Well for my own startups I don't do system design interviews. I don't think they're perfect and there are better ways of measuring the same thing if you have more time per candidate.
Big companies like Google have to sometimes choose mediocre processes that are Lindy and agreed on. System design interviews are less bad than coding interviews IMO, and they are much more scalable for Google.
I think I'm better at spotting genuine experience vs preparation than most interviewers because I've done a lot of interviews. On the other hand I don't think I can tell 100% of the time, and it's not black and white to begin with.
Another point, your specific background may not matter for L6 roles. I want to know if you can build the sort of thing you will be building in the role you're interviewing for. I don't care if you're good at building something else. This is less true for L4 and L5.
> Another point, your specific background may not matter for L6 roles. I want to know if you can build the sort of thing you will be building in the role you're interviewing for. I don't care if you're good at building something else
Why would you narrow your pool so much, especially when specific experience is usually not what defines higher engineering levels but rather architecture, leadership and communication skills?
If someone is actually skilled in system design they would be able to come into a new domain, understand the constraints and design a system within those constraints.
People seem to superficially pattern match on experience that looks similar, but doesn't really have that much overlap a lot of the time.
My thinking is that most things are far more specific than we realize, so why not mostly forget about specific domain knowledge and focus on applicable high level skills? Domain knowledge is a nice bonus, but you're almost certainly going to have to learn things on the job regardless.
Big companies like Google have to sometimes choose mediocre processes that are Lindy and agreed on. System design interviews are less bad than coding interviews IMO, and they are much more scalable for Google.
I think I'm better at spotting genuine experience vs preparation than most interviewers because I've done a lot of interviews. On the other hand I don't think I can tell 100% of the time, and it's not black and white to begin with.
Another point, your specific background may not matter for L6 roles. I want to know if you can build the sort of thing you will be building in the role you're interviewing for. I don't care if you're good at building something else. This is less true for L4 and L5.