[Book Reviews] System Design Interview — An Insider’s Guide [Volume 1 & Volume 2]

Hello everyone, this blog is related to two popular system design interview preparation books. I have bought and read both of them so I can point to the overview and summarize for someone who is interested. Even though I recommend reading both of them. (Very superhuman to memorize all of them but also fine if you can catch the concepts such as “Back to Envelope” or “Concurrency”)

First of all, System Design Interviews tend to be common in technical interviews nowadays even if you’re just joined the industry only for 2–3 years. The industry always needs someone who can implement the system in digitize as a coding contribution including someone who brings impact and value to the company in high-level solution design somehow.

The below information, there is my perspective and gives my own opinions. They might disturb you but I need to give direct information and my feeling combined.

I don’t want to bother your reading time and also want to give you just an overview of the books in a short time frame. Let’s jump into it.

SYSTEM DESIGN INTERVIEW

• Provided you the basics about numbers you need to know or can assume.
• Provided the overall real-world scaling system thinking as in the early chapter of the book.
• Give you the approach guideline and behavior when you want to minimize the scope when you jump to system design interviews.
• There are some parts that didn’t deep dive into too much in detail. But I understand they design for those who just started preparing the system design interviews.
• Even if you knew how to solve some of the problems, they will show you more opportunities to apply some alternative solutions in your design.
• Examples of design I have loved => Rate-Limiting, Consistent Hashing, Notification Systems, Design Youtube

SYSTEM DESIGN INTERVIEW — VOLUME 2

• More advanced in the context of solutions architect design.
• Also, miss the introduction on how to make the progress in scaling the system introductions but you can catch the pattern after you read some chapters.
• Give you more assumption guidelines for someone who needs to estimate the bandwidth and capacity faster.
• They picked the common problems that you might be facing in day-to-day as a software engineer instead of popular questions, but because they are the problems you will solve in the real world, so they will more popular soon.
• Focusing in detail on technical implementations, specify the topics you want to focus on but not specific technologies you will use, there might be some of them which need to use the specific technologies also but they are fewer.
• What is the origin of the technologies?
  What about history, how did we solve them in past?
  Why were they born?
  What kind of problems are these technologies going to solve?
  Why do we need them in the design?
  The BEST part and unique one for this book. ❤️
• Examples of design I have loved => Distribute Message Queue, Hotel Reservation, Payment System, Digital Wallet

What’s the difference between both of them?

Before we go through the difference, the common one is they helped me a lot in the interview preparation including out of preparation time. They guided me on where I needed to research and reference more for the topics. They just preparing you to become a better software engineer either. Then let’s get to different points.

• Blue cover, I can call it “It’s just a start of the game” for the ratings, I give it a 4/5 rating. Why do I give it 4? From my perspective and I already provided the reason in one bullet point, “There are some parts that didn’t deep dive into too much in detail” some of those you didn’t get the clear information why I need to use them in the design, and I still need to explore more for support the decisions. By the way, I still recommend reading it.
• The green cover is an upgraded version after getting feedback and seeing the points to improve from 1st volume, so the 2nd volume has been released with great quality of content. Thicker and also provided a better guide to ask the interviewers. By the way, the series of books has worked as continuous sections so some parts you can find it only in 1st volume. That means if you didn’t read the 1st volume, you might miss some concepts but you can search for them on the internet actually. Overall I give it a 5/5 rating. Maybe you are just overpreparing for mid-level but who knows? You can not control the output at all. Last but not least, in my opinion, this book might prepare you for more than senior level, I can feel it after reading all of them. (Honestly, for more than half of the concepts in this book I need to search more on the internet to explore more, that’s being said, completely destroys me 🤣)

System Design Interviews don’t have right or wrong in design, but you need to discuss why you provided these technologies in your solution design. All of them are communications between you and the interviewers.

If you are just shown the awkward moment, Red flag 🚩.

If you didn’t make minimize the scope of design, Might be a Red flag 🚩.

If you didn’t prepare and bring only your experiences, you just bombed yourself. 🤯 💣 💥

Moreover

You can find the video format content by reaching to ByteByteGo channel, maybe some of you are comfortable with visual learning.

ByteByteGo

Example

That’s it, hope you enjoy it so far. See you in the next review book blogs.

You can reach me at the below links.

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