The Top Ways People Fail System Design Interviews

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Sophie NovatiFounder @ Formation (ex-Nextdoor/Meta Staff Engineer)
The Top Ways People Fail System Design Interviews poster
Total time: 1 hour, 31 minutes
Course Overview

Have you watched hours of YouTube videos on system design, but still freeze up during the real thing? Are you concerned about how you present yourself to interviewers?

Discover a different approach to system design interview prep with our video series. We’re moving beyond just technical solutions to focus on mastering the interview process itself so you can show your expertise and interview confidently.

In this course, you will:

  • Watch Common Mistakes: Explore mock interview clips that highlight frequent errors made by candidates.

  • Analyze Reasons Why: Delve into the underlying causes of these pitfalls.

  • Improve: See a practical example of how candidates can successfully navigate these challenges.

The clips are organized around four critical themes for interview success:

  1. 🧘 Staying Focused on the Problem: Learn how to keep your technical discussion centered on the most crucial issues.

  2. 🗣️ Communication: Develop the skills to articulate your technical ideas clearly and effectively.

  3. 💭 Thinking Like an Engineer: Adopt an iterative problem-solving approach and adapt to new information.

  4. ✍️ Driving the Design: Approach your interview with strategic intent and purpose.

This course provides you with real-world examples that will elevate your system design performance. Equip yourself with our strategies to confidently ace your next interview and make a lasting impression!

Meet Sophie Novati

Sophie Novati is the founder and CEO of Formation, an interview prep platform that has empowered hundreds of engineers to secure top-paying roles in the tech industry. With extensive experience in interviews, Sophie understands the common challenges and strategies that lead to success.

Through Formation, she provides tailored coaching to help engineers advance their careers with confidence and earn more while doing it — on average, individuals increase their total comp by $127k after going through Formation.

Before founding Formation, Sophie served as a staff-level engineer at Meta and Nextdoor, where she conducted interviews and mentored over 100 engineers through pivotal moments in their careers.

In her spare time, Sophie loves traveling the world with friends, enjoying great food, and snowboarding.

Learn more about Sophie and what she is building at Formation: https://formation.dev/


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Mid-Level Software EngineerGopuff

Very helpful. The examples are the best part

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Staff Software EngineerElevance health

Touched on very subtle and key points, which are very valid and commonly in the interviews. Also, liked format of course backed by examples. Highly recommended!!

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Senior Software EngineerFiserv

This course was a refreshing take on system design interviews. Having watched several SD interview videos online, my preparation was on similar lines: following the template, cramming the buzzwords and practicing the transitions. This course offered me a glimpse of what potential mistakes that I was heading into, and I am glad that I chanced upon this gem at the right time. I hope to use a lot of tips that was offered in this course to shape my interview into a successful one. Thanks.

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FellowSoftware Engineer

The system design content re-engaged my interest in the craft of software engineering. It made me realize how much more there is to learn.

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Mid-Level Software EngineerUnemployed

The series outlined some of the pitfalls a candidate might face when faced with an unfamiliar prompt. It was quite insightful and well articulated with precise examples.

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Senior Software Engineer [E5]DoorDash

The "Do" and "Don't" mock interviews were very helpful in reinforcing the advice.

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Staff Software EngineerUnemployed

Thanks for this series of video. Gave me a different perspective to approach system design interviews.

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Software EngineerUnemployed

So amazing, so impressed. A++

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Senior Software Development Engineer [E5]Oracle

It was really helpful to see the Do vs Don't versions to actually understand how the interviewee's actions form the perspective, judgement for the interviewer and how the interview consequently progresses and one could get scored on the interview. The key points covered in the case studies provide really valuable pointers to approach the system design interview to be effective and successful in the interview, very helpful content, many thanks to the course author and the interviewer/ interviewee in the videos in helping people review their behaviors and do well on system design problems. Thank you!
Will definitely be reviewing the videos once again to make my notes and solidify understanding of the concepts, liked the outline of the course too, very concise and discusses popular mistakes and how one could do better given the situation.

