Engineering with People Intelligence | Microsoft, Yahoo, SAP, Carnegie Mellon | The Engineering Career Coach

I transformed from a curious software engineer to a strategic leader, guiding massive teams at Microsoft, Yahoo, Walmart Labs, and startups. Along this journey, I generated over $2.3 billion in revenue. But it wasn't always smooth sailing.

My quest began with questions about management, innovation, and leadership, leading me to an unexpected discovery - emotional intelligence. It sparked a new realization; traditional corporate management training teaches frameworks, not leadership. That's why I created Taha's Method, a unique approach focused on leading yourself before others and applying management frameworks rooted in human principles.

And boy, did it work!

In 6 years, I led from 0 to 250+ team members. To date, I have coached over 600+ professionals, including those at Google, Netflix, Oracle, Microsoft, Meta, Intuit, Yahoo, and startups, helping them to secure management as well as IC roles (Principal+).

But why stop there?

In January 2022, I walked away from a 7-figure career to dedicate myself to enabling ambitious software engineers to reach their full potential. I developed a personalized 6-month 1:1 coaching program - and the impact has been phenomenal. (Check out the reviews from my clients below.)

Every day, I share insights on LinkedIn about effective leadership, emotional intelligence challenges, and career advancements. In doing so, I've created a vibrant community of learners and leaders.

For me, great leadership can make the world a better place. And I believe that everyone has the capacity to become a great leader.

So, are you ready to unlock your potential? 

Join me, and let's change the world one leader at a time.

Taha Hussain

At Microsoft, I saw three kinds of senior engineers. 

The first were the Masters.

They were the best technicians I had. 

Flawless code. 
Deep systems knowledge. 
The kind of engineer you begged to review your work.

But most of them were stuck at L64 for a decade.

They stayed in the code. 
Their reach stopped at their fingertips.

They blamed managers for not making them bigger than they were willing to become.

The second were the Heroes.

They ran toward outages. 
Took the hits. 
Brought everything back online.

And the team leaned on them. Too much.

The mess returned, and the Hero was there again in the middle of it.

They absorbed complexity. 
They multiplied reliability. 
They did not multiply successors.

The third were rare. The Challengers.

In calibration discussions, it took 30 seconds. 
Everyone said, "The best."

They did not step in. They stepped back.
They handed the outage to the junior.
They let the mid-level bleed through a design review.

They held the line until people changed shape.

They did not multiply output. 
They multiplied people.

Masters make code.
Heroes make systems.
Challengers make people.

And people outlast everything.

Want to grow into the kind of engineer people call “the best” in 30 seconds?

Enroll in the Top Engineer Method.

I built it from my experience shaping engineers at Microsoft, SAP and startups into true Challengers.

Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gMGfmVas

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Engineering Career Coach | Microsoft, Yahoo, SAP, Carnegie Mellon | Engineering with People Intelligence

The most dangerous person to work for is a first-time manager.

Not because they don’t know what they’re doing,

But because no one punishes them when they get it wrong.

For six months, every misstep gets wrapped in gift paper labeled “growth.”

And you?

You’re the ribbon they pull apart.

Every new EM goes through the same phase:

• Break the silence
• Practice discomfort
• Prove you're a leader: "give tough feedback"

So they go looking for something to fix.
Even when there's nothing to fix.

In September, three new clients came to me.

Each on a PIP, all under first-time managers.

The feedback reads like a template.

Facts. Expectations. No warmth. No context.

Here’s the part no one wants to say out loud:

New managers are afraid.

Afraid of being wrong.
Of sounding junior.
Of being exposed as someone who never belonged in the chair.

So they overcompensate.

And you become the proof they’re looking for.

If you're working under a new manager: tread lightly.

Don't confuse their fear with your failure.
Don’t make their practice your identity.

Most don’t mean harm. 
But they are learning on live subjects. 

Treat them like a cop on the highway:

Hands at ten and two.
No sudden moves.
Let them pass.

Then get back to driving your career.

You can't choose every manager you work for.

But you can choose how you grow under them.

Need help taking control of your growth?

Enroll in the Top Engineer Method.

I built it from my experience growing engineers at Microsoft, SAP, and startups through messy, imperfect management environments.

Start now: https://lnkd.in/gMGfmVas

Your career deserves steadier hands, especially your own.

graphical user interface, text, application

If you feel like a fraud, here’s the good news:
You care.
You’re aware.
You want to do the thing right.

Most actual frauds don’t feel like impostors.
They feel entitled.

So if you’re doubting yourself, keep going.
It means you’re getting closer to something real.

Impostor syndrome doesn’t mean you’re unqualified.

It means you’re growing faster than your confidence can catch up.

Give it a minute.

If you are in that space where your ability is clear but your belief lags behind, I built Top Engineer Method for you. 

It helps engineers turn quiet doubt into quiet confidence.

Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gMGfmVas

Most people don’t stay at companies out of loyalty.

They stay because leaving would expose how little they’ve grown.

We tell ourselves we’re “committed.”
We’re often just comfortable being seen as reliable.

Loyalty without evolution isn’t noble.
It’s stagnation dressed as virtue.

Stay because you’re learning.
Leave when you’re not.

That’s loyalty to yourself.

When you outgrow your environment, it is not betrayal to move on. That is the moment for reinvention. 

The Top Engineer Method was built to help you find it.

Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gMGfmVas

Taplio

(7) Feed | LinkedIn

The best engineer on the team is like salt.
You don’t notice them.
Until they’re gone.

No big goodbye.
No incident.
No drama.

Just... friction.

PRs bounce around.
Standup feels heavier.
The sprint goal slips, but no one names it.

Someone blames shifting priorities.
Someone else says it’s dependencies.

No one mentions the name that’s missing.

Because no one realized they were the one holding it all together.

They weren’t loud in meetings.
Didn’t “drive the vision.”
Never showed up with a 5-point plan and a Notion doc.

They just made everything... smoother.

Caught the edge case.
Spotted the bug early.
Asked the quiet question that saved two weeks of rework.

And when you thanked them?

They just nodded. Maybe dropped a 👌. That’s it.

They didn’t need credit.
But they deserved something.

And now?

Now the team is full of smart people, doing smart things—
but it doesn’t feel smart.

It feels scattered.
Tense.
A little bitter.

And someone says,

"I don’t know... it just felt easier before."

Yeah.

Because salt doesn’t call attention to itself.
It just makes everything else taste right.

