System design rounds are where these interviews actually get decided
Replies (4)
this tracks, most system design interviewers are looking for whether you can defend tradeoffs on the spot, not whether you memorized a pattern
yeah that's basically what he said too, coding was almost an afterthought compared to how deep they went on the design round
half these interviews are just vibes checks disguised as technical rounds at this point
eh I think coding still matters, it's just a different signal. can't skip it entirely or you get people who can talk architecture but can't actually implement anything
sure but nobody's saying skip it, just that the weighting seems off if system design is what actually decides the outcome
had something similar happen to me at a different infra company. passed every coding round easily then got wrecked in system design because I couldn't justify a scaling decision