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Senior Member of Technical StaffSalesforce

It was extremely insightful and the mock interview clips clearly demonstrated all the ideas.

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Entry-Level Software EngineerZoomInfo

Informative!

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Senior Software EngineerTuring.com

I'd rate this course 7 stars if there were such a provision. This course shows how easy it is for even highly experienced engineers to fail at System Design Interviews by not focusing on the CORE problem, which might be subtle in most cases, and how to avoid such unseen yet very common pitfalls. The recommendations it gives are applicable in any System Design Interview. The only downside (not related to the advice from the course) is the video player is in fixed resolution which interferes with clarity once the designs get complex and the screen is packed with diagrams and text

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Anon userFormation Fellow

I had an Amazon interview before I even started and had no idea what a system design interview was. I felt that I had an easier time learning it with Formation.

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Senior Software EngineerOther

Great content

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Anon userFormation Fellow

Formation has developed one of the best ways to learn system design that I have seen anywhere.

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Mid-Level Software EngineerYahoo

Excellent. Not only did it highlight some of the pitfalls I’ve personally encountered when I’ve done sys design interviews, it also helped me identify a few key weaknesses of my sys design prep that I will start tackling in the near future.

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Entry-Level Software EngineerSeries B Startup

Definitely addressed some of the pitfalls in my system design prep. Before this, I tended to be a little bit boxy about my approach --> i.e. a little rigid thinking that following a systematic way of fleshing out the interview would allow me to cover all bases. However, after going through this course, I realized that system design interviews should be a lot more dynamic, and more importantly, HOW to be more dynamic in my approach.

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Entry-Level Software EngineerCue Health

An excellent course for those already familiar with system design and its inner workings.

My favorite aspects of this course:

- Clear, straightforward, and easy to understand.

- Highlights common mistakes and immediately follows up with the right approach.

- Excellent examples, lessons, and valuable insights.

- If I ever fail a system design interview, I'll know exactly why, instead of guessing what went wrong or why I was rejected.

Feedback for improvement:

- The video quality could be better. The background was a bit blurry and difficult to read, possibly due to pixel size. If it's an issue on my end, please forgive me! 😅

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Staff Software EngineerIterable
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Senior ML EngineerUnemployed
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Staff Software Engineer [E6]Meta
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Senior Software EngineerSalesforce
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Senior Software EngineerPure Storage
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Senior Software EngineerUnemployed
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Senior Software EngineerUnemployed
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Entry-Level Software EngineerOther
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Staff engineerWalmart
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Senior Software EngineerOpenText
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Staff Software EngineerMicrosoft
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Senior Software EngineerSeries F Startup
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Mid-Level Software EngineerCallHub
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Entry-Level Software EngineerBarclays UK
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Mid-Level Software EngineerViasat
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senior engineerother
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Mid-Level Software Engineer [SDE 2]Amazon
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Senior Software EngineerSAP
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Software Engineering InternUnemployed
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Staff Software EngineerUnemployed
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Mid-Level Software EngineerOther
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Mid-Level Software Engineer [SDE 2]Amazon
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Senior Software EngineerSiemens
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Staff Software EngineerUnemployed

This is a great supplement to other system design prep materials, highlighting problems and giving examples of poor vs. good performances on each topic. This guide won't give you content (i.e. how to design Uber), but it does provide key guidance on how to avoid pitfalls that might cause an interviewer to reject you.

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Senior Software EngineerZeal

Insights are valuable, but do vs dont examples should be clearer.

In some of those there aren't too much difference between them - like the one with Kafka.

I think the interviewer expectations can be more clear-cut with real examples (e.g. for positions at Google its really important to understand X problems at Y level)

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Mid-Level Software EngineerIPO
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Mid-Level Software EngineerMicrosoft
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Staff Software EngineerMicrosoft

Unfortunately, I didn't found this much helpful. Also video screen lot of times in clips were not clear and there is no option to change video resolution as well.