Flash sale load shedding
Design load-shedding and graceful degradation for an e-commerce site during a flash sale that drives 20x normal traffic. The checkout/payment path must stay up even if it means dropping non-essential features (recommendations, reviews, analytics). The system must shed load before it collapses, prioritizing revenue-critical requests. Design how you classify, prioritize, and shed traffic, and how you decide when to start shedding.
What a strong answer looks like
Clarify scale and constraints first. Propose a clean component breakdown, then go deep on the hard parts (data model, bottlenecks, consistency, failure modes) and name the trade-offs you are making.
Clarify5:00 left
Estimate5:00 planned
Design15:00 planned
Deep dive12:00 planned
Failure8:00 planned
Which questions mattered is sealed until you submit. Telling you now would just be handing over the edge cases.
Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.