Hacking the System Design Interview: Real Big Tech Interview Questions and In-depth Solutions

by Stanley Chiang

#1 Book Pick for System Design Interviews by Five Books in 2022. Get the inside edge for your system design interview. Written by a software engineer at Google, this book will teach you how to ace the system design interview. This book includes real interview questions based on hundreds of interviews conducted at big tech companies, and their detailed solutions. Learn software and system fundamentals in clear and engaging lessons, distilled from 15+ years of experience. In this book, you will
Based on hundreds of interviews, Hacking the System Design Interview is the definitive guide to learning about systems and building a comprehensive foundation for your interview. It provides an insider view of the big tech interview process, and provides proven techniques that will help you succeed in your interview. Hacking the System Design Interview will prepare you for success in your next tech interview. Get the book today, and get your dream job tomorrow. Walk through designs of recurring components that are the building blocks of
Learn a systematic approach to tackling any system design question by studying step-by-step solutions to real system design interview questions,

Genres: Software, Technical

252 pages, Paperback

Published July 22, 2022

Reviews

[Walter Ullon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let me preface this review by admitting that:
1. I am not a seasoned Systems Designer/Developer
2. I am not prepping for system design interviews

My primary purpose for reading this book is to familiarize myself with the basics and core principles of System Design, and get some exposure to some of the different problems one might run into and their prototypical technical solutions.

My background is in Math and Data Science, and these days my role is more along the lines of a technical Product Manager / Solutions Engineer. As such, I work very closely with very talented engineers that speak the author's technical language fluently. As one might expect, becoming more familiar with design principles allows me to better understand their concerns, participate more meaningfully in the more technical discussions, and propose solutions and feature specs that incorporate System Design considerations.

It is a great resource if you need to get up-to-speed with core components and principles such as: caching, sharding, load balancing, replication, rate limiting, cohesion, fault tolerance, queues, DBs, and so much more.

Highly recommended!

[Bugzmanov · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok. this one is slightly better than "The System Design Interview" by Lewis C. Lin, Shivam P. Patel, but still far from being good.
As usual with this genre it consists of two parts: theoretical intro, practical examples. The problem with theoretical intro is that it is too shallow. If you know this stuff, you wouldn't learn anything new, if you don't know it this is a very bad book to read about it.
The practical part is slightly better. First the examples are indeed pretty common design interview questions: design twitter, design google search, design url shortner. Been there, done that. The main problem with this part is that the solutions to the problems are very hand-wavy. If you just give the solution from a book during a real interview most likely you wouldn't pass. The authors come up with descent and common template on how to give an answer:
1) clarify requirements
2) define data model
3) make some estimates
4) create high level design
5) design components in detail.
6) main interfaces & protocols

And the failure of the book is that point 5 for most of Design Questions is very short and paradoxically lack details. And I would argue that this is the meat of any challenge that would be given on a real interview. This is where THE solution to a challenge lives. The interviewer can't be sure that you know how to solve it unless you've provided the mapping of a data model to a real database, unless you've described your main data structures, unless you've showed the main flows in your system.

Points 1-2-3 and even 4 are usually pretty generic. Yes, there will be different numbers and slightly different boxes-and-arrows for high level, but from challenge to challenge these parts it's pretty much the same. And that's what makes the second part of the book boring and repetitive. After you've read Design Question 1 and 2 there is no need to read the rest of them, you wouldn't learn anything new.

[Olga · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend Hacking the System Design Interview to anyone looking to build a strong understanding of distributed systems foundations and apply that knowledge effectively in system design interviews.
In a typical system design interview, you’re presented with a problem and expected to design a solution using the key components of distributed systems. The real challenge is identifying which components match the system requirements and integrating them into a coherent system architecture.
This book does an excellent job of explaining each major component and challenges of distributed systems, illustrating them with real system examples created by Big Tech companies like Google, Amazon, and others. It also provides a clear, step-by-step framework for selecting the right components and approaches, enabling you to design simple, effective solutions for complex problems.

[Ali Fatolahi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book offers a valuable recap of the fundamentals of software system design especially if the reader is only reading it to refresh their memory. It also has a very good collection of sample interview questions. The solutions, again, helpful for someone who's already familiar with the high-level design exercise. With that said I would have given it 4 stars if the author had paid more attention amd respect to the writing. There are algorithimc incorrectness - see the bidirectional graph traverse; spelling errors, e.g chace (cache); and perhaps the most annoying of all are the reference error prints in place of table numbers.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here is a comprehensive guide to the system design interview at big tech companies. It also contains the newer material that big tech companies are using in interviews, such as spatial queries and large scale data processing. The book is a must have for system design interviews at big tech and startup companies. On top of the system designs that are useful for all SWEs, some of the book is also useful for ML/ data engineers, and covers how ETL, data lakes, and map reduce work in detail.

[Mikhail Filatov · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book can be a good starting point if you just starting to prepare for the system design interview.
Questions are real, but answers, while following reasonable set of steps are too schematic. Almost no depth and no potentially tough questions discussed.

[Tapaswini]

Any one has a pdf of this book?

[Andrey Martyanov · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a glossary it is fine, but the overall content is too shallow.

[Pablo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly this book is really good and if you are trying to pass a system's design interview, I recommend you read this and one other book on system design so that you have perspective and not just a recipe. The way it's organized with concepts at the beginning and interviews at the end is a good approach.

My only criticism is that there's a Google bias, saying "things are this way" when it's just a Google choice or even a Google idiosyncrasy and the rest of the industry doesn't follow that approach. This is mostly about naming things. For example, calling API servers "frontend" because there's a secondary server that does the work which is called "backend" is not a thing I've seen anywhere else and I would be very careful repeating that without context in an interview.