Until it’s gone.

And then, all you taste is the missing.

If you’ve ever felt like the missing ingredient no one names, I built this for you

Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gMGfmVas

Skipped a workout.
Ate delivery again.
Didn’t show up for the interview.
Didn’t practice.
Didn’t read.
Didn’t grow.
Didn’t win the day.

But you know what?

You're still here.

Still trying.

Still learning.

That counts.

Don’t let the shame of an unproductive day bleed into the next one.

New day. New shot.

Let’s go.

The middle is the worst place to be.

Not building a career
Not learning
Not resting, not recovering
Not risking, not growing

Just floating in a lukewarm pool of “meh.”

If you want freedom, you have to move.

Left or right.
Up or down.
Forward or backward.

Just pick.

Because staying in the middle?

That’s how people wake up 15 years later filled with regret.

Choose a direction.
Then sprint.

If you’ve been stuck in the middle — not failing, not fulfilled — you’re not alone.

That’s why I built Top Tech Leader, to help you pick a direction and lead with intent.

Learn more → https://lnkd.in/gHSYuJrv

Most engineers chase titles.

Senior. Staff. Principal. Lead.

But here’s the truth:

Your title isn’t your ceiling.
Your communication is.
Your visibility is.
Your leverage is.

I’ve seen Staff Engineers nobody trusts.
And Seniors with Director-level influence.

If your work is invisible, your value is too.

So speak clearly.
Document generously.
Mentor someone.
Present your work.
Post your lessons.

Quiet excellence is noble.

But it rarely gets promoted.

Need help making your work visible without feeling loud?

Enroll in the Top Engineer Method.

I built it from my experience growing engineers at Microsoft, SAP and Walmart into people the org could not overlook.

Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gMGfmVas

Geeta Sharma landed L6 role at Google for $672K.

But the real breakthrough happened before she said yes to the offer.

Senior Engineering Manager.
CS grad. Data, storage, cloud.
20+ years at the same company.

She came to me looking for a new role.

Four interviews before we met.
Two failed.
Two she never showed up for.

She thought she needed motivation.
A goals doc.
A practice plan.

I gave her both. She didn’t show up. 

It wasn’t a failure of willpower.
It was a systems error.

And it got worse.

By July, she wasn’t even a manager anymore.

By October, she was L6 at Google.

I wrote about what happened in between.

"The Debugging of Geeta Sharma"

Read it here: https://lnkd.in/gyt-UGCp

An Engineering Director hired me to prep him for an M2 role at Meta. He didn’t get it. Not even M1.

On paper, he was perfect.

• Scaled systems
• Managed managers
• Hit every target
• Told every story by the book

So what went wrong?

It wasn’t his answers.
It wasn’t his architecture.
It wasn’t his delivery.

A leadership blind spot, hidden inside his success.

Startups reward it.
Big tech exposes it.

And it revealed itself with one question.

I wrote about it in the article:

"Why Meta rejected Jeff."

(Tap the image below to read it 👇)

One question exposed the blind spot that decides promotions. The Zoom call started on time. Jeff appeared, fiddling with his headphones. He had a poli

Open article: Why Meta Rejected Jeff by Taha Hussain • 4 min read

Senior engineers think it’s about the code.

Staff engineers know it’s about something else.

I’ve seen the same story 100 times:

A sharp Senior does everything right — clean commits, crisp design docs, predictable delivery — and still gets passed over.

Meanwhile, someone with half the technical depth overtakes them into a Staff role.

It’s not politics.
It’s not favoritism.
It’s five invisible skills no one talks out loud.

I wrote about them here:

5 Skills That Separate Staff From Senior

(Click the image below to read it 👇)

I’ve watched this play out too many times. A Senior engineer does everything right. They know the systems cold. Their code reviews are precise. Their 

5 Skills That Separate Staff From Senior

Every engineer hates politics.

Until they watch a weaker idea win
just because the right person said it.

Until their carefully-prepared presentation dies quietly
because they didn't loop someone in.

Until the obvious solution gets tossed
because it makes someone uncomfortable.

At first, you think it's just unfair.

Then you realize:

Fairness was never the game.
Influence was.

Influence isn't about charm or manipulation.
It's knowing:

→ When to speak up, and when to wait.
→ Which egos need room, and how to give it gracefully.
→ How to present your solution as an upgrade, not a threat.

You can pretend politics don't exist.
You can hope your quiet contributions get noticed.

Or you can choose to see the invisible currents clearly.

You don’t need to play games.
You need to stop assuming merit wins on its own.

Engineers can learn influence without faking, manipulating, or selling out. 

Here’s how: https://lnkd.in/gMGfmVas

You say you’re open to feedback.

But you’re not.

You’re open to praise wrapped in suggestions.
You’re open to feedback that doesn’t hurt.
You’re open to what confirms what you already believe.

The moment it threatens your self-image?

You shut down.
You start nitpicking how it was said.
You label it “rude” or “harsh” or “not actionable.”

Here’s what’s really happening:

You’re not protecting your growth.
You’re protecting your guilt.

Because if the feedback is even half true?

You’d have to face all the moments you coasted.
All the things you said you’d do and didn’t.
All the ways you played small when you knew better.

That’s not feedback rejection.
That’s ego triage.

You’re not built soft.
You’re just rusty.

Let the feedback hit.
Let it bruise.
Let it point to something real.

Then fix it.
Quietly.
Relentlessly.
Like a professional.

No shame.
No tantrum.
Just reps.

If you want to turn bruises into breakthroughs, this is where you begin.

Enroll in the Top Engineer Method.

I built it to help engineers grow without defensiveness and improve without drama.

Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gMGfmVas

Promotions teach you how to climb.
Layoffs teach you how to survive.

One rewards loyalty.
The other rewards leverage.

If you’re only optimizing for titles, you’re fragile.
If you’re building skills, networks, and reputation, you’re durable.

One path depends on your company.
The other depends on you.

Need help building a career that survives any company?

Enroll in the Top Engineer Method.

I built it from years of growing engineers at Microsoft, SAP and startups into durable, high-trust professionals.

Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gMGfmVas

Managers obsess over grooming people for promotion.

They forget to groom themselves for replacement.

If your team falls apart when you step away, you did not build strength. You built a bottleneck.

Great managers are not trying to be the hero.

They are trying to be removable.

They train decisions into their people.
They design systems that run without hand-holding.
They make themselves less necessary every quarter.

