You're Not Interviewing for the Job. You're Auditioning for the Job Title

Summary

I once had a job interview for a backend position. Their stack was Node.js, MySQL, nothing exotic. The interviewer asked: "If you have an array containing a million entries, how would you sort the data by name?" My immediate thought was: If you have a JavaScript array with a million entries, you're certainly doing something wrong. The interviewer continued: "There are multiple fields that you should be able to sort by." This felt like a trick question. Surely the right answer was to explain why you shouldn't be sorting millions of records in JavaScript. Pagination, database indexing, server-side filtering. So I said exactly that. I was wrong. He wanted me to show him Array.prototype.sort(). My crime? Prioritizing real-world efficiency over theatrical scale. The interviewer didn't see a practical engineer, he saw a candidate who "lacked vision." The Theater of Technical Interviews I once read that "a complex system usually reflects an absence of good design." It's brilliant. True. And if you're prepping for a system design interview, forget it immediately. In real-world engineering, simplicity is king. In interviews, complexity is currency. Job interviews aren't assessments. They're auditions for a job title: The Architect Who Solves Hard Problems™. You're not being evaluated on whether you can build the described system efficiently. You're being evaluated on whether you can perform the role of someone who could theoretically build Google. The Unwritten Script Every system design interview follows the same theatrical formula: Act I: Summon the Dragons First, you assume infinite users and planetary-scale traffic. Multiply every reasonable number by 1,000. Treat a todo app like it's handling the New York Stock Exchange. The interviewer nods approvingly as you describe millions of concurrent users for what is essentially a digital notepad. Act II: Draw the Arcane Symbols Next, you cover the whiteboard in boxes, arrows, and at least one redundant Kubernetes cluster. Add ...