openai | Software Engineer | Interview Experience
Interview Date: Not specified
Result: Not specified
Difficulty: Not specified
Interview Process
The interview focused on system design questions. The candidate noted that preparation for system design interviews has become quite formulaic, and the interviewers’ levels of expertise can vary significantly.
Technical Questions
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System Design: Implement a Slack-like chat system
- Requirements: Support sending messages to a group or individual users, create new group chats, add users to group chats, send notifications, and support rich media (e.g., images).
- Follow-up: How to implement the deletion of a message by a user.
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System Design: Webhook Service
- Requirements: Design a service that allows users to register a callback address and an event ID. The system should trigger the callback with a specific payload whenever the event ID is activated. It is assumed that each event ID maps to a unique callback address, and each event ID will trigger only one callback address. The system should handle up to 1 billion events per day.
Tips & Insights
Candidates should be prepared for in-depth questions on common design patterns and implementation details, especially for topics like message deletion in chat systems. It is crucial to align on design options early in the conversation, focusing on the overall design direction rather than just functional or non-functional requirements. Other frequently asked design topics include distributed CI/CD workflow systems, Yelp, and payment systems.