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

Depends on how to study. Ive been working on this for years. Many people just jump into a solution (or what they think is a solution) to the problem (or what they think is the problem). And this usually triggers interviewers who are looking for that gotcha moment. So you have to treat it as a careful game of getting requirements, setting expectations, managing time, communicating and more.

Source - I sucked at system designs for a good 5+ years until I had a ah-ha moment thanks to a couple of questions an Uber interviewer asked me (that interview sucked but I found my mojo after that). And back in that time I did not have the plethora of resources that are available now (not even mentioning GPT's ability to come up both problems and solution formats).

The key to these interviewers isnt just study but actually practicing mock problems. There are tons of those these days. Another way to learn is to - teach. Start writing up posts for each Design X kinda problem where you would lay it out as if you were presenting it in an interview, ie Requirements, Entities, APIs, High Level Design, Scalability Barriers, Deep Dives etc. Keep at it. A few failures isnt that bad.