Criticized for having only 1–2 pages on some major architectural subjects. ❌
| Week | Focus | Resource | |------|-------|----------| | 1 | Building blocks (caching, load balancing, DB sharding) | Hacking book (Ch 1–5) + system-design-primer GitHub | | 2 | Estimation & trade-offs (CAP, PACELC) | Book’s “back of envelope” chapter + YouTube mock interviews | | 3 | Practice 3 design problems (e.g., URL shortener, Twitter) | Book’s solution + GitHub alternatives from checkcheckzz | | 4 | Mock interview with a peer using a whiteboard tool | Blind your book; time yourself with a timer (45 min/problem) |
Hacking the System Design Interview " is a popular preparation book by , a software engineer with extensive experience at Google. While specific copyrighted PDFs of the full book are frequently taken down from GitHub, many repositories host high-quality summaries, roadmaps, and related open-source materials that cover similar high-level and low-level design concepts. Top GitHub Resources for System Design
Don't waste hours scouring GitHub for a questionable PDF of a book. The true "hack" for system design interviews is already available for free on GitHub through open-source repositories.
: Maintained by Ashish Pratap Singh, this repository offers a free 75-page PDF guide covering core concepts like data partitioning and common architectural trade-offs.