System Design interview

Under the Hood
Well, this new section or series is going good, because a few days back I received a comment from a follower expecting a new story about a system design interview in coinbase 😁. Expectations are growing bit by bit from the audiences and to be honest, I am ready for it, in fact I was waiting for it for so long.

Let’s begin with the interview part III, system design. They will ask questions based on architecture, layouts, state management, API structures, database, network calls, microservices and so on. Depending on your profile which ranges from frontend to backend to DevOps you will ask questions in the respective domain. So don’t worry about being a backend developer you have to confront the questions from frontend state management.

Questions
The entire interview went with a zero-code policy, meaning you will not write code at all. You will be given a whiteboard to keep sharing your process, opinions, wireframes, draws and so on. It's exactly like how pair programming begins and how the team discuss the work and its respective approach.

Similarly, you will be given a single question and the next 40–45 minutes will be all for how you will execute and accomplish this complexity of the task.

They will keep asking you the approaches,

• how will you start,
• Which tech stack you will prefer and why,
• How the architecture will look like,
• how will you design the “x” component
• How will you design the more performant API
• How you can improve the existing codebase and so on.

Remember, the questions are not fixed the more you go deeper about anything such as tech stack the more question they can or they will throw at you. So my suggestion, if you don’t know why to choose redux or context API then simply don’t say that redux is better than context API.

Whatever you are claiming make sure you have a valid reason for it even though that reason might not be 100% correct.

I’ve asked multiple questions about why I will choose Next.JS over Create React App and how my API response become more performant.

These types of questions are quite common and trust me they don’t have the right answer at all, all you need is to lay the valid answer to these types of questions.

Tools & Timezones
They will provide you with the information prior to the interview also, Excalidraw is the tool they will use for system design questions. All the meetings will take over google meet, timezone is quite flexible in whatever time you are free.

Preparations
Prepare for the interview in a full-fledged way meaning don’t just go into the deep of everything but you should know the overview of the development cycle from end to end.

For example, how will you develop a coinbase homepage with all the coins listed and users can buy the coin using the API.

This question is quite common and it covers all the full stack terms from API development to databases to frontend and state management. So a very good question for full-stack developers.

I’ve covered a story regarding a single question that I was asked multiple times in multiple organisations, if you cover this question bit by bit in detail then most of the preparation will be completed.

Conclusion
Here are the 2 pair programming interview in coinbase stories. All the best if you are looking to apply for the same opportunity in coinbase. Don’t forget to follow me and until next time, have a good day, people.

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