The book is pretty good. It’s easy to read. There are lots of design diagrams. If you are a visual person, you will love the book. It helped me pass the system design round at FANG.

I read the book twice and take notes. I read all the reference materials mentioned in the book. Reading those extra materials help me a lot with topics I’m not familiar with.

Highlights:

+ The book has a good set of questions.

+ Lots of diagrams and clear explanation.

+ You will learn something new by reading the book regardless of your experience.

Drawbacks:

- I wish the reference links are footnotes instead of being at the end of chapters. That way, it’s more accessible.

- Some topics are not talked about too much like security and stream processing.

- It’s tailored towards junior and semi-senior engineers. Some chapters are not deep enough. For example, I wish the author would talk more about feed ranking and caching in the designing news feed chapter.

Overall, it’s a masterpiece in system design books. However, no book can cover everything in system design. No one knows every system. Here are some of my other recommendations:

-- designing data-intensive applications. Highly recommended.

-- system design primer github repo. Highly recommended free resource.

-- Leetcode discussion forum about system designs.

-- Grokking the system interview course. This is an ok resource but not very deep.

-- Various youtube channels. I like channels like Tushar Roy, System Design Interview, Success in Tech, etc. There are a lot more but I found them most useful for senior engineer positions.

-- Various tech blogs: Facebook, Netflix, Uber, AirBnb, etc. Those tech blogs are extremely valuable to help us understand real-life systems.

-- highscalability website. The website contains lots of real world systems.

-- InfoQ youtube channel. Many tech companies talk about how they scale their systems at infoQ. I find sometimes it’s quite hard to find useful videos on google but when I narrow down it to a specific channel, it’s much easier to find. For example, I found a lot of useful tech talks about uber there. It’s invaluable when I interviewed there.

System Design Interview—An Insider’s Guide is a great resource for anyone looking to prepare for system design interviews. The book is well-structured, easy to follow, and provides a solid foundation for understanding key system design concepts. I especially appreciated how Alex Xu breaks down complex topics into manageable chunks, making it accessible for both beginners and those with some experience.

What stands out is the step-by-step approach to solving system design problems. The book explains not only how to get to the right answer but also the reasoning behind the decisions, which are crucial during real interviews. The real-world examples and diagrams are incredibly helpful in visualizing the concepts, especially if you’re someone who learns best by seeing things laid out.

While the book is mostly geared towards those newer to system design, it still has value for more experienced engineers. That said, there are a few areas where the content could go deeper, such as in security or more advanced topics like feed ranking. Some chapters might feel a bit light if you’re already familiar with certain concepts.

That being said, I would definitely recommend this book if you’re preparing for system design interviews. It’s clear, practical, and gives you the tools to tackle even tough design questions with confidence.

So, I got my hands on "System Design Interview – An insider's guide" by Alex Xu, and I've got to say, it's a pretty solid book if you're gearing up for a tech interview, especially the tricky system design stuff.

What I really liked is how Alex breaks everything down. Instead of making you wade through a sea of jargon, he walks you through each concept, bit by bit. It's like he's right there, guiding you, which is really cool for beginners like me. Plus, there's a bunch of real-world examples, so it's not just theory—you actually see how it works in practice.

The best part? Alex doesn't just teach you system design; he gets you into the mind of the interviewer. It's not just about getting the right answers; it's about understanding what the interviewer is looking for. Trust me, that stuff is gold!

But hey, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. If you're already a pro at system design, you might find this book a bit on the simpler side. Don't get me wrong, the basics are covered really well, but I wished there was more for the advanced folks.

Also, I had a bit of a tough time with some of the technical lingo. Even though Alex tries to make things simple, some parts still felt like a mouthful. And, more different problem scenarios would've been great to see.

All in all, I'd definitely recommend "System Design Interview – An insider's guide" if you're starting out or kinda in the middle in system design. It's an easy-to-follow guide that'll help you get through those intimidating interviews. For the pros, maybe look for something more advanced, but as a refresher, it works well.

It is the best book that discusses the system design so far!

I read a few posts from other people, and I think those comments do not really reflect the author's true intent. The author was trying to provide a generic way of how to approach the design issues and provided some classic design patterns. The book is very well organized. In the first few chapters, it tells you the common ways to scale the system and then gradually dive into deeper to show some fundamental concepts and practical ways of how a distributed system should be built. For example, Consistent Hashing is the foundation and has been used so many places, Alex explained very well. Then he discussed how to efficiently compare the nodes and how to detect the temp and permanent failures and recover from the failure. Yes, some of the content can be considered as "borrowed" from the paper, but Alex put them together in a very nice and easy way and save you a lot of questions and time. I read the original paper and still get inspired by the book. Another example is the Youtube chapter, Alex used some concepts from facebook paper. But we have to appreciate that he understood the content and put into such an easy way that you don’t need to spend a day to read facebook paper and still only 60% understanding.

