[temporallobe]

On the system design question, the only correct answer should be: It can take months to come up with a good system design, and even then it can be wrong because of a minor misunderstanding, a missed requirement, availability of support teams, etc. If someone came up with a system design in 10 minutes, I wouldn’t want to hire them.

[mehh]

Yeah, I was tripped up in an interview at Meta on system design, we had a good discussion, but on my part I didn’t realise they expected an actual solution during interview. I mean, you’d have a gist of a solution but you wouldn’t tighten the screws until you’d gone through many rounds of stakeholder discussions and requirements refinement. I was way more experienced than the chap interviewing me, it just felt all a bit contrived, playing at architecture, memorise these patterns for these x scenarios.

[lisasays]

If someone came up with a system design in 10 minutes, I wouldn’t want to hire them.

Deep wisdom here, indeed. Don't you dare say this during an actual interview, though -- especially when you're asked to do the system design part in 10 minutes or less. The last thing these companies could possibly want is to have reality to intrude.