[tayo42]

Thinking of it as pass or fail is really the problem. That leads to having some kind of criteria that ends up being gamed. Which is what happened to this style of interviewing.

"system design" as it's done now by everyone is a bad interview whether I can pass it or not. You just need to hit the right buzzwords or draw the right boxes. How is that effective?

[motorest]

> Thinking of it as pass or fail is really the problem. That leads to having some kind of criteria that ends up being gamed. Which is what happened to this style of interviewing.

What do you think a technical interview is? Everyone steps into a job interview hoping to outperform all other candidates in whatever criterias they will be evaluated on. Vibes play a role, but don't you think that being able to demonstrate technical skills matters?

[tayo42]

a technical assessment imo would be more effective if we just talked directly about the topics. If you want to discuss tradeoffs in database choice, just ask about it. Or talk about projects where I actually made those decisions and why.

Instead the system design interview has turned into a role playing game where there is a rubric on the other side and you need to hope you hit the topics the interviewer expects. Now it can be memorized. Its detached from reality the same way leetcode questions are and people are memorizing complex answers.

This style of interview can be a way to demonstrate technical skills if it allowed it, but instead we have people memorizing how to implement rate limiters or re-designing websites in 30 minutes that have been built up over a decade.