That is how you earn real scope.

First, your team runs without you.

Then the org trusts you with more than your team.

If you want to build that kind of team, that is exactly what Top Tech Leader is for.

Practical systems, real scripts, and a clear operating model for managers who want ownership, not chaos.

Join here: https://lnkd.in/gHSYuJrv

If you're an engineering leader, here's a hard truth:

Your job is to manage up and craft down.

Executives don’t care about clean architecture.

Engineers don’t care about stakeholder politics.

So your influence lives in the middle:

• Translating chaos into clarity.
• Turning vision into interfaces.
• Turning ego into velocity.

Bad managers hide in ambiguity.
Great ones compress it.

The more clearly you think, the less your team has to.

Need help?

I help engineering leaders cut through ambiguity and lead with clarity.

Learn how inside the Top Tech Leader program ↓
https://lnkd.in/gHSYuJrv

If you're a manager and you're tired all the time...

It's probably not the work.

It's the emotional overhead.

• The passive-aggressive reports
• The pressure to perform + protect
• The back-to-back meetings
• The politics
• The feeling that you're never doing enough for your team

Managing humans is hard.

You're not broken. You're carrying too much.

Want to last in this role?

You need boundaries.
You need peers.
You need space to not be strong.

You're a manager.

But you're still a person.

Don't forget that.

If you’ve been feeling the weight of leadership, you’re not alone.

That’s why I built Top Tech Leader — a place for managers to grow without exhaustion.

Weekly Live Sessions.

Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gHSYuJrv

In a toxic org, being great makes you a target.

• You get more asks
• You become the buffer
• You absorb the chaos

Eventually you get burned out while someone else gets promoted.

Don’t try to “fix the culture.”

That’s code for “die slowly.”

Instead:

• Set hard boundaries
• Leave a trail of impact in writing
• Document everything

You’re not stuck.

You’re in the wrong game.

If you don’t learn the system, the system will decide for you.

If you know you’re capable of more but tired of toxic games, I built the Top Tech Leader for you. Learn more ↓ 

https://lnkd.in/gHSYuJrv

The higher you climb, the fewer people can tell you the truth.

At Senior, everyone praises your decisions.
At Staff, they start copying them.
At Principal, they stop challenging them.

That silence feels like respect.
It’s actually your next ceiling forming.

If no one pushes back, you’ve stopped growing.

Need help?
 
Enroll in the Top Engineer Method. 

I built it from my experience growing engineers at Microsoft, SAP, Walmart and through personalized coaching. 

Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gMGfmVas

Challenge is what keeps your trajectory alive.

Engineers say they hate DSA.

“It’s irrelevant.”
“It’s academic.”
“No one uses red-black trees at work.”

Bullsh*t.

You do not hate DSA.
You hate what it makes you feel.

Slow.
Stupid.
Exposed.

It drags you into problems where you cannot hide behind frameworks.

Where your fancy IDE does not save you.
Where the question does not care about your title, your tech stack, or your years of experience.

And suddenly you are alone with the voice.

“You are not good enough.”
“You have been faking it.”
“Everyone else figured this out years ago.”

So you avoid it.
Or mock it.
Or treat it like a ritual for insecure overachievers.

Engineers blame DSA because blaming themselves is too painful.

Because admitting you feel behind is heavier than any algorithm.

Because if you say it out loud, you have to do something about it.

You’re scared.

Scared that you’ve plateaued.
Scared that you’ll try and still fail.
Scared that your edge is gone.

Here is the reality:

You do not sharpen a knife on bread.
You sharpen it against steel.

Most of your day is soft.
Setters. Getters. API glue.
Tickets that keep you busy but never really test you.

DSA is not for the job.
It is for the edge.
For the part of you that still wants to be dangerous.

You do not have to love it.
You have to stop hiding from it.

Because that shame you keep dodging?
That is where the growth lives.

The edge is in you.

But only if you are willing to bleed a little.

If you're ready to stop hiding and start facing challenges, enroll in the Top Engineer Method.

I built it from years of training engineers at Microsoft, SAP, and startups into the kind of talent others can’t ignore.

Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gMGfmVas

Amazon

As an engineering manager in Amazon AppStore, I work on defining and executing the strategy and roadmap of my business. I lead a team of 10+ amazing engineers who work backwards from customer problems. We build scalable solutions using cutting-edge tools from AWS services, Machine learning, and Generative AI. Our products have reduced the time taken in application testing by 5 times using machine learning-based solutions. 
As a manager, I have coached 100+ engineers in their career development and built a strong team of problem-solving, self-driven individuals.

Software Development Manager

Leading the engineering team, that powers the backend of the Product Details page of Amazon shopping site worldwide, top 10 visited page on internet.

Goldman Sachs

Leadership | Hiring & Mentoring | Big Data | Data pipeline

Designed and managed a team for strategic rebuilt of conflict management system to support the new advanced nature of business with futuristic tech stack using Elasticsearch, microservices & Angular etc. It uses event sourcing in UI to create a reactive front end using RxJS.

Architected & managed a team to optimize the rule based tagging to highlight potential risks related to deals using event driven architecture. This improved the existing rule based system and reduced the noise by 80%.

Managed a team to create a self-service reporting dashboard using Elasticsearch & Angular.  This product saved 208 business days/year for business.

Executed a learning and training program for Legal, Compliance and Audit business unit by Chairing learning and training committee. This committee delivered 500+ person hours of training and mentorship

Vice President

Web & Mobile | Event Sourcing | Mentoring | Training 

Managed a team of interns to create a product for automating various manual approval processes by leveraging JBPM & microservices using RESTful architecture. This system currently hosts 100+ business processes and over 1M unique instances of those processes.

Influenced the business to get funding for a project by implementing a system showcasing how emails can be connected with the application to track the conversation which led to a decision for a deal.

Applied Event sourcing with RabbitMQ and ElasticSearch in implementing a data pipeline for conflict management system so that users can execute searches & reports in near real time.

Led & designed a workflow to document the decision taken during conflict approval process. Further improved the workflow by extending it to junior users, without compromising the risk associated with approval. This led to 70% faster issue approvals.

Associate Programmer

Analyst programmer

Accenture

Web | Enterprise Application Development | Agile | TDD 

Reduced the coding time by 20% by creating a reusable UI component using Google Web Toolkit, leading to a 70% reduction in coding time in similar requirements. 

