Understanding How to Prepare for Vague or Hypothetical Architecture Interview Questions

Navigating technical interviews often involves tackling abstract or broad questions that test your problem-solving abilities and architectural thinking. While such questions can seem daunting—especially under time pressure—their purpose is to evaluate your approach to designing systems rather than expecting a perfect answer.

Below is an exploration of how to approach and prepare for these types of interview questions, illustrated by a real-world example, along with strategies to refine your responses and build confidence.

A Real-World Example of a Vague System Design Question

During an interview, I was prompted with a question roughly framed as:

“Pretend I need to build a cloud storage or file system. How would you design the relationships within a DBMS for such a system?”

While the question lacked specifics—such as scale, concurrency, features, or constraints—the task was to conceptualize a suitable data model. Because of limited time and additional questions, I chose to outline my initial thoughts rather than a definitive schema.

My Initial Thought Process

I focused on core entities and their relationships:

• Folders:
• Can be nested (children of other folders).
• The root folder has no parent.

• Subfolders have a parent folder.

• Files:

• Do not contain other entities.
• Have attributes like name and file type.
• Belong either directly to the root or to a folder.

I considered different design models:

1. Polymorphic Entities:
2. A single table/type that can represent both files and folders, distinguished with a type field.

3. Each record could have an optional parent ID, linking to either a folder or root.

4. Separate Tables:

5. Specific tables for files and folders, with folder references for hierarchy.

6. Hierarchical Model:

7. Implemented via parent foreign keys.
8. The root folder acts as a unique entity with no parent.

Potential models I considered included:

• A “Root” entity with no parent, linked to multiple files and folders.
• A “Folder” entity that may have a parent folder or be at the top level.
• A “File” entity linked to either the root or a parent folder.

Key Takeaways and Preparation Tips

1. Clarify Assumptions:
   When faced with a vague question, ask clarifying questions. For example:
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