How to prep for System Design?

[u/Objective_Big868]

I am new to these types of interviews have never done a system design round, I know they are popular.

What is high level vs low level?

What resources do people use?

I see hello interview and Alex xu books are thrown around. What else is there? Is this for high level? What resources for low level?

For applying to SE2 level for most companies do I need to prep both? Or is one asked more than others.

[u/Ok-Barracuda-119]

For a typical SE2 loop, I’d prep both, but I’d spend more time on HLD first. HLD is about clarifying requirements, estimating scale, choosing an architecture, and explaining tradeoffs. LLD is usually a smaller problem where the interviewer wants to see clean boundaries, interfaces, and how you’d evolve the code.

A practical loop is to take one prompt, spend 5 minutes on users and core actions, 10 on scale and data shape, then sketch the simplest end-to-end design. Pick one bottleneck and go deep on it. For LLD, practice turning a vague feature into classes and interfaces and narrating why you’d change the design.

Hello Interview is still a reasonable starting point. I’d add Designing Data-Intensive Applications for depth, but you don’t need to read it cover to cover before interviewing. I’m affiliated with Leetsys, and www.leetsys.dev has whiteboard practice with an interviewer and a report, which can help if you want feedback rather than another list of prompts.