Redesigned the architecture of a GWT based page, which lead to 70% less defects.

Automated the copy/paste of Review comments from word file to an excel file using POI library, leading to a 100% reduction in developer’s time.

Performed the role of Subject Matter Expert for GWT and Selenium testing tool in Accenture.

Created a team to organize technical sessions and discussions for the project, leading to a decline of 30% questions/doubts from the new joiners and other team members.

Senior Programmer

Favworks

Application Developer | Customer Relationship Management Tool | Billing Tools 

Reduced the time taken in organizing the company’s billing/client/project information by 80% by developing a Billing Software, which was later launched as one of the company’s product.

Developed a CRM and Social Network from scratch using PHP, MySql and JQuery.

Software Engineer

I help in skyrocketing 🚀 your career & finances | Engineering Manager @ Amazon | Ex GS | IIMK | Career coach | Personal finance coach

4 years before I got demoted from leading a team of 15 engineers to 1 engineer.

I doubted myself, if I am good at leading teams or not.

My managers, colleagues (𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘭𝘺) told me to stop leading the team.

Then one day without any agenda, I called my ex-manager, who then had moved to Amazon.

We spoke for an hour. He reminded me of my work and abilities when he used to be my manager.

He told me what matters in career and how I was in a wrong place at a wrong time

We then met again, but this time with agenda of exactly what I needed to do, to crack Amazon interview.

I applied, and cracked the interview in the very first attempt.

And after joining Amazon, I already got promoted once.

𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘱𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘳.

Which taught me 3 very important lessons.

# 1
You are given one life.
Don't spoil it because of being in wrong place.

# 2
Be closer to those who motivate & mentor you.
Avoid everyone else.

# 3
Learning is the only thing that doesn't change.
Rest all is temporary.

In last 5 months I spoke to 50+ of you from LinkedIn. 

In those meetings, I realised there are many in the same place where I was 4 years ago.

It is the state of "self doubt", "constant confusion", "frustration". 

This state not only stops your career growth but also kills your personal life. 

Thats why I made it my mission to help software professionals in achieving their true career potential and  live fulfilling life.

I do it in 2 ways.

[1] By coaching on how to crack Big tech FAANG+ interviews (behavioural)  
[2] By coaching on how to get promoted (career growth).


I do it by sharing result and action oriented "systems" and "frameworks".  

These are proven frameworks that I have developed for myself & learned from others. 


Follow me (and press bell icon) for getting these systems and frameworks.

If you want advise or coaching for your unique situation, DM me "COACH"

Chandra Shekhar Joshi

You aren't paid a Staff Engineer salary to write code faster than a Senior.

If that was the goal, they would just hire two Seniors.

Or buy an AI tool.

Yet, I often see critical teams of 15 people with 3 or 4 Staff Engineers.

On paper, this ratio makes no sense. In reality, it is the only thing keeping the business alive.

When you own a critical business function, things break. High-traffic systems go down. Deadlines get tight.

The team starts panicking.

You are not there to close tickets during the calm times. You are there to make the right call during the chaos.

You ensure the team doesn't make a suboptimal decision that feels good today but kills the architecture next year.

You exist to stop the technical debt from becoming a bottleneck that halts business growth.

But still, this is where many of you Staff engineers get it wrong.

Many of you join a new team or get promoted as a Staff Engineer and immediately miss this point.

Instead of stopping the bleeding, you start your first month by:
- Complaining about the existing legacy system.
- Asking why we aren't doing it the way "Company X" did it.
- Philosophizing about how AI will replace the whole team soon.
- Proposing a total re-architecture without understanding the business context.

This is just noise.

There are already enough people in the company adding noise. They didn't hire a Staff/Principal Engineer to add more of it.

Your value is not in the code you write. It is in the clarity you bring.

You are there to ensure the team, including the Engineering Manager and Product Manager, does not get lost in the noise.

You guide them to make decisions that allow the business to scale.

You are not paid for the features you ship. You are paid for the catastrophic mistakes you prevent the team from making.

Senior Engineers build the product. Staff Engineers protect the business.

Don't confuse the two.

Crack mid-senior/staff level FAANG+ SDE and EM Behavioural, and System Design HLD interviews | DM me “COACH” | Engineering Manager @ Amazon | Engineering Career Coach | FAANG+ Interview Coach

Interviewer: "The system must have low latency."
Candidate: "Got it. I'll use Redis for caching."

This is a weak answer, especially for a Senior/Staff engineer. Here’s why.

No interviewer has ever asked you to design a high latency system. "Low latency" is a given. It is not a useful requirement.

The real question is: How low is low?

Is the p99 target 500ms? 100ms? 20ms? 

You cannot design a solution until you quantify the problem.

Jumping straight to "Redis" is a, keyword-matching reflex.

The Senior+ level approach is to first understand the actual target. 
Then, you design a baseline system.

If that baseline doesn't meet the latency target, you optimize.

And caching is almost never the first optimization.

You check these first:
- Can I improve the database schema to remove expensive joins?
- Can I add read replicas (leader-follower) to scale the reads?
- Can I use a different database (like a KV store) that guarantees single-digit-ms latency?

Only when those options are not enough, you introduce the complexity of a cache.

When you hear the key "low latency" and just return the value "Redis"... 
You're not a system designer.
You're a human key-value store.

If you are preparing for mid-senior/staff SDE, EM system design HLD interviews, and need help, DM me COACH.

Interviewer: "Design a live stream for 10 million users."
Candidate: "I'll use Kafka. The user devices will be the consumers."

This is an immediate fail. It shows you don't understand how Kafka actually works.

When asked about the setup, the candidate often says: "The infra team owns the Kafka cluster."

That is a lazy answer. Infra owns the servers. You own the topology (partitions, keys, consumer groups).

If you don't define the partitions and consumer groups, you build a broken system. 

Here is the math:

Scenario 1: One Consumer Group. 
You have 1,000 partitions and 10 million users. Kafka logic dictates that extra consumers sit idle. Result: 1,000 users watch the match. 9,999,000 users see a black screen.

Scenario 2: 10 Million Consumer Groups. 
You give every user their own group. Now everyone can read the data. Result: You create a metadata storm that crashes the cluster.

And logically? You are connecting 10 million public devices directly to your internal backend. 

That isn't a design. It is a self-inflicted DDoS attack.

Live streaming relies on CDNs (Edge servers), not backend logs.

