It’s astonishing: According to the major tech companies, 73% of software engineers fail to answer a straightforward 5-minute question in their system design interviews. It’s not about hard technologies, it’s about the regular design approaches that candidates with experience could still forget.

The Question That’s Breaking Careers

This challenge looks quite straightforward: "Design a basic chat message system that allows users to send and receive messages in real-time within just five minutes." In spite of this, this simple prompt has played a significant role in preventing many from getting jobs at Google, Amazon and Meta.

So many talented people struggle when they encounter this area of engineering. We find solutions to problems by staying calm and thinking clearly, not by memorizing lots of facts.

What Goes Wrong in Those Critical 5 Minutes

Panic Sets In Fast: Right away, many candidates jump into examining database schemas or WebSocket implementations and often ignore the need to find out what needs to be achieved. With a chat system, the system should be able to support 100 concurrent users or 10,000; therefore, a simple WebSocket connection could fit smaller loads while horizontal scaling requires message queues and load balancers. The absence of this understanding makes engineers waste their time on unimportant technical details.

Missing the Big Picture: Most engineers pay little attention to traits such as real-time delivery and message persistence, focusing only on database design and API endpoints, without mentioning clear system components in a system design interview.

Key components they overlook include:

• WebSocket connections for real-time bidirectional communication
• Message storage to persist chat history and handle offline users
• User presence tracking to show who’s online/offline
• Message delivery confirmation to ensure reliable delivery
• Connection management to handle user disconnections gracefully
• Basic authentication to identify and authorize users

People who only care about one part such as the database schema, overlook the real-time nature and connection management aspects that make chat systems unique. In some cases, engineers cannot properly express their ideas which makes it tough for interviewers to understand them.

The Winning Approach: Structure Over Speed

Successful candidates follow a consistent framework:

Requirements Gathering (1 minute): Clarify functional requirements, scale expectations, and constraints before diving deeper.

• One-on-one chat or group chat rooms?
• How many concurrent users (100s vs 1000s)?
• Message persistence required or ephemeral?
• Real-time delivery expectations?

High-Level Design (2 minutes):Sketch a flow diagram covering:

• Client Apps: Mobile/web clients establishing WebSocket connections
• Chat Server: Handles incoming messages and routes to recipients
• Message Database: Stores chat history and user information
• Connection Manager: Tracks active WebSocket connections and user presence
• Message Queue: Handles offline message delivery and ensures reliability
• Authentication Service: Validates users and manages sessions

Deep Dive (2 minutes):Discuss how to handle message ordering, connection failures, and scaling WebSocket connections across multiple servers.

This structured approach is what interviewers are testing for, your ability to think about real-time systems and connection management, not your memorization of specific chat technologies.

How InterviewBee Helps You Execute the Winning Approach

To know the format is one thing; to execute it under a high-stakes situation is another. When you freeze, having prompt guidance is the difference between rejection and an offer. That is where InterviewBee comes in as your secret weapon for technical interview questions.

Provides an Instant Structure: The moment you’re given a system design question, our tool can provide you with a proper structure, asking you to "Clarify real-time requirements" or "Sketch the message flow components." This precludes the initial panic and enables you to start on the right foot.

Avoids Overlooked Requirements: The AI assistant is able to remind you gently about important factors that you might forget in the moment, such as connection management, message ordering, or offline user handling. This helps you demonstrate the real-time systems thinking that interviewers value.

Improves Communication: By providing you with concise, well-organized talking points, InterviewBee allows you to communicate your design choices clearly and sensibly, thereby making your train of thought easy for the interviewer to understand.

The 5-minute chat system design question will likely remain a staple in system design interview processes throughout 2025. But with proper preparation and the right support system, you can join the 27% who ace it confidently. Remember: system design interview success isn’t about perfect solutions, it’s about demonstrating clear thinking, good communication, and systematic problem-solving under pressure.

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