What is a load balancer?
A load balancer distributes traffic across multiple instances to improve availability and throughput.
- Spreads requests
- Can health-check backends
- Removes single-instance bottlenecks
Quick recall
374 cards
What is eventual consistency?
Eventual consistency means replicas may temporarily disagree, but if updates stop they converge over time.
- Temporary stale reads are possible
- Improves availability and scale
- Good fit depends on the product workflow
Why use caching in system design?
Caching moves repeated reads closer to the user or application to reduce latency and backend load.
- Fast for repeated reads
- Staleness is the main tradeoff
- Choose eviction and invalidation strategy
Describe a difficult bug you solved
Tell a story that highlights systematic debugging, collaboration, and the final fix or prevention step.
- Explain impact clearly
- Show your investigation method
- Mention prevention after fix
How do you handle deadline pressure?
Show prioritization, communication, and realistic tradeoff management instead of heroic overtime as the only tool.
- Clarify must-haves
- Communicate risk early
- Protect quality on critical paths
How do you handle feedback you disagree with?
Listen first, ask clarifying questions, test whether the feedback is valid, and respond without defensiveness.
- Separate signal from emotion
- Ask for examples
- Adopt what improves your work
How do you learn a new technology quickly?
Start with the problem, learn the core concepts, build something small, and seek feedback early.
- Anchor to a real use case
- Prefer official docs first
- Turn notes into a working example
How do you prioritize when everything feels urgent?
Use business impact, risk, dependencies, and deadlines to separate true urgency from noise.
- Clarify impact quickly
- Align with stakeholders
- Document tradeoffs
Tell me about a conflict in your team
Show that you addressed disagreement respectfully, clarified goals, and moved the team toward a better outcome.
- Use STAR structure
- Focus on actions not blame
- End with learning
Tell me about a production incident you handled
Focus on calm triage, communication, mitigation, and what changed afterward.
- Explain impact first
- Describe your response sequence
- Mention prevention steps
Tell me about a time you disagreed with a technical decision
Show respectful disagreement, evidence-based reasoning, and alignment with the final team outcome.
- State the context clearly
- Explain your reasoning with facts
- Show how you aligned after the decision
Tell me about a time you improved a process
Pick a concrete workflow improvement and show how it reduced friction, risk, or delivery time.
- Start with the pain point
- Explain the change you drove
- Share measurable impact if possible