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How to Prepare for Success

Get an overview of interview preparation guidelines and materials.

We'll cover the following

  • This course
  • Technical blogs
  • Ask why a system works
  • The right direction
  • Mock interviews

Substantial preparation is necessary to increase our odds of getting the job we apply for.

Depending on seniority and proficiency, candidates need different preparation timelines.
For an average candidate, three to four months might be required to prepare for a system design interview.

This course

This course helps learners build or refresh their system design skills.
We’ve curated both traditional and fresh design problems to cover meaningful depth and breadth.

The following activities can accelerate your preparation and strengthen your understanding.

Technical blogs

Many companies regularly publish technical deep dives about their engineering work.

Why are companies eager to share such technical details?

The reason for such sharing is to excite the technical community about the fact that the company is solving hard problems. They also hope to motivate more people to join their company.

Such blogs can:

  • Showcase engineering excellence
  • Advertise products to B2B customers
  • Train future potential employees

Note: Companies must balance competitive secrecy with what can be shared publicly.

Studying these blogs helps us understand:

  • Real challenges companies face
  • How designs evolve in response to failures or bottlenecks
  • What modern engineering best practices look like

Staying informed is important for working professionals and even more important for applicants.

Notable engineering blogs

  • Engineering at Meta
  • Meta Research
  • AWS Architecture Blog
  • Amazon Science Blog
  • Netflix TechBlog
  • Google Research
  • Engineering at Quora
  • Uber Engineering Blog
  • Databricks Blog
  • Pinterest Engineering
  • BlackRock Engineering
  • Lyft Engineering
  • Salesforce Engineering

Note: Treat non–peer-reviewed content critically. If something doesn’t make sense, discuss it with peers—this strengthens your technical reasoning.

Ask why a system works

Great candidates ask the right questions and learn to reason through ambiguity.

Ways to build this intuition:

  • Study high-level architectures of popular apps (Instagram, Twitter, etc.)
  • Ask why one component is preferred over another (e.g., Firebase vs SQL)
  • Build meaningful side projects
  • Start small, then refine and iterate
  • Build systems from scratch to understand all layers
  • Clone a popular application without tutorials

The right direction

System design deals with high-level architecture, not implementation details.

Focus on trade-offs—not mechanics.

For example:

  • Not helpful: debating Room Library vs raw SQLite
  • Helpful: comparing MySQL vs MongoDB and discussing trade-offs

Start at a high level; the low-level details will naturally emerge.

Mock interviews

Mock interviews are one of the best ways to prepare.
You can:

  • Pair with a friend to simulate interviewer/interviewee roles
  • Record yourself and critique your performance
  • Ask a knowledgeable friend for feedback

Note: No mock interview fully mimics a real interview.
Taking real interviews at companies helps you calibrate your strengths and weaknesses.