Suggested topics to review based on your interview timeline (short, medium, long).
Do I need to know everything here?
Q: For interviews, do I need to know everything here?
Q: For interviews, do I need to know everything here?
A: No, you don’t need to know everything here to prepare for the interview.What you are asked in an interview depends on variables such as:
- How much experience you have
- What your technical background is
- What positions you are interviewing for
- Which companies you are interviewing with
- Luck
Timeline-based approach
Short timeline
Aim for breadth with system design topics. Practice by solving some interview questions.Medium timeline
Aim for breadth and some depth with system design topics. Practice by solving many interview questions.Long timeline
Aim for breadth and more depth with system design topics. Practice by solving most interview questions.Study plan by timeline
| Topic | Short | Medium | Long |
|---|---|---|---|
| Read through the System design topics to get a broad understanding of how systems work | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Read through a few articles in the Company engineering blogs for the companies you are interviewing with | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Read through a few Real world architectures | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Review How to approach a system design interview question | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Work through System design interview questions with solutions | Some | Many | Most |
| Work through Object-oriented design interview questions with solutions | Some | Many | Most |
| Review Additional system design interview questions | Some | Many | Most |
Key topics to cover
System design topics
Start with fundamentals: scalability, performance, latency, throughput, availability, and consistency
Real world architectures
Study how major companies architect their systems at scale
Interview questions
Practice with real system design interview questions and solutions
Company blogs
Read engineering blogs from companies you’re interviewing with
System design topics: start here
New to system design? First, you’ll need a basic understanding of common principles, learning about what they are, how they are used, and their pros and cons.
Step 1: Review the scalability video lecture
Scalability Lecture at Harvard Topics covered:- Vertical scaling
- Horizontal scaling
- Caching
- Load balancing
- Database replication
- Database partitioning
Step 2: Review the scalability article
Scalability Topics covered:Next steps
Next, we’ll look at high-level trade-offs:- Performance vs scalability
- Latency vs throughput
- Availability vs consistency