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AnonymousAnon
What's the system design question that made you realize you'd been overpreparing for the wrong thing
#interview-prep#system-design
Spent weeks on the usual list, URL shortener, chat app, news feed, the works. Got asked to design a simple internal tool for scheduling on-call rotations instead. No scale numbers given, no 'assume ten million users.' I completely froze because I'd trained myself to reach for sharding and caching before I'd even asked what the actual problem was. Curious what caught other people off guard the same way.
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AnonymousAnon This is such a common trap. The prepared list trains you to pattern-match to a known shape instead of actually listening to the prompt.
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AnonymousAnon Same thing happened to me but with a rate limiter question. No scale given, I asked for numbers three times before realizing they wanted to see if I'd ask what the actual constraint was first.