Method

How to approach a problem under pressure: frameworks, phase budgets, and the moves that separate a strong answer from a memorized one.

Explainers

• The System Design Cheat Sheet — A hundred design prompts look like a hundred things to memorize — they are one method re-dialed. The meta layer above the worked examples: the eight-move arc of the round (scope, size, break the naive version, deliberate, go deep in dependency order, sweep the failures, wrap); the numbers you carry in (the Jeff Dean latency ladder on a live log scale, per-box capacity rules of thumb, the four QPS/storage/bandwidth formulas); the building-block menu with the failure an interviewer probes the moment you place each one; the six decision tables (SQL vs NoSQL, strong vs eventual, cache-aside vs write-through, push vs pull, sync vs async, precompute vs on-demand), verdict-first; and the six cross-cutting invariants a senior never skips (idempotency, backpressure, hot keys, fan-out, honest exactly-once, checkpointed resume). The signature exhibit is a prompt-decoder: pick a classic prompt and watch which blocks it pulls and which invariant dominates.
• How to Design a System in 60 Minutes — A system design interview is not a memory test — it is four phases on a clock. Restate the problem, commit to one design, go deep where it matters, then break it on purpose. The framework, drawn as an interactive script you scrub minute by minute.
• Preparing for the Agent-Infrastructure Interview — A design invite lands with a rubric axis you have not rehearsed for — "Automation Depth & AI Leverage" — sitting right next to the familiar platform-design one. What that new line actually grades, the four question territories it draws from, and how to walk in ready on both.