System Design (TPM) Mock Interview: Twitter API

Watch our technical program manager (TPM) interview. Stephen asks Jacob (CTO at Exponent) to answer a system design TPM interview question of designing Twitter's API.

Chapters -
0:00 Introduction
0:31 Question
0:51 Clarifying questions
2:33 Answer
4:58 APIs
9:19 Follow-up questions
16:00 Interview analysis

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[rajdeepbanerjee]

We can use API gateway to request throttling, rate limiting. The APIs can be abstracted behind the API gateway which will throttle and route the requests.

[ValeriCFBG]

The interviewer played his role well, that's how interviewers behave usually - kinda reserved, not following exactly the train of thought or direction of the interviewee, asking a lot of follow up questions in the middle of something! This is legit stuff!
Typically on other videos from this channel, the interviewer is either missing or too nice.
I noticed that Jacob was a bit underperforming, compared to the stellar designs in other videos. I think it is mostly because of how the interviewer leads the interview.
Keep that in mind, interviewees! Most of the interviews will be something like that. I usually want to draw some boxes, talk about concrete implementation and it's kinda sad that most interviews have really strong timelines and leave me unfullfilled.

[deathbombs]

10:46 clear explaining. I like how you set up explaination by saying goign heads up on it's prior to request sent( to creating token or obtain token then send it WITH the request).

Great thorough explainations with a clear structure, and specific implementation details on how the authentication works

The simple way to explain would've just been "we use tokens"

[iamworstgamer]

this is good interaction. interviews I attend people keep interupting me when I answer the question

[lasophistique]

Love the idea behind this video, it's very timely. Thank you so much!! Want to see more of it. Also, more in depth discussion would be helpful. Also for the interview, using "tsk" sound often can be distracting.

[amit]

I think, it was good learning but I really missed the database part, which database to use, sharding desing.
Can you please put your thoughts

[sharma]

Make more videos on system design interview... Really appreciate your work 😇😇

[johnsmith]

You don't update entites with POST, you do it with PUT or with PATCH (for partial updates)

[JHker]

14:30 The HTTP Status Code that's returned when you are being rate-limited is 429 - Too Many Requests

[deathbombs]

14:05 was it a good idea to basically justify why interviewer asked about rate limiting? Usually they don't really care about these signals, although you might show them your depth of the topic and friendliness, but aren't you wasting time potentially when they just care about the solution to the problem given?

[riteshpatel]

Hey, Thank you for doing this. Very concise and systematic approach. Very seamless flow of discussion. Do you have a video that goes into depth that you referred in the end. I would like to learn about approach or details on the architecture and implementation side. Especially how much details are expected and how to balance between keeping it abstract enough while covering important part for that section.

[Justinbiebereva]

How long is it appropriate to spend writing the api/brainstorming?

[golammuhaimeen]

really great video guys! super helpful, concise and informative. Loved it

[praveensg]

Please do a deep dive of api authentication.

[avinashtomar]

This was a great interview. Can you please post Uber/Lfyt API design next time.

[DiklahC]

Great video! Is this relevant also for Product Manager interviews?

[italia]

what software has been used for the whiteboard ?

[relishxylitol]

In a system design interview, when It comes to designing an API, is the interviewer expecting API endpoint design which was shown in the video?

[barakhazan]

Hi :-)
The question is also characterized for technical product manager interviews?

[AlikElzin]

Thanks for the video!
What about some text board like whiteboard?
Do system design interviews on vchat have some text board?