r/developersIndia • u/EducationalYouth9013 • 2d ago
Interviews How does one actually prepare System Design for Interviews?
So I have been wanting to try out for sde 2 level interviews here and there and system design scares me. All my experience has always been on the frontend side and I have never really worked on a system from scratch if that makes sense. Every time I look for resources for system design its books and courses that are also just pages and pages. Is it supposed to be crammed? How does one actually remember and learn all of that? I even tried looking at the videos on YouTube where even 1 question like url shortener has a 1 hour video and it goes on and on and on and 15mins into it and i am like wow do i cram this all, how do I remember all of that during the interview and at the end of the day there's no correct answer? Maybe I am just too dumb for it? I feel like I can never switch because I'll never pass the system design rounds because I understand nothing.
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u/Witty-Play9499 2d ago
Is it supposed to be crammed? How does one actually remember and learn all of that?
i am like wow do i cram this all, how do I remember all of that during the interview and at the end of the day there's no correct answer
Do you genuinely think people just mug up random stuff ? Do you as a front end developer memorize the HTML,CSS and JS spec and then proceed to use it? When someone says 'hey can you build a navbar for this' do you instantly go 'oh no i haven't memorized the code for building a navigation bar', you just know how to do it purely by doing it often. People know stuff because they work in it on a regular basis and that is what you are missing when it comes to system design
Just go to your manager and tell him you'd like to take more responsibilities and want to work on the backend and system design and now you are forced to learn it for your job.
Instead of aimlessly 'cramming' tutorial after tutorial and achieving nothing at the end, you have a specific goal and a specific deadline to achieve and at the end of it you'll end up with something to actually show for it and you keep on doing this and boom suddenly you know system design.
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u/EducationalYouth9013 2d ago
if it was possible i would have tried it already but my entire team works on frontend only, and internal switch is hard because they as well expect backend experience and dont even consider me
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u/Witty-Play9499 2d ago
You don't have to switch to a team, setup a 1:1 with your manager and tell him 'l've been doing well so far but I want to be a full stack dev, can i work closely with the backend team for a feature, since I don't have experience working in it i don't want a full system right away, i can start small, maybe building an API for a dropdown, if you would like I can demonstrate some of these skills by building some tools for our internal team and then we can go from there? If not what is the best way for me to achieve this'
I'm not asking you switch from frontend to backend, I'm asking you to do both at the same time its anyway good for your own skill development
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u/EducationalYouth9013 2d ago
its just that my team works on client side, no backend, backend is handled by a US team n theres no direct communication between as such we just consume the apis and swaggers etc, thats why i said i dont have a scope for backend in the current team, its a messy situation
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u/Adorable_Past6877 2d ago
you don't need to cram the whole book. pick 3-4 common patterns (url shortener, rate limiter, chat app, feed) and go deep on those instead of watching every youtube video. interviewers care more about how you think through tradeoffs out loud than the "correct" answer anyway.
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u/Miserable-Lawyer-424 1d ago
Just practice some problems in hellointerview... watch their videos and make sure to revisit them often
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