You also need to think of the first eight chapters are the building blocks of the distributed system, and they are the real challenges. Maybe in no interviews, people will ask the same questions, but these technics are really needed for you to build a good distributed system. For example, there is no global clock in the distributed system; then Twitter came up a Snowflake unique ID with the time concept in it. For example, the unique ID becomes the foundation of generating the short URL and newsfeed. For example, the Merkle tree helps you efficiently compare the difference between the nodes.

Yes, there are some chapters that seem to be oversimplified, such as Google drive chapter, but overall the book covered a lot of patterns that require building the distributed system.

A suggestion for Alex, organized the book into two sections, the common challenges and practical patterns for the distributed system, then dive into the interview questions.

Great effort, I will give my 5 stars!

I subscribed Grokking first to prepare for the upcoming System Design interviews, however, it lacks of a lot of details and doesn't follow a good logical flow. So I researched online to find a substitute course/book, I got recommended for this book and before placing the order, I didn't know if this is a good spending of $35 or not. When I got the book, I left it in shelf for couple weeks and didn't expect it would be that good. One day, I struggled understanding the GoogleDrive design again by reading Grokking, so I picked up this book and hope it can help me to understand the problem. By reading this book, it fills many gaps/answered lots of questions that I came up by studying Grokking. This book has extensive details and guide you solve questions step by step. I especially like the SD examples in this book and how the author organize the logical flow, it made me feel I'm solving a problem from high level to low level, and then handle some edge cases/failures. It makes sense in real world and we can follow such logic flow when talking to interviewers. I highly recommend.

When preparing for system design interviews, I was lost initially because there are not a lot of good materials available. I read a couple of blogs that went over some code and concepts. But I felt like something was missing. I didn't think I could confidently tackle the interview questions.

This book helped fill in the gaps. It gave the most lucid explanation of system design concepts that I've come across, as well as diving deep into practical real world interview questions such as designing NewsFeed, YouTube, Google Drive, key value store, rate limiting, consistent hashing among many others. It is easy to read and easy to understand. It has tons of diagrams, tables and charts that help a lot. As a result I feel more empowered and more confident to design a better system. There's also useful advice in the book about how to handle the interview.

It's really a must-read for system design interview preparation.

Easy read, concepts covered are great!

This is an okay high-level overview of a few different systems, but I do not recommend it for a one stop shop for learning. They don’t show designs through an iterative process (high level at first, then built out through deep dives). I can’t really recommend this book because I think online resources (many free ones) are much better. Personally, I recommend hellointerview.com and then paying for their premium if you want to pay for something! The system design primer on GitHub is really good as well!!

As an experienced mobile software engineer I found a lot of new information. There are 16 examples of a system design. It's backend oriented, but I think a frontend developer should know these things.

Paper quality is good, but no hardcover.

"System Design Interview – An Insider's Guide" is an absolute must-read for anyone preparing for technical interviews, especially if you’re aiming for a role that involves system design. As someone who’s been through a few system design interviews, I found this book to be incredibly insightful and practical.

The author does an excellent job of breaking down complex system design concepts into manageable sections. The step-by-step approach helps you understand how to approach design problems, from gathering requirements to making trade-offs and optimizing your design. Each chapter is packed with real-world examples that illustrate key principles, making it easier to grasp and apply them during an interview.

What I particularly appreciated was the inclusion of sample interview scenarios and the detailed thought process behind each design. It’s not just about getting the right answer but about understanding the reasoning and methodology, which is crucial during actual interviews.

Whether you're a beginner looking to understand the basics of system design or an experienced engineer aiming to refine your skills, this book is a valuable resource. It’s well-written, easy to follow, and provides a solid foundation for tackling system design interviews with confidence. Highly recommend!"

Great book, very clear and informative

It came as surprising while I started to study the book and then found most of the diagrams are in black and white!! It's not cheap book, it's €40

I found out when I took a look at an online version of the book

- Explains the design of most commonly used systems in the industry with great clarity

- Analysing all possible solutions to a problem, listing the pros and cons of each approach, thus helping in making more informed decisions