When you hear "Live Stream" and blindly produce "Kafka"... 
You aren't going to consume an offer letter.
Instead, you are sending your offer letter straight to the Dead Letter Queue.

If you are preparing for mid-senior/staff SDE, EM system design HLD interviews, and need help, DM me COACH.

Interviewer: "We save to the DB and publish to Kafka. What if one fails?" 
Candidate: "I will use a Two-Phase Commit (2PC) to ensure they both succeed."

This is a red flag and it shows the lack of understanding.

You just proved you treat infrastructure like magic.

Two-Phase Commit is not a config switch. It requires a Coordinator node. It requires all participants (DB, Queue, Search Engine) to implement a specific locking protocol:
- Phase 1: "Are you ready to commit?"
- Phase 2: "Commit now."

Yes, distributed databases like MongoDB support transactions using 2PC. 

But that works because the database vendors wrote the complex 2PC logic internally to coordinate between their own nodes. They implemented the protocol for you.

But your custom architecture? Your Elasticsearch cluster? Your Kafka topic? They do not natively support an external coordinator locking their resources.

To make 2PC work here, you have to implement the locking protocol wrapper for every single service. You are signing up to build a distributed transaction manager from scratch.

Even if you build it, you create a massive risk. 2PC is a blocking protocol. If the Coordinator fails, your resources stay locked. Your latency spikes. Your availability drops. You need to handle all of this. 

A Staff Engineer solves this by changing the constraints.

1. They aim for reliable eventual consistency: 
Does the user really need the search index to update the exact millisecond the record is saved? Rarely. A few seconds of lag is acceptable.

2. They use asynchronous patterns (Outbox or CDC): 
Don't write to two systems synchronously. Commit your data to the primary database first. 

Then, use the Transactional Outbox Pattern or Change Data Capture (CDC) to stream that change to Elasticsearch asynchronously.

3. They use Sagas break the flow into local transactions: 
If step 2 fails, trigger a "Compensating Transaction" to undo step 1.

Stop reaching for the most complex tool in the box.
Stop trying to fight the CAP theorem with complex protocols.

You aren't building a distributed system. You are building a distributed deadlock.

If you are preparing for mid-senior/staff SDE, EM system design HLD interviews, and need help, DM me COACH.

Interviewer: "You need to store petabytes of data."
Candidate: "Okay, I'll use a NoSQL database."

This is a weak answer, especially for a Senior/Staff engineer. Here’s why.

The "petabyte" requirement forces one specific, non-negotiable outcome. 
You must use a distributed database.

A single machine cannot hold that much data. 
This is the primary, first-order constraint.

The mistake is confusing the architecture (distributed) with the data model (SQL vs. NoSQL).

SQL vs. NoSQL is about how data is represented. 
It's the API the developer interacts with.

Yes, many popular NoSQL databases are distributed by nature. 
But that's a correlation, not the core principle.

You can absolutely have a distributed SQL setup. This isn't just theory.

YouTube built Vitess to scale MySQL (a SQL database) in a distributed way.

A strong answer first identifies the need for a distributed system. 
Then, it discusses the trade-offs of SQL vs. NoSQL for the specific use case.

Knowing the definitions is for junior engineers. 
Knowing which constraint matters first is for staff.

If you are preparing for mid-senior/staff SDE, EM system design HLD interviews, and need help, DM me COACH.

Interviewer: "Tell me about a time you handled a conflict."
Candidate: "Sure. So, we had this microservice, and it was using gRPC, and my manager wanted to use REST, but the other team was using Kafka..."

...three minutes later, you're still explaining the tech stack.

The interviewer is nodding, but they've checked out.

This is an immediate red flag.

Your answer isn't an answer. It's a "brain dump."

You are "thinking on the fly" and beating around the bush.

When a candidate uses endless, random technical examples to explain a situation, it signals two major failures:
- You don't understand the core situation well enough to be concise.
- You have a communication problem and are using examples as a crutch.

You're hiding in the tech details because you haven't identified the actual business or customer problem.

By the time you finally get to the point (if you ever do), the interviewer has already lost interest and stopped collecting useful data.

A senior-level winning answer is precise. It gets to the point fast.

It leads with the business context, not the tech stack.

Weak: "We had a problem with our Kafka consumers lagging..."

Strong: "My manager and I disagreed on a launch deadline. The conflict was over high customer risk vs. a hard revenue deadline."

See the difference?

The situation and its impact come first. The technology is just supporting context, not the main story.

Structure your answer. Deliver the core point in ~3 minutes or less.

Then, stop talking. Let the interviewer ask for more details if they want them.

If you are giving 10 minute monologue before coming to the point, it is not a good sign of seniority and communication. 

If you are preparing for mid-senior/staff SDE, EM behavioural interviews, and need help, DM me COACH.

Interviewer: "Tell me about a time you worked with a difficult stakeholder."
Candidate: "The Product Manager changed the requirements halfway through the sprint. I told them it was too late, proved the original plan was better, and we shipped as per the original plan."

This is a red flag for a senior role.

You told a story about "winning."

If you won, that means your stakeholder lost. That is not collaboration. That is an argument.

You also failed to define what "difficult" actually means.

A stakeholder changing requirements once is not being difficult. That is just the nature of business. Priorities shift. New data comes in.

If you think a single change request makes someone "difficult," you might be the difficult one.

Here is the winning Staff-level approach.

To answer this correctly, you must first establish a pattern.

Difficulty is not a one-time event. It is recurring behavior.
- A PM who changes scope two days before launch, five sprints in a row.
- A Staff Engineer who re-opens the same design debate for the 10th time without adding new data.

That is a difficult pattern.

Once you establish the pattern, do not talk about how you shut them down.

Talk about:
- How you identified the root cause of their behavior (empathy).
- How you set up a process to mitigate the disruption.
- How you secured a meaningful outcome, even if it wasn't perfect.

The interviewer is not checking if you can debate.

They are checking if you can work with humans who are stressed, disorganized, or stubborn without becoming toxic yourself.

Juniors try to win the argument. Staff engineers try to save the relationship and the delivery.

If you are preparing for mid-senior/staff SDE, EM behavioural interviews, and need help, DM me COACH.

Engineer: "I tried using AI for the new shipping feature. It wrote great unit tests, but the core logic is broken. It hallucinated APIs that don't exist."

Leader: "Did you prompt it correctly?"

Engineer: "Yes. I uploaded the architecture docs and the context files."

