Episode 06: Intro to Architecture and Systems Design Interviews

In this episode, I walk through the context and goals of a systems design and architecture interview. If you're considering working for a tech company, you'll almost certainly be asked to tackle a high-scale systems design problem. This video explains why companies ask this of you, how to prepare for this interview mentally and emotionally, and what success or failure might look like.
A full write-up of this video is available here: jg.gg/architecture-and-systems...
If the background music bugs you, here's a version with no background music: • Episode 06: (No backgr...
Contents:
The part about money • Episode 06: Intro to A...
Different kinds of interviews • Episode 06: Intro to A...
Coding interviews vs. architecture interviews • Episode 06: Intro to A...
The structure of an architecture interview • Episode 06: Intro to A...
The actual architecture question • Episode 06: Intro to A...
How much this question sucks • Episode 06: Intro to A...
Life isn't fair • Episode 06: Intro to A...
Breaking the problem down • Episode 06: Intro to A...
All the stuff I didn't talk about • Episode 06: Intro to A...
The goal of the interview • Episode 06: Intro to A...
The most important point • Episode 06: Intro to A...
Failing this interview • Episode 06: Intro to A...
Why these skills might get you fired • Episode 06: Intro to A...
Reasons you can succeed • Episode 06: Intro to A...
Advantages you can leverage • Episode 06: Intro to A...
Getting rejected • Episode 06: Intro to A...

[@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!

[@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.

[@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!

[@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!

[@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!

[@nagu1080]

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

[@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.

[@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?

[@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.

[@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 :)

[@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.

[@staypositiveru]

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

[@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

[@chrisbell8207]

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

[@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!!

[@zhidazhang4018]

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

[@adamzerner5208]

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

[@mustang6x]

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

[@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.

[@dineshkosaraju]

Thanks Jackson for valuable suggestions through your episodes.

[@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?))

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@JDiculous1]

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

[@cyphen21]

Most insightful systems design tutorial yet.

[@harsandeep]

one of the best videos on system design interview

[@brianblackie9434]

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

[@alexsalo]

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

[@kunal_tanti]

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

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

[@mannepalliutube]

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

[@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

[@ningoo]

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

[@senthilandavanp]

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

[@kevinyang9094]

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

[@AlbertoCamposR]

Thanks Jackson for uploading this video. It's really helpful!

[@AlissonSiri]

I really enjoy your videos, thank you so much for sharing your experience with us.

[@jhillyt]

Jackson, awesome session! Thank you.

[@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!

[@CODcanbefornoobs]

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

[@NathanMartins]

Man, this video is so motivating. Big thumbs up

[@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!

[@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

[@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!

[@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.

[@yonglongd.4730]

Thanks Jackson. Great video, very helpful.

[@romanshvetsov3275]

great interview! thanks! the last part is the best - just keep going

[@flixbuf2850]

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

[@robertdalin]

This is phenomenal, thanks for making this video

[@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?

[@ageenppz]

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

[@matthcw8745]

Really, really good insights, thanks Jackson!

[@nem035]

Great video! Thanks for all the awesome insights

[@meganlee5897]

love the talk！weirdly I really love the bgm too.

[@connections2190]

Very inspiring, enjoyed every part.

[@DeepakArora1976]

Great intro.... and I really enjoyed listening you!

[@zakharbondia1647]

Wow! Great talk. Much inspiration

[@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.

[@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?

[@seanjcan]

Great video! Have one of these coming up and this helped a lot.

[@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!

[@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

[@math23ab]

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

[@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.

[@fireystella]

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

[@DHRUVNARAYANSINGH]

Great, going to watch every video !

[@yerbolatyeskaliyev7341]

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

[@avinashkharbanda957]

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

[@omarflores4234]

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

[@antilopesalga4342]

Another awesome video, thank you!

[@jamess5330]

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

[@megichejanovsky3967]

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

[@kaushikdas417]

This is gold! All of it.

[@corresponsalyt]

Great video! thanks for this one, was really helpful. Could you do a video for the networking interview?

[@AlexanderOnTube]

Man this is awesome and super useful!

[@TheRealMartin]

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

[@FroL_Onn]

Oh, god! What a nice video! Thanks a lot! Please, keep up!

[@VigneshDhakshinamoorthy]

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

[@HemantKumar-cb2uz]

i really like the videos that you have posted , very well calibrated and presented. Would you be able to post something similar on API design interview as well, appreciated.

[@eclipselu]

Thanks Jackson, got great help from your video.

[@GurdeepSabarwal]

thanks jackson .. amazing video .... keep posting this type of video .. :)

[@GURUYATHI]

You are awesome man..! great video...! Very informative and useful for me...! thank you

[@andrearmstrong3715]

Hey Jack, first of all, great video, I hope you do more of these in the future. I was wondering if you could comment a bit about how Product Design Interviews contrast with System Design Interviews, which is something I know FB also offers for people with more of a full-stack background. It is my understanding that there's a bigger focus on api/components/data structure rather than on scalability and capacity estimation, would you say that sounds correct? Would an interviewer still expect me to calculate bandwidth/throughoutput for these interviews?

[@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!

[@divirathi]

Awesome , highly motivating

[@taotang6557]

Good job, sir!

[@itsjmmariano]

Hi. Thanks for this video. I was wondering, what video recorder gadget you used to record this vid as well as the microphone :)

[@itsjmmariano]

I actually wanted to start my own VA company and want to start podcasting as well. Thanks for your reply! :)

[@rtylerlucas]

You are great. Learned a lot, thank you!

[@adarshsingh1667]

Thanks, Jackson for such a nice video and covering all the point as an interviewer, However how or where to get the good understanding of designing such system when you never got such opportunity or you were in support project all the time during your career?

[@daleprather3026]

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

[@koeber99]

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

[@markoshivapavlovic4976]

Dude your videos are awesome.

[@dmitrybekker1194]

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

[@khaledsaleh4238]

Nice Video , thank you Jackson very much!.

[@greggleventhal5010]

Before these types of interviews, I highly recommend taking a breadth mint®

[@hermesmercuriustrismegistu4841]

Great content. Thank you!

[@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