Study plan (12 weeks)

Week 1 — Foundations

Finance & Transactions: Deep dives into Payment Systems, Digital Wallets, and high-throughput Stock Exchanges.

Financial Systems: Solving the complexities of Payment Systems, Digital Wallets, and Stock Exchanges.

Specialized Platforms: Architecture for Ad Click Aggregation, Hotel Reservations, Distributed Email Services, and Real-time Gaming Leaderboards. System Design Interview – An Insider's Guide: Volume 2

The book utilizes a 4-step framework for every system design problem: Understand the problem and establish design scope. Propose high-level design and get buy-in. Design deep dive into specific components. Wrap up with a discussion on bottlenecks and trade-offs.

• Excellent continuation from Volume 1, focusing on deeper, more complex systems (e.g., YouTube, Google Drive, Uber, Ticketmaster)
• Clear diagrams and step-by-step explanations
• Real-world trade-offs (consistency vs. availability, SQL vs. NoSQL, etc.)
• Includes "what to expect" from FAANG-level interviews