Leader: "You need to be more prescriptive. Give it specific examples of the pattern we use."

After 2 days...

Engineer: "I spent ten hours doing that. It still tried to use the wrong framework. Added code and features that were not required."

Leader: "Well, did you provide the Low-Level Design with code snippets?"

Stop and look at that last request.

If I have to write the code to tell the AI how to write the code, I might as well copy-paste it into my IDE.

This conversation is happening in many engineering orgs right now.

It is an example of the sunk cost fallacy.

Leaders are invested in the narrative that AI will make organizations "100x more productive."

They cite examples like, "My 2-year-old built Tic Tac Toe in 2 minutes."

But there is a massive difference between generating a static game and building a production-ready feature in a complex distributed system.

When the tool fails, the narrative forces you to blame the instruction, not the tool.

So you make the task less ambiguous. You break it down. You feed it context.

You end up treating the AI like a Staff Engineer who needs tasks broken down like an intern.

If you hired a Staff Engineer who needed that level of hand-holding, you would fire them.

You wouldn't say, "I just need to prompt them better."

Use the tool for what it is actually good at.

It crushes unit tests. It writes great boilerplate. It explains regex perfectly.

Keep the narrative there.

But stop pretending it can architect complex systems with minimal to no hand-holding.

Real productivity comes from using the right tool for the job, not forcing the job to fit the tool.

A few months ago: "AI will replace all software engineering jobs."
Now: "AI is a useless bubble that just hallucinates."

Both narratives are extreme. Both are wrong.

This is the real problem. We operate in extremes.

We want to label everything as 100% "good" or 100% "bad." We avoid the complex, nuanced middle because we crave quick labels.

The "replace everyone" story was a funding-driven hype cycle. Building useless agents for "hello world" tasks was noise.

But the new narrative, "AI is useless," is just as lazy.

I said it then and I'll say it now: AI is changing the way we work in software.

It’s not about replacing engineers. It’s about changing the work itself.

Tedious work that used to take days now takes a few hours. That is the real impact.

Stop thinking in extremes. The truth is not "good" or "bad." The truth is in how the tool is applied.

Interviewer: "Tell me about a time you traded quality for speed."
Candidate: "We skipped unit tests for three files to meet a deadline, but I added them right after launch."

This is a weak answer from a senior candidate.

It tells interviewer you are playing it safe.

This is because, you are afraid that admitting to "low quality" makes you look like a bad engineer.

So you pick a trivial example, skipping a few tests, that has zero real risk.

But this backfires.

It signals that you haven't been in a position where you had to make a real, painful trade-off.

It suggests you haven't carried the weight of a business-critical launch where "perfect" wasn't an option.

The 'Staff-Level' solution:

Stop trying to prove you are a "clean coder." 
Start proving you are a business partner.

A Staff engineer doesn't talk about skipping tests. 
They talk about skipping architecture.

A strong answer looks like this:
- We had a hard deadline for the Black Friday sale.
- The "right" design was a microservice with a dedicated DB.
- We built a monolith extension on the legacy DB instead.
- We accrued technical debt.
- But we captured $5M in revenue that would have been lost.

Why is this works?

It shows you understand that shipping value > perfect code.

It shows you can calculate the cost of debt vs. the cost of delay.

It shows you have the confidence to make a mess intentionally to win.

Junior engineers fear technical debt. Staff engineers manage it as a financial and business decision.

If you are preparing for mid-senior/staff SDE, EM behavioural interviews, and need help, DM me COACH.

One out of five engineers treats job titles like a candy shop.

They think they can walk in and just "pick" the Staff Engineer or Engineering Manager role.

This is living in delusion.

If you are operating as an SDE 2, you cannot just apply for a Staff role and hope to crack it.

If you are a Senior Engineer, you cannot simply "decide" to become an Engineering Manager in a new company without prior experience.

The market has shifted.

During the hiring craze of 2021, companies were desperate. They took bets on potential. 

They hired Tech Leads directly into EM roles hoping they would figure it out.

That era is over.

Today, supply is high and open roles are scarce. No company will hire you as a Manager if you have never managed a team.

And even if you somehow crack the interview, the danger is real.

On day one, the company will expect you to perform at that level. If you have never handled that scope or ambiguity before, your chances of success are slim to none.

Titles exist for a reason.

They are not just labels. 

They define:
- The scope of problems you solve.
- The level of ambiguity you handle.
- The impact you deliver.

You cannot fake this scope in an interview.

Here is the reality check.
If you want to jump from IC to Manager, or SDE 2 to Staff, do not apply outside yet.

Do it in your current company first.

Work with your manager to expand your scope. Take on the responsibilities of the next level. Get the internal transition or promotion.

Build the proof of work first.

Roles are not candies distributed at the entrance. They are recognition for the work you have already done.

System design is not about memorizing every tool in the ecosystem.

It is about knowing how to use a few core concepts to solve massive problems.

Most engineers memorize "Kafka" or "Redis" without understanding why they need them.

This is a junior mindset.

Tools like "Kafka", "Redis", or "Cassandra" are just implementation details. They change every few years.

The physics of data movement do not.

If you want to pass the Staff bar, stop memorizing feature lists. Focus on these 5 invariants:

1. If you look for one bottleneck, look at the Database. 
-> Stateless services are easy to scale. You just add more servers.
-> State is hard. The database is almost always the constraint. If you aren't optimizing the state, you aren't solving the problem.

2. If you master one scaling pattern, make it Partitioning + Replication. 
-> Caching solves latency. It does not fix write throughput.
-> Partitioning (sharding) combined with Replication is the only way to scale write-heavy systems indefinitely while keeping data durable.

3. If you do one calculation, calculate Data Storage. 
-> QPS is easy to scale. Storage is a hard constraint.
-> If you underestimate data growth, you will pick the wrong database. If you pick the wrong database, you will rewrite the system in six months.

4. If you analyze one trade-off, analyze the impact on Functional Requirements. 
-> "Consistency vs. Availability" is an abstract concept.
-> You need to make a concrete choice. Example: "We will show users stale data to ensure the system survives a partition."

5. If you want to understand one thing about non-functional requirements (NFRs), stop listing their definitions 
-> Do not just list "Low Latency" or "High Availability."
-> Explain what they mean for this specific question. "Low" for a chat app is different from "Low" for a payment gateway.

Tools expire. Fundamental architecture patterns stay the same.

If you only know the tools, you aren't a System Designer.
You are just a walking README. md file.

