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When asked about CAP theorem, don't get academic. Use Chiang's script: "In a distributed system, if the network partitions (P), we must choose between Consistency (C) and Availability (A). For a banking system, I choose CP (Consistency) because we cannot lose money. For a social feed, I choose AP (Availability) because a stale 'like' is fine, but downtime is not."
The primary "hack" Chiang provides is a structural one. Most candidates fail not because they don't know concepts (like sharding or caching), but because they lack communication structure. hacking the system design interview stanley chiang pdf
Chiang argues that the interview is a 45-minute collaborative play with four acts. If you try to jump to "Let's use Redis!" in the first 5 minutes, you have already failed. When asked about CAP theorem, don't get academic
The hack: Draw boxes and circles, but name them with proper nouns (AWS/GCP).
Many guides tell you to draw a generic "Load Balancer." Chiang says to use "ALB (Application Load Balancer)" or "HAProxy." This signals real-world experience. Your diagram should look like:
Client -> CDN (CloudFront) -> Load Balancer -> API Gateway -> Microservices -> Data Store For a social feed, I choose AP (Availability)
The hack: Identify the single hardest problem. Don't explain the whole system evenly. Is it a messaging app? The hardest part is message ordering. Is it a video platform? The hardest part is storage optimization. Spend 20 minutes only on that one component.