Strengths

Functional & Non-Functional Requirements

• Clearly identified core functional requirements (e.g., post creation with varying privacy levels).
  
  
• Incorporated additional requirements, showing proactive thinking on latency and scalability, aligned with interviewer expectations on non-functional aspects.
  
  

High-Level Design & Deep Dive

• Delivered a comprehensive high-level design covering post creation, news feed generation, and privacy configuration.
  
  
• Proactively discussed failure scenarios, such as job queue durability (WAL) and recovery considerations.

Improvement Suggestions

Delivery Framework

• Highlight Staff-Level Thinking: Focus on discussions that differentiate you (e.g., scaling, reliability) and minimize time on common areas like API design.
  

• Prioritize Complex Topics: Spend more time on challenging functional/non-functional requirements (latency, scalability, fault tolerance). Cover simpler ones (e.g., post creation) briefly. 

Technical Excellence & Deep Dive

• Justify Key Components with Trade-offs: For critical design elements (e.g., friendship graph generation), present alternatives and analyze pros/cons. No need to do this for every component—only scenario-critical ones.
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• Proactively Identify Edge Cases: Raise subtle issues (e.g., feed clearing from privacy changes). As a staff-level engineer, anticipate race conditions, consistency risks, and flaws in proposed designs—and offer fixes.

Proactively Identify Edge Cases: Raise subtle issues (e.g., feed clearing from privacy changes). As a staff-level engineer, anticipate race conditions, consistency risks, and flaws in proposed designs—and offer fixes.