Requirements gathering, capacity estimation, and structuring the first ten minutes of a design round.
5 questions in System Design.
Clarifying questions stop helping at the first one whose answer would not change what you draw. Past that point you are moving risk onto the interviewer, not reducing it. Turn every remaining question into a stated assumption, draw a first diagram, and ask the rest against that diagram.
Spend roughly three minutes agreeing the functional scope, three pinning the numbers that change the architecture, and four turning those numbers into a derived estimate of request rate, storage and bandwidth — then state which design decision each number forces.
Nines only mean something as a downtime budget over a stated window, and dependencies in series multiply: five hard dependencies at three nines each put your own ceiling near 99.4 percent, so the target is met by removing dependencies from the critical path rather than by asking each owner for more nines.
A pragmatic guide to dismantling component teams, breaking database monoliths, and surviving the political fallout of organizational restructuring. Use this engineering leadership answer to show the decision, trade-off, and evidence rather than a memorised definition. It also connects org design to the point an interviewer is testing.
A cynical engineering leader's framework for categorizing technical debt, quantifying business risk, and negotiating with product managers. Use this engineering leadership answer to show the decision, trade-off, and evidence rather than a memorised definition. It also connects tech debt to the point an interviewer is testing.