The data layer and beyond. Link to part 1(web tier) Persistence Layer We can broadly persist data in Databases or file/blob storage. If you are designing an application like Google Drive or have to store images or large files, you would choose a storage solution like Amazon S3, Azure Object Storage, etc. Scaling Database Horizontally …

eBay interview experience highlighted a strange pattern in the Bay Area! eBay is an almost 30-year-old e-commerce juggernaut. Although it lags behind the likes of Amazon and Alibaba by a wide margin, it still remains the 2nd largest e-commerce company in the United States. It is also among the few…

Jerks especially the brilliant ones pose one of the biggest challenges for the Managers and the team! Back in the day, I worked at a global investment bank and it was still the early days of my career. My team had an architect at a very senior level who was…

These 2 startup interviews show how expectations vary widely for EMs! I interviewed for two start-ups recently and observed the sheer contrast in the expectations from the two companies from their Engineering Managers. While I will share the details of the interview process specifically for these two startups, I will…

Decision Tree to help you choose the right one for a System Design interview! We focussed heavily on the persistence layer in part-2 of our System Design Interview crash course. In this article, we will closely look into the approach to choosing the right database Database. We’ll take a step-by-step…

Learn to distinguish between what “you” can do vs your company! In a recent interview, I was asked by the final interviewer to give him feedback on the overall experience. I thought I did well and in the final round spoke relatively freely. After a slight hesitation, I said “During…

No, it is NOT a solution for hotspots in a Distributed System Consistent Hashing is a concept that is often echoed in System Design interviews. In many interviews, I have heard candidates say that they would solve the hotspot problem using consistent hashing. However, Consistent Hashing doesn’t solve this, at…

But not in the manner we thought it would… The recent events after the sudden rise of Large Language Models(LLMs) in the world of AI and Data science have sparked fear and debate about the safety of humans and their jobs. We previously covered this in detail and why we…

How one interviewer spoiled an otherwise decent interviewing experience. I interviewed with DoorDash recently. DoorDash is a Food Order Delivery service primarily operating in North America and headquartered in San Fransico. It’s one of the notable startups in the region which offer good benefits and works heavily on Kotlin which…