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Description
System Design Interview - An Insider's Guide (Volume 1) System design interviews are the most difficult to tackle of all technical interview questions. This book is Volume 1 of the System Design Interview - An insider’s guide series that provides a reliable strategy and knowledge base for approaching a broad range of system design questions. This book provides a step-by-step framework for how to tackle a system design question. It includes many real-world examples to illustrate the systematic approach, with detailed steps that you can follow. What’s inside? - An insider’s take on what interviewers really look for and why. - A 4-step framework for solving any system design interview question. - 16 real system design interview questions with detailed solutions. - 188 diagrams to visually explain how different systems work. Table Of Contents Chapter 1: Scale From Zero To Millions Of Users Chapter 2: Back-of-the-envelope Estimation Chapter 3: A Framework For System Design Interviews Chapter 4: Design A Rate Limiter Chapter 5: Design Consistent Hashing Chapter 6: Design A Key-value Store Chapter 7: Design A Unique Id Generator In Distributed Systems Chapter 8: Design A Url Shortener Chapter 9: Design A Web Crawler Chapter 10: Design A Notification System Chapter 11: Design A News Feed System Chapter 12: Design A Chat System Chapter 13: Design A Search Autocomplete System Chapter 14: Design Youtube Chapter 15: Design Google Drive Chapter 16: The Learning Continues Read more
Publisher : Independently published
Publication date : June 12, 2020
Language : English
Print length : 320 pages
ISBN-13 : 03
Item Weight : 15.2 ounces
Dimensions : 6 x 0.73 x 9 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #9,796 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #1 in Object-Oriented Software Design #1 in Computer Operating Systems (Books) #2 in Cloud Computing (Books)
#1 in Object-Oriented Software Design:
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Top Amazon Reviews
Format: Kindle
The book is pretty good. It’s easy to read. There are lots of design diagrams. If you are a visual person, you will love the book. It helped me pass the system design round at FANG. I read the book twice and take notes. I read all the reference materials mentioned in the book. Reading those extra materials help me a lot with topics I’m not familiar with. Highlights: + The book has a good set of questions. + Lots of diagrams and clear explanation. + You will learn something new by reading the book regardless of your experience. Drawbacks: - I wish the reference links are footnotes instead of being at the end of chapters. That way, it’s more accessible. - Some topics are not talked about too much like security and stream processing. - It’s tailored towards junior and semi-senior engineers. Some chapters are not deep enough. For example, I wish the author would talk more about feed ranking and caching in the designing news feed chapter. Overall, it’s a masterpiece in system design books. However, no book can cover everything in system design. No one knows every system. Here are some of my other recommendations: -- designing data-intensive applications. Highly recommended. -- system design primer github repo. Highly recommended free resource. -- Leetcode discussion forum about system designs. -- Grokking the system interview course. This is an ok resource but not very deep. -- Various youtube channels. I like channels like Tushar Roy, System Design Interview, Success in Tech, etc. There are a lot more but I found them most useful for senior engineer positions. -- Various tech blogs: Facebook, Netflix, Uber, AirBnb, etc. Those tech blogs are extremely valuable to help us understand real-life systems. -- highscalability website. The website contains lots of real world systems. -- InfoQ youtube channel. Many tech companies talk about how they scale their systems at infoQ. I find sometimes it’s quite hard to find useful videos on google but when I narrow down it to a specific channel, it’s much easier to find. For example, I found a lot of useful tech talks about uber there. It’s invaluable when I interviewed there.
