Seasoned systems engineers may remember the time when a cloud was something everyone ignored on a network diagram. It was a time when applications ran on electrified metal and we all knew where our machines lived. In a closet at the end of the corridor. We stopped ignoring the clouds when they brought us data centers on demand along with our bosses’ excitement for saving money.

I discovered an undocumented feature in my wifi-capable, portable document scanner: It can upload scanned documents, such as unsolicited love letters, via a webhook. Implementing the server side of the webhook was a nice afternoon project.

A few days ago my wife and I visited the Teide Observatory on the volcano island of Tenerife. We learned about the donkey’s belly cloud-blocking weather phenomenon that makes the Teide national park the perfect place for stargazing. Yesterday, after sunset, we jumped into our tiny rental car and drove into the Teide crater for some astrophotography.

I was a bit surprised by how thoroughly Google tested my management and leadership skills. Three out of the eight interviews were about management and leadership. That gave me a strong hint that these interviews are similarly important to Google as the technical interviews. I had to reflect about my past leadership experiences in the army, about management in non-profit organizations and my team leading in the realm of event management. I also had to think about how I approached education (which I am passionate about), coaching and mentoring. If I wanted to demonstrate those skills in an interview I knew, I’d better have my story straight and be aware of what I am and am not good at.

Unfortunately, Non-abstract Large System Design (NALSD) is a lesser known concept to most of the engineering world. When I started preparing for the NALSD interview I found resources on pure NALSD to be rare. Therefore, I primarily used the traditional system design wisdom to prepare for this type of interview. I found tons of material on traditional system design and respective interview questions including recorded mock interview sessions. I used those resources to get a better understanding of how distributed systems are designed nowadays. Upon that I built an understanding for NALSD by attaching realistic numbers to the abstract designs I read about.