Track 5 · Design Interview Problems
Design Google Docs (Collaborative Real-Time Editing)
Real-time concurrent document editing like Google Docs and Notion. Operational Transformation (OT) vs CRDTs, offline sync convergence, and stateful document sessions.
Interview problem25 min read1 interactive
On this page
- Problem framing
- Questions I ask before drawing anything
- Requirements
- Estimation
- API design
- Database schema
- The two mathematical engines: OT vs CRDT
- Interactive collaborative sync simulator
- Evolutionary architecture: v1 MVP to v2 Distributed scale
- System architecture deep dives
- Edge cases and failure recovery
- Cross-questions interviewers will ask
- Interview Rubric: Mid-Level vs Senior / Staff