mediumDesignMidSeniorStaff
How do you spend the first ten minutes of a system design round?
5 min readUpdated 2026-08-15
Answer
Short answer
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.
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Likely follow-ups
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