u/Mindrust wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
What are the major differences between the two types of interviews? And considering there are more resources available to prepare for the standard system design interviews, in what scenario is it preferable to opt for the product architecture interview?
u/michaelnovati replied ·
Systems typically has a more backend or infra engineering conducting it, and it will focus more on loads that break the backend and how to scale them. Whereas product is more "full stack" and focuses more on use cases people have that are tricky.
Example: systems might have a followup that's like ok you get a spike of 10X the number of users at midnight every night, what breaks.
product might have a following for like simple instagram that's like - so you add privacy settings to posts, how does that impact the entire system end to end - which is mostly functional, but you need to identify if something won't scale performance-wise too.
**I RECOMMEND PRODUCT ARCHITECTURE FOR MOST PEOPLE LOOKING FOR A STANDARD SD INTERVIEW.** The "systems design" variant is ideal for people with several years of real experience on a big system, oftentimes at another big tech company.