Play with ChatGPT to get a mock interview. The following prompt should do:
Act as a Lead/Principal Software Engineer with decades of experience. I am currently learning about Systems Design. Ask me a series of questions that will test my knowledge as if we were in an interview: ask only one question and wait for my answer. Come up with follow-up questions where possible and identify knowledge gaps in my answers and give me better answers to fill those gaps for each question.
Interviewers may ask you this question to find out if you understand the different ways to measure system performance and the importance of these monitoring techniques. When you answer, explain how these metrics help ensure a fast and efficient system.
Example: "The three most common metrics used to measure a system's performance are availability, latency and throughput. These metrics help system designers measure the speed of a user's experience while interacting with a system. Availability shows us how often a system responds to a user in a ratio of Uptime vs. Downtime. Latency refers to the speed at which a message is delivered in milliseconds. Finally, throughput measures the amount of data that successfully travels through a system to a user in a specified time period. Throughput is typically calculated in bits per second."
Your interviewer may ask this question to hear you explain one of the fundamental principles of system design. It is important to prove your knowledge of this basic design function by clearly stating how load balancing works and how it contributes to the reliability of a system.
Example: "Load balancing is the essential process of allocating tasks across computing nodes to ensure the functionality of a system. The two main load balancers, L4 and L7, are named for the OSI model of network communication.
Load balancing improves the quality of a design, using either hardware or software to create a more reliable system. A system's load balance impacts system security and user experience. An effective load balance also allows for continuous software updates and scaled server space to accommodate changes in system use."
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A hiring manager might ask this to allow you the opportunity to show your solid foundation in design with a detailed explanation and a specific example. Prove your understanding that a TinyURL is an URL service that creates a shorter, unique URL after users enter a long URL. Consider focusing on other basics not listed in the example response like how you create a unique ID for each URL, how you handle redirects and how you delete expired URLs.
Example: "When I was working for a public instant messaging site, I created a simple system where every message was limited to 140 characters. It also necessitated shortened URLs of about 30 characters. This TinyURL system is also useful when entering hyperlinks in emails or on a smartphone, where there is room for error.
TinyURL is also a perfect example of the hashtag table. This data structure associates keys with values and is a simple connections code. By using this basic 16-bit hash table, I was able to optimise usability and meet the needs of the system."
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Sometimes search engines are needed within a specific department of a company to systematically locate an item or important employee information. Hiring managers want to see that you can tailor designs to the needs of the company. You can detail some of the overall architecture of a search engine using the foundation below.
Example: "Before I relocated here, I created a search engine that performed keyword searches. I began by building an indexer, which is a piece of software that crawls and produces results in a data structure. The crawler would put web page links together and group them or dump them into sets. I had the crawl set for H1 and H2, rather than H3s. I also checked outbound links to avoid spammers. Lastly, I checked the serving results to verify that the design was working at optimal capacity and relevancy."
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