If you are preparing for mid-senior/staff SDE, EM system design HLD interviews, and need help, DM me COACH.

A 20-year EM or Senior engineer applies for a job.
But their resume says "14 years of experience."

This is a real (and flawed) strategy I'm seeing. 
Senior engineers and EMs are intentionally cutting their experience.

They assume they aren't prepared. 

They believe their stories and projects for 20 years aren't "good enough." 

They think "14 years" will make the interview easier.

This is a panic move. And it solves the wrong problem.

If you can't tell compelling stories about your 20-year career... You can't tell them for a 14-year career either.

The problem isn't the number. It's the story.

This fear comes from two root causes:
1. You became too comfortable in your job.
2. You lost motivation and stopped doing two things.

First, you stopped deeply reflecting on your projects and career stories.

Second, you stopped putting effort into upskilling.

By upskilling, I don't just mean the latest AI trend. 

I mean the core skills:
- Building a deep understanding of systems.
- Improving your leadership and behavioral skills.

When you suddenly decide to switch, you realize your knowledge is weak. Your stories are shallow. 

So you try to hide your experience instead of fixing the gap.

Don't be in that boat. Start working on this today:
1. Actively reflect on your career stories.
2. Spend time building your core technical and behavioral skills.

You don't need to hide your 20 years. 
You need to be able to explain them.

If you are preparing for mid-senior/staff SDE, EM behavioural interviews, and need help, DM me COACH.

You reached home. You are tired due to work. You still have to complete that one last work before you start interview preparation. Your body is giving up. Rejecting the tiredness you opened that youtube video to learn. Its good content. But you don't know how to apply it structurally in an interview. You followed the same routine for 5 days, and 6th day you gave up.

You still have your current job.

So, even if you don't prepare it's not like you wont get bread for 2 times in a day.

You think, you will restart this later, when there is less work at job.

You feel better now. At least you tried. 

Yes, you did try. But......

It was the most unsuccessful way of trying.

You knew since day 1 this routine is not gonna work out.

You knew about yourself, how committed you were.

You knew the work pressure at job.

But, you were trying to convince yourself that it will get better in sometime.

1st month passes by.. then 2nd and 3rd and 6th.

Before you know, its already more than an year. 

Now, you will anyways have to restart it.

You tried doing same again.

Result : Same.

But, what if: 
- you would've made yourself accountable 
- you could've carved out time for preparation
- you could've prepared using structured resources

You would have cracked the company during first time itself. 

Lack of time + Procrastination + unstructured resources

have killed more dreams than stock market. 

So, next time you are starting preparation, do this instead: 

[1] Start with self evaluation on below interview rounds.

Rate your preparation and confidence from 1 to 5 where 1 is the lowest.

a) DSA round
b) LLD round
c) HLD round
d) Behavioural rounds
e) Your most recent project  

[2] After this, create a working backward plan for interviews.

- This plan should not be more than 5 weeks in future.
- Spend 1st week only on DSA. Try to find out patterns
- Second week on System design (HLD round)
- Third week on System design (LLD round)
- Fourth week on behavioural interviews.
- Fifth week on most recent project.
- Also do revision in 5th week.

[3] Create an optimised resume

Talk about the impact of your work (clearly)
Don't use cliche words.

[4] Practice with mock interviews

[5] Start applying for job.

Don't apply through "Easy Apply" button on LinkedIn.
It has not worked for anyone whom I am know of.

Instead, apply this strategy:

- first; ask referral from those with whom you have worked in the past and are now working in the company you are applying for.

- second; once you have exhausted this list, ask for referral from employees of those companies on Linkedin

- third; connect with recruiter of that company, and send your profile through email (not linkedin DM)

- fourth; directly apply on company's website.

[6] Don't wait for perfect preparation.

No preparation is complete and perfect.
Instead, go ahead with what you know.
Learn from rejections, and reapply.    

If you are applying for mid-senior SDE, EM roles, and need help, DM me COACH.

Most Sr/Staff+ level system design interviews go wrong, because engineers memorize what a tool does, not why it was built.

They prep for system design by creating checklists.
- Use Kafka for events.
- Use Redis for caching.
- Use Postgres for relational data.

But this is just memorization. It misses the why. 

Every tool you use is just a bundle of trade-offs.

This works perfectly, until the interviewer asks "Why?"

Suddenly, you're stuck. 
Your checklist has no bullet point to justify your choice. 
You can't explain the trade offs.

The failure happens because you're missing the core architectural decisions behind the technology.

You need to know:
- The most important architectural choice of that tool.
- How does that architectural choice impacts your system.
- How does it leads to you breaching functional requirements.

In this carousel, you’ll learn:
 - Why your checklist-based prep is failing you.
- A quick primer on Kafka's core architectural trade-off.
- The exact interview-losing scenario: Kafka for a task scheduler.
- The difference between a mid-level answer and a staff-level answer.

(𝘛𝘪𝘱: 𝘴𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘵, 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘶𝘱𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸.)

Stop memorizing what tools do. 
Start understanding why they were built.

Knowing the definition of Kafka is for exams. 
Knowing its trade-offs is for a staff-level offer.

If you are preparing for mid-senior/staff SDE, EM system design HLD interviews, and need help, DM me COACH.

Staff-System-Design-Kafka-Architectural-Tradeoffs

"We'll use events and CDC for loose coupling."
This statement sounds good in a design doc.

In reality, it's a top reason for "silent" production failures.

An upstream system (Service A) produces data. A downstream system (Service B) needs that data.

To avoid a "tight coupling," the engineer has Service B "listen" for changes from Service A.

Maybe Service B uses Change Data Capture (CDC) to stream changes from Service A's database. Or it just consumes from a generic event log.

Service A doesn't even know Service B exists. This feels like a win for loose coupling.

It's actually a time bomb.

And then reorg happens, team gets changed completely. 

The failure happens 3-6 months later.

The team for Service A changes their data contract. 
They rename a field. 
They refactor the code and stop producing a specific event.

Why? Because they forgot Service B was silently listening.

The dependency was implicit. 
It wasn't obvious in their code.

Service A's tests pass. They ship their change.

Weeks later, Service B breaks. The data is corrupt. The system is down in production. 

The damage is done, and it takes days to trace and fix the problem, which happened due to a change made a month ago.

That's why, stop relying on silent event streams for critical data flows.

Use an explicit command instead.

