Interviewed for a Senior Engineer position.
The first DSA round was good and focused on problem-solving. However, the second round with SaiKrishna Vemulapally, which was supposed to be a System Design discussion, felt more like an evaluation of past decisions made in my current product rather than an assessment of system design skills.
A large part of the discussion focused on optimizations I had implemented in production systems. After explaining the improvements, I was repeatedly asked why those approaches were not followed from the beginning. In my opinion, this misses the reality that most systems evolve over time as scale, requirements, and bottlenecks become better understood.
What was missing was a discussion around trade-offs, constraints, alternative approaches, and how I would design or improve a system today. Senior-level interviews should focus on evaluating engineering judgment, problem-solving, and design thinking rather than judging historical decisions without full product context.
I would also encourage interviewers to come prepared, review the candidate's resume beforehand, and spend time understanding the candidate's background and experience. It is difficult to have a meaningful technical discussion when questions are asked without sufficient context about the candidate's role, responsibilities, and the environment in which decisions were made.
Overall, the interaction felt more focused on defending past decisions than demonstrating technical capability.