Mock interview

Allow about 30 minutes: ten rounds of three minutes. Begin each with a 30-second answer. Use the rest to draw the path, state a failure case and defend a trade-off. Ask a partner to pick one counter-question from the linked scenario. The final round asks for a proposed feature; say clearly what is already implemented and what you would add.

Start, pause or reset each round’s timer. It never advances automatically; finish your thought and select Next round. You can practice without timing or storage. Reloading starts fresh.

Round 1 of 10

Draw one booking from browser to durable confirmation.

3:00

Start when you are ready. You can also practice without the timer.

Start timerReset timerReview answer

Next roundRestart interview

Questions without the timer

This list works without JavaScript. Cover the review link while you answer.

1. Draw one booking from browser to durable confirmation. Review scenario
2. Two customers want the last seat. Where is correctness enforced? Review scenario
3. The booking response times out. What may the client safely retry? Review scenario
4. The relay publishes and crashes before recording success. What happens? Review scenario
5. A queue message succeeds partly. How do you recover without duplicating effects? Review scenario
6. Traffic jumps during a sale. How do you protect Postgres and preserve seats? Review scenario
7. A new deployment needs a schema change. What is the safe sequence? Review scenario
8. Users see an older release after approval. What evidence do you collect? Review scenario
9. The site returns errors. What do you do in the first five minutes? Review scenario
10. How would you add door check-in without accepting the same ticket twice? Review scenario

Review your performance

For each round, give yourself one point for each of these:

• You traced the real MiniTickets components and identified the source of truth.
• You explained a failure and its recovery without promising exactly-once effects.
• You defended a trade-off and asked which requirement could change the choice.

This is a self-assessment, not an automatic interview grade. Repeat the two weakest answers with the scenarios, then rehearse again without opening the notes.