The interviewer seemed like a very senior person, I felt his level was really high. I got the hugely popular Bookstore question.
He asked a lot of questions about failure modes. For example: if the request inserts into the DB but then SQS fails, what should happen? How can we prevent that? I said I would use a transaction outbox. He said he had never heard of that pattern, we spent a while with me explaining it, and he still said he didn't understand. The communication wasn't great the whole way through. Maybe I was just too nervous and didn't explain it clearly.
He also asked how to avoid duplicate messages with at-least-once delivery.
I had prepared for a long time, so the initial flow came out very fast, but the later part got a bit stumbling, especially after being challenged a few times, when I started to panic. Drawing with Draw Mode in CoderPad also didn't go smoothly.
After waiting a week I was told I passed. Thanks to the interviewer for going easy on me. There are definitely things I haven't mastered solidly. Thank you for giving me this chance, I'll keep working hard.
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