck in the future!

[@jackson-gabbard]

If you look in the description, there's a link to a version of the video with no music.

[@SohailSiadat]

+Jackson Gabbard thanks

[@bohuang2]

Awesome. That's what I need:)

[@xiangni3923]

I am going to interview with facebook. The system design interview advices you gave are very helpful! Thank you vm for the fantastic video!

[@kevinyang9094]

Amazing Video! Thanks Jackson. Gonna interview at FB next week, wish me good luck. : )

[@sandipanhaldar8609]

"If you are going through hell, keep going. That's a lot like architecture interview" - Nice

[@megichejanovsky3967]

It took me whole two minutes to see you implemented a recursion into your video. hilarious!

[@math23ab]

This is probably the most impactful video I've ever seen about interviews and tech

Super good tips and mindset for approaching such interviews. Thanks!

[@zhidazhang4018]

I really love your intuitive way of explaining stuff! Thanks very much!!

[@ANJANI4986]

Nice video. I made the playback speed as 2X as I usually do to understand any videos and it was such an amazing rap with music.

[@avinashkharbanda957]

At 31:50 talking about PII & GDPR was awesome ;)

[@vincentbabo]

What's with that speedup section? I kept messing with my video speed setting thinking there was a bug on youtube.

[@boot-strapper]

I have an interview at Facebook on Monday. I'm terrified.

[@andriirubtsov5404]

How was it?

[@supremepancakes4388]

same

[@tungtop]

you passed?

[@user-nu2zq7rv8x]

DItto the music comments, turn music off or lower it quite a bit. Thanks for taking the time to put this together.

[@bluberrryhill]

I like you. Please make more videos. I also really liked your behavioral interview video. I'll definitely be using your advice, and recommend you to tech friends who are interviewing. Thank you so much!

[@markganus1085]

background music sounds like battletoads

[@brianblackie9434]

Such a good talk.. cheers. I have an interview tomorrow so this has helped.

[@akhashr]

Background music is annoying. Takes away the shine of your discussion.

[@hechen236]

The cup moves at 6:47. Magic happened!

[@dmitrybekker1194]

Hey, Jackson, it was a great video! Why did you stop do more like this?

[@hesamkalhor3263]

Hi, just a quick tip from the audience perspective: the music is a bit loud, and I have problems hearing you clearly. I don't know if anyone else experienced it, but I think it could be 75% to 50% lower.

[@iamdedlok]

Hi Jack, Good morning and hello from Sydney! This video was amazing and hugely inspirational for me. Nicely done !! Subscribed and looking forward to more amazing videos from you!

[@bkboggy]

Man... was hoping for a good video, but I can't focus on what you're saying because of the music. EDIT: Just saw the link to the video with no music in the description -- thank you! It's a very good video.

[@joaosallaberry]

If you have 245M users in a peak hour and you say you have 68k users per second you're assuming that each user is connected for 1 second, right?

[@ageenppz]

This is awesome, man. I'm totally into it and didn't notice the music at all. :)

[@asbearful]

Hey Jackson, this is the best tip video for the system design interview. Really appreciate it. Would it be even nicer to have the background off 😊 - oh I found your comment about no-music version!

[@omarflores4234]

that is some solid advice right there. You’ve gained a new subscriber :)

[@beetroot99]

I have a systems design interview for my first software engineering internship... Wish me luck. Ill try my best!

[@dineshkosaraju]

Thanks Jackson for valuable suggestions through your episodes.

[@staypositiveru]

Jackson, thank you for such an amazing video advice. It's super motivating.

[@yunlianghuang4629]

Thanks Jackson, it is a great video! Could you try to share some video about how to approach a detail system design question with drawing something, from frontend to backend, distribution system etc?

[@HaloSmyth]

for the question about how much data is acceptable to use? should we think about if it's appropriate to use mobile data at all? Why can't the phone store the data on the phone and upload it only when the phone is connected to wifi? Yes, there are some people who we may never get data from in that model but how many people is that? Is the loss of collecting that data worth the trade-off for a better user experience where we aren't using our users' expensive mobile data?

[@kunalpareek8321]

Excellent advice. I have 8 years of exp as a dev. But only worked at startups. Have a lot of wide experience, but nothing deep. Sys design has been the 1 HUGE stumbling block to cracking a big company now. Since they all consider me for Principal Roles which I downgrade to Senior Roles but the expectations are super high for Sys Design and they are all crashing. I have done the thing that was talked about at the end. I have avoided the whole hard interview my entire career. This time I decided to challenge myself. Not going to hit the Uber/Atlassians of the world. But I hope to end up somewhere nice soon. Been 8 months though. Its getting hard to stay motivated.

[@poosanth]

Great content thank you! Wish there was a way to remove the music track.

[@koeber99]

Great and useful video. Please keep them coming .....However, the background music should be played at a lower volume !!

[@NathanMartins]

Man, this video is so motivating. Big thumbs up

[@lynxArul]

Amazing video! Learnt a lot. I liked the background music it didn't bother me too much. Please do keep up these videos coming in. I just wish you had more videos love it!

[@bharattejwani4993]

Hey Jackson, it was an awesome video to watch and learn something new. I would like to request you to make some videos on real scenarios of system design, which may include the basic requirements that an entry level graduate should know at least. Thanks

[@fireystella]

Really enjoy the way you talk. So COHERENT! 🤑🤑

[@matthcw8745]

Really, really good insights, thanks Jackson!

[@daleprather3026]

Very motivating. Love your videos. You're great at this. Why'd you stop?

[@robertdalin]

This is phenomenal, thanks for making this video

[@abhishekjain5354]

This is a great video and I am seeing this in 2020. Why have you stopped?

[@ningoo]

Thanks, very helpful video! I really like the logging service example in the video, very thought-invoking

[@Wes-Tyler]

"Companies like Facebook don't give system design interviews to new graduates" BOY is that wrong! I'm doing one tomorrow :'D

[@manishkankani]

Best 49 mins spent today.

[@GuruPrasanna]

Does a system design interview of this sort - which is really super-focused on backend design - really make sense to hire a front-end / client dev?

[@flixbuf2850]

Heck, you nailed it dude! What killer video it is... Great enlightenment... Keep rocking! Another fan in your funnel :)

[@yerbolatyeskaliyev7341]

duude... inspiring, funny and veeeery useful... even with background music!

[@johnw9722]

Background music is KILLING me