The Top Ways People Fail System Design Interviews
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:
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Watch Common Mistakes: Explore mock interview clips that highlight frequent errors made by candidates.
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Analyze Reasons Why: Delve into the underlying causes of these pitfalls.
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Improve: See a practical example of how candidates can successfully navigate these challenges.
The clips are organized around four critical themes for interview success:
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🧘 Staying Focused on the Problem: Learn how to keep your technical discussion centered on the most crucial issues.
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🗣️ Communication: Develop the skills to articulate your technical ideas clearly and effectively.
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💭 Thinking Like an Engineer: Adopt an iterative problem-solving approach and adapt to new information.
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✍️ 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!
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/
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.
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.
The "Do" and "Don't" mock interviews were very helpful in reinforcing the advice.
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.
Formation has developed one of the best ways to learn system design that I have seen anywhere.
