Google Systems Design Interview With An Ex-Googler

[clem]

I hope you all find this mock systems design interview insightful! And if you're in the business of acing your systems design interviews (who isn't? 😎), be sure to check out www.systemsexpert.io where we have more questions like this one as well as a full course on all of the fundamental systems design topics that you need to understand to tackle these types of interviews.

[charliel.]

I'd like to hear the feedback from the interviewer, I think that's the important part on distinguishing what went well and what didn't

[khoavo]

"Ex-Googler" means that you now use Bing or what? /s

[jlove]

I used to have zero understanding of the importance of clarifying requirements and used to ask typical dimension clarifying question without knowing how that could actually help me solving the problem at hand. You really showed how you could incorporate the information you gained by asking clarifying questions through this mock interview - appreciate it

[lasophistique]

What I loved most is, it actually went on like a real interview, where candidate doesn't know all the answers, and kept building on the assumptions, kept extending the designs. Thank you for making it look realistic!

[nishantt]

wow...simply is like a real world experience for the system design interviews
most of the videos on youtube are just about explaining the system design about some popular applications like messenger, tinyurl, dropbox etc...
all of them have one thing in common....all of them explain the design very well in only one aspect....they are all well structured, there are no hiccups, there is not much thinking to design the system without any flaws...why? because they know the design and there is no interviewer who is asking for in depth details or looking for more clarifying answers...they just explain the system in only one direction


This is totally different and the one which we actually need.


This is by far the best for multiple reasons
1. It shows how a real world interview looks like with all the white boarding sessions
2. the question given by the interviewer is very abstract....the interviewee may know the design in one particular aspect, but the interviewer is looking for some different aspect and asking more in depth details at every stage
3. the interviewee actually asks a series of questions at the start and also keep asking different questions time to time
4. at times the interviewer stops the interviewee because he missed explaining few details and missed details about fault tolerance and keeps asking for more in depth details about how the interviewee is approaching his design
5. its more of a collaborative brainstorming which actually happens in real world
6. it also showed how the interviewee picked some technologies like SQL, GCS, KVS etc and validated it with his explanation, getting approval of the interviewer and proceeding to the next stage at every point in the interview.


Totally worth watching the whole you Clement and kudos for creating such a valuable content
hope to see more such videos

[zss]

This is VERY helpful. This is literally better than any video that just tells you general tips that are hard to follow in an interview setting.

[crankerson]

The SQL transaction would ensure that all of the SQL statements would run together or not at all (rollback), but it doesn't ensure atomicity. In this design, to prevent multiple workers from running the same job concurrently, wouldn't you need to specify the isolation level on the transaction in order to prevent a non-repeatable read? Example: worker 1 selects the oldest "queued" job. worker 2 selects the oldest "queued" job. worker 1 updates the job status to "running".

[animalrocket]

This was really good. I often paused the video to offer my 2 cents and thought out loud. Really liked the collaboration between Clement and the interviewer. Also, one subtle thing is Clement’s frightlessness in asking even the most simple questions and repeating things in his own words. This is what allowed him to really build and understanding of the problem, as the interviewer’s words may not click the first time and they are meant to be ambiguous so it fosters clarifying questions.

His interviewing skills really showed off here. So much to learn!

[charan]

Every time clement was the interviewer but now for a change clement is the interviewee.

[l_karuhanga]

No one:


Clément: Thinking back to my experience with code deployment systems.

[kkkarki]

Clement, I really like the way how questioned to dissect every aspect of the question, to collect as much as information which is a super motivating tool for all developers.

[ShubhamSingh-kuow]

Such an AMAZING video Clement. Before this video, I went through few others but this one literally beated them all. The quality of the questions asked and the way you responded gave a Google feel. Thanks ALOT for bringing such high quality content. Absolutely terrific.

[aritraroy]

Your help and free content is appreciated, and I am rooting for the success your entire business. There is nothing brighter than an honest and smart effort. Keep shining.

[AmrMostafaY]

I loved this. Thanks so much for taking the time to put this high quality video! I've a small comment that I can't get out of my head: The SQL transaction that workers use to grab jobs seem to have a race condition that might make 2 or more workers grab the same job. I don't think ACID here protects from that. Locking needs to be done somehow to prevent that, and the first option I'd explore, as it's the simplest, is to change the SELECT to SELECT FOR UPDATE, assuming the underlying SQL engine supports it which is guaranteed to lock the resulting row for a single worker until it had a chance to perform the update on the status. If SELECT FOR UPDATE is not supported, we can explore other options such as manual row-level or table-level locking.

Great stuff, thanks again!

[akkshayganesh]

Brilliant setup. Great cross questioning and really makes the viewer think. Good going Clement!

[guiyuxu]

Going for multiple onsite interview all with system design interview, this is the most helpful material I have seen so far

[ramkrishnakulkarni]

Clement you nailed it man. Fabulously awesome content. I’ve learned a lot from this. Please make more videos like this. 👏👏👏

[ashrafkotbofficial]

This is really beneficial, thank you for taking the time to go through a full mock interview.

[AshutoshAnandashu]

This was so good. Thank you @Clement for giving us an insight on what goes on in a real system design interview. Kudos to the interviewer as well. He asked brilliant questions and put up some interesting extra questions to make it difficult yet understandable.
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