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Ask HN: How to study for system design that doesn't include front end/back end?

38 points 3a2d29 | 3 comments | 13 Mar 25 23:32 UTC | HN request time: 0.658s | source

I got a system design interview where I was asked to build a pricer for a financial product, then expand it to multiple pricers that might share inputs.

This was not the typical system design interview where you have to deal with APIs / load balancers / latency / etc

I have studied that a lot, but what about these type of general interviews?

1. deadbabe ◴[14 Mar 25 00:05 UTC] No.43358462[source]▶
When you get a question like this, you just reduce everything down to database design.

Most systems are just wrappers around a database. You can tell because if you take away the database the system does nothing useful.

Financial products are exclusively priced in databases.

replies(1): >>43358548 #
2. MrDarcy ◴[14 Mar 25 00:27 UTC] No.43358548[source]▶
I did this in an interview once, failed miserably and got the feedback, “we don’t care about the database.”

I personally feel you aren’t wrong but you also aren’t aligned with what they’re looking for, like I wasn’t when I failed this interview.

replies(1): >>43359012 #
3. deadbabe ◴[14 Mar 25 02:19 UTC] No.43359012[source]▶
You dodged a bullet.