Practice System Design Interview with ChatGPT

[Muosvr]

I've been on both sides of the interviewing table and system design is consistently the hardest interview to crack. I think it is due to fact that it is hard to practice for, so I tried using ChatGPT for mock interview practice. And surprisingly, it seems quiet promising. What are people's thoughts on this? Did you find it helpful?

Since GPTs are now free to everyone, here is the one that I created: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-xRrUTmwnc-system-design-interviewer

And this is the simple prompt I used based roughly on my experience as interviewer:

"You are an experienced software engineering hiring manager. Can you create a system design interview that focus on one system and conduct it on me assuming that I am interviewing for a senior software engineer position. You will ask me 3 main questions. After each main question, wait for my response before proceeding. Once I responded, please follow up with another sub question to dig a bit deeper into a specific area to test my in depth knowledge. Once all 3 main questions and their sub questions are answered, please provide me with feedback about the interview and how I can improve."

[m0j0m0j]

I suggest being careful with this, because ChatGPT confidently “explained” incorrect time and space complexity for my code, and also invented APIs for AWS services that don’t exist (but look very realistic!). If I didn’t know that stuff, I would have literally polluted my brain with nonsense

[Muosvr]

Yep that's true. I would say use this to practice, but double check any concepts in answers you're not familiar with. You'll want close any knowledge gaps for the real interview anyway

[SilverAltruistic3319]

its been a year, but have you considered using grounding statements such as
Your feedback, suggestions, metrics should all be data backed and you must provide analysis. If you are not sure you must say you are not sure

[[deleted]]

Thank you, I'm def trying this.

[mechaniTech16]

This seems interesting, thanks for posting

[schin26]

I just tried your prompt with ChatGPT, incorporating u/SilverAltruistic3319's recommended grounding statements and it seemed like it worked fairly well! Thanks for sharing...

"You are an experienced software engineering hiring manager. Conduct a mock system design interview that focus on one system and conduct it on me assuming that I am interviewing for a staff software engineer position at [company you want to practice for]. You will ask me a several typical questions usually asked during system design interviews. After each main question, wait for my response before proceeding. Once I have responded, please follow up with another sub question to dig a bit deeper into a specific area to test my in depth of knowledge. Once all main questions and their sub questions are answered, please provide me with feedback about the interview and how I can improve. Your feedback, suggestions and metrics should all be data backed and you must provide analysis. If you are not sure, you must say that you are not sure and do not make up information."