This doesn't mean it must be a synchronous API call. It can (and often should) still be an event.

But Service A must explicitly publish a well-defined event. 

The code in Service A should literally say: event_publisher.send("OrderProcessed_v1", data)

Now, the dependency is explicit.

When the Service A team refactors their code, they see this line. They can't forget it.

They are forced to think: "Who consumes OrderProcessed_v1? Oh, Service B. We are moving to v2, so we need to tell them."

This conversation happens during development. Not during a production fire.

Don't confuse "loose coupling" with "implicit dependencies."

One is a good design goal. 
The other is a production incident waiting to happen.

If you are preparing for mid-senior/staff SDE, EM system design HLD interviews, and need help, DM me COACH.

"Why does Big Tech still ask DSA questions?"
"Why design for a billion users? That's not my daily job."
"Why do my behavioral answers have to be so polished? It feels fake."

Many of you get stuck here.

You spend energy questioning the interview "game." 
And then argue about what companies should be asking.

This is not how you prepare for interviews.

You are seeking the job, not providing/creating one.

The company is not going to change its interview process for you. 
Complaining about the "rules" is a waste of your time.

Instead, use 100% of that energy to prepare.
- Focus on what they will ask, not what they "should" ask.
- Google the common questions asked for your level at that company.
- Practice the patterns.
- Learn the format they expect.

That is how you pass the interview.

You can debate what makes a "good" interview after you get the offer. 

Or better yet, when you are in a position to change the process from the inside.

First, you have to pass the test.

How to create 10+ stories for your next Sr, Staff, EM behavioural interview from your last 2-3 projects using a 5-step process.

First think about your last 2-3 projects, which you have done in last 1-2 years. 

Keep a pen and paper ready to write down your stories.

Step # 1 

What is the first thing you do when you join a new project or company?

You need to ramp up yourself with: 
- the tool, 
- technology, 
- processes, 
- product

Write down: 
- how did you learn, 
- what challenges you faced, 
- what timelines were you tracking, 
- why learning them was important.

These are your learnability stories. 

Step # 2 

Now, when you work in a  project, what is the next thing you do?

You collaborate with stakeholders - product manager, your manager, colleagues, customers, QA, UX, BA etc.

These collaborations are about:
- understanding and prioritizing requirements 
- deciding which features to build, & which not
- disagreeing with them, aligning on a approach
- communicating with them to avoid confusions 

These are your stakeholder collaboration stories. 

Step # 3 

Now after requirements are finalized, what do you do next?

Design and implement the solution.

Think about:
- how did you dive deep to come up with solutions
- how did you use metrics, data to justify your choices
- how did you decide on tech stacks, design approaches
- did you have to choose quality vs speed of delivery
- did you innovate by making anything simple

These are your tech leadership stories.

Step # 4 

What is the next thing you do after above?

You take ownership and deliver the solution.

Think about:
- how did you deliver despite tight timelines
- how did you take complete ownership of delivery
- did you have to make tradeoffs between short and long term solutions?

These are your project delivery stories.

Step # 5

Once then project is delivered, what is the next thing you do?

You support the customers and continuously improve it.

Think about:
- the difficult discussions you have had with customers
- did you ever had to say NO to them, and why
- did you went above and beyond while supporting them

These are your customer focus stories. 

Bonus (Step # 6):

This is an overarching step while doing all the above steps.

- How did you help, and supported your colleagues?
- Did you mentor, coach them, if yes, what were results.


Thats all. 

If you took notes while reading this post, then congrats you are ready with 10+ stories that will cover 99% of behavioural interview questions.  

If you couldn't take notes, then save this post for later.

If you are preparing for mid-senior/staff+ SDE, EM behavioural interviews and need help, DM me COACH.

"I don’t have any disagreement stories for behavioural interviews."

When an engineer says this, I know two things:
- They have definitely had disagreements.
- They just didn't realize it.

And that is the real problem.

An engineer is prepping for interviews. 
They feel good. 
Then they get the "conflict" or "disagreement" question.

Suddenly, they freeze.

They think:
- "Wait... have I ever had a real disagreement?"
- "Does that small debate with the staff engineer count?"
- "What if they think I'm difficult?"

So they downgrade the story. 
They make it "safer."

They say things like:
- "It wasn’t a real conflict..."
- "We just had different opinions..."
- "We agreed in the end, so it was fine..."

And just like that, they erase the most valuable part of their story.

But forget that disagreement is not a red flag. In fact the real red flag is not being able to share the disagreement story for a Sr/Staff roles.

Disagreement is one of the most powerful ways to show maturity and engineering judgment.

Handled well, a disagreement story proves:
- You challenge ideas, not people.
- You can handle power dynamics.
- You care about the best solution, not just about being right.

That is gold in senior and staff-level interviews.

Disagreement doesn't have to be a shouting match.

It's often as simple as this:
- You proposed a design.
- A staff engineer said, “Have you considered this alternative?”
- You didn’t agree, and you had to align.

That’s it. That's the disagreement.

We don't remember it as a "disagreement" in our day-to-day work. We call it "part of the process."

But in an interview, that quiet tension is what reveals your judgment.

The other reason engineers hesitate? They are taught that disagreement means being difficult.

So they are unsure:
- Should I downplay the tension?
- Will this make me look bad?

The best stories do not hide the tension. 
They show how you handled it with clarity and conviction.

Real engineering isn't about avoiding disagreement. 
It’s about learning how to walk through it without burning trust.

If you are preparing for mid-senior/staff SDE, EM behavioural interviews, and need help, DM me COACH.

A critical system design interview mistake:
Jumping straight into drawing boxes.

Do this, and you’ll miss key requirements. 

You'll over-engineer the solution. You'll fail to communicate your thinking.

Why does this happen? 
- You're impatient. 
- You want to jump to the 'how' (the boxes). 
- Before you've even settled the 'what' and 'why'.

Instead, try this:
- Clarify requirements first. Ask questions. Stop assuming. This aligns you with the interviewer.
- Break it down step-by-step. Start with the high-level architecture. Then move to components.
- Think out loud. Explain your trade-offs, scalability, and failure handling as you go.

This will feel slow at first.

I’ve personally felt that impatience. That urge to jump straight to the solution.

But structured thinking beats rushed drawing.

Better to design with clarity than to draw in chaos.

If you are preparing for mid-senior/staff SDE, EM system design HLD interviews, and need help, DM me COACH.

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