Why do interviewers want you to talk about trade-offs in a design?
Options
- Every choice has costs; weighing them shows judgment (Correct option)
- There is always a single perfect answer to find
- It makes the interview last longer than planned
- Trade-offs are only about the money of the project
Answer
Because every choice has benefits and costs (speed vs consistency, simplicity vs flexibility); showing that you weigh them proves engineering judgment
Why
There is rarely a best design, only a best design for these requirements.
Examples: a cache makes reads faster but data may be stale. A microservice split gives independence but adds network failures. SQL gives strong consistency; some NoSQL stores give easier horizontal scaling.
Say: 'I choose X because of Y, and the cost is Z'.
Remember
Say what you choose, why, and what it costs.