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Reviewed in the United States on November 7, 2020 by M Carmen Trevino
Format: Paperback
System Design Interview—An Insider’s Guide is a great resource for anyone looking to prepare for system design interviews. The book is well-structured, easy to follow, and provides a solid foundation for understanding key system design concepts. I especially appreciated how Alex Xu breaks down complex topics into manageable chunks, making it accessible for both beginners and those with some experience. What stands out is the step-by-step approach to solving system design problems. The book explains not only how to get to the right answer but also the reasoning behind the decisions, which are crucial during real interviews. The real-world examples and diagrams are incredibly helpful in visualizing the concepts, especially if you’re someone who learns best by seeing things laid out. While the book is mostly geared towards those newer to system design, it still has value for more experienced engineers. That said, there are a few areas where the content could go deeper, such as in security or more advanced topics like feed ranking. Some chapters might feel a bit light if you’re already familiar with certain concepts. That being said, I would definitely recommend this book if you’re preparing for system design interviews. It’s clear, practical, and gives you the tools to tackle even tough design questions with confidence.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2025 by Marcel Laurent
Format: Paperback
So, I got my hands on "System Design Interview – An insider's guide" by Alex Xu, and I've got to say, it's a pretty solid book if you're gearing up for a tech interview, especially the tricky system design stuff. What I really liked is how Alex breaks everything down. Instead of making you wade through a sea of jargon, he walks you through each concept, bit by bit. It's like he's right there, guiding you, which is really cool for beginners like me. Plus, there's a bunch of real-world examples, so it's not just theory—you actually see how it works in practice. The best part? Alex doesn't just teach you system design; he gets you into the mind of the interviewer. It's not just about getting the right answers; it's about understanding what the interviewer is looking for. Trust me, that stuff is gold! But hey, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. If you're already a pro at system design, you might find this book a bit on the simpler side. Don't get me wrong, the basics are covered really well, but I wished there was more for the advanced folks. Also, I had a bit of a tough time with some of the technical lingo. Even though Alex tries to make things simple, some parts still felt like a mouthful. And, more different problem scenarios would've been great to see. All in all, I'd definitely recommend "System Design Interview – An insider's guide" if you're starting out or kinda in the middle in system design. It's an easy-to-follow guide that'll help you get through those intimidating interviews. For the pros, maybe look for something more advanced, but as a refresher, it works well.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2023 by Customer
Format: Kindle
It is the best book that discusses the system design so far! I read a few posts from other people, and I think those comments do not really reflect the author's true intent. The author was trying to provide a generic way of how to approach the design issues and provided some classic design patterns. The book is very well organized. In the first few chapters, it tells you the common ways to scale the system and then gradually dive into deeper to show some fundamental concepts and practical ways of how a distributed system should be built. For example, Consistent Hashing is the foundation and has been used so many places, Alex explained very well. Then he discussed how to efficiently compare the nodes and how to detect the temp and permanent failures and recover from the failure. Yes, some of the content can be considered as "borrowed" from the paper, but Alex put them together in a very nice and easy way and save you a lot of questions and time. I read the original paper and still get inspired by the book. Another example is the Youtube chapter, Alex used some concepts from facebook paper. But we have to appreciate that he understood the content and put into such an easy way that you don’t need to spend a day to read facebook paper and still only 60% understanding. You also need to think of the first eight chapters are the building blocks of the distributed system, and they are the real challenges. Maybe in no interviews, people will ask the same questions, but these technics are really needed for you to build a good distributed system. For example, there is no global clock in the distributed system; then Twitter came up a Snowflake unique ID with the time concept in it. For example, the unique ID becomes the foundation of generating the short URL and newsfeed. For example, the Merkle tree helps you efficiently compare the difference between the nodes. Yes, there are some chapters that seem to be oversimplified, such as Google drive chapter, but overall the book covered a lot of patterns that require building the distributed system. A suggestion for Alex, organized the book into two sections, the common challenges and practical patterns for the distributed system, then dive into the interview questions. Great effort, I will give my 5 stars!
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Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2021 by Michael W.
Format: Paperback
Easy read, concepts covered are great!
Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2026 by Srinivas L.
Format: Paperback
I subscribed Grokking first to prepare for the upcoming System Design interviews, however, it lacks of a lot of details and doesn't follow a good logical flow. So I researched online to find a substitute course/book, I got recommended for this book and before placing the order, I didn't know if this is a good spending of $35 or not. When I got the book, I left it in shelf for couple weeks and didn't expect it would be that good. One day, I struggled understanding the GoogleDrive design again by reading Grokking, so I picked up this book and hope it can help me to understand the problem. By reading this book, it fills many gaps/answered lots of questions that I came up by studying Grokking. This book has extensive details and guide you solve questions step by step. I especially like the SD examples in this book and how the author organize the logical flow, it made me feel I'm solving a problem from high level to low level, and then handle some edge cases/failures. It makes sense in real world and we can follow such logic flow when talking to interviewers. I highly recommend.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2022 by Amazon Customer
Format: Kindle
When preparing for system design interviews, I was lost initially because there are not a lot of good materials available. I read a couple of blogs that went over some code and concepts. But I felt like something was missing. I didn't think I could confidently tackle the interview questions. This book helped fill in the gaps. It gave the most lucid explanation of system design concepts that I've come across, as well as diving deep into practical real world interview questions such as designing NewsFeed, YouTube, Google Drive, key value store, rate limiting, consistent hashing among many others. It is easy to read and easy to understand. It has tons of diagrams, tables and charts that help a lot. As a result I feel more empowered and more confident to design a better system. There's also useful advice in the book about how to handle the interview. It's really a must-read for system design interview preparation.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2020 by A Nickname
Format: Paperback
This is a great primer, but is a bit "all over the place" instead of building on top of a strong foundation. I found the book useful, but less of a teaching tool and more as a reference; if the questions asked fall outside of the scope of the ones explained in this book, I doubt this would be of much help. I wish that the "web crawler" chapter were more descriptive, it was far too hand-wavey. Otherwise, the book is decent.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2025 by G