Interview archetype
The Constraint Setter
Imposes a hard limit up front and grades everything within it.
Set The Constraint Setter as your interviewer and the app will pick follow-ups in their categories and weight your rubric their way.
How they behave
- Before you draw anything: "assume users are on 2G", or "no data may leave the country", or "it must work offline".
- The constraint is not negotiable and is not a hint. It is the frame for the whole interview.
- They grade whether every decision respects it, and they notice immediately when one does not.
- They are usually testing whether you can design within a box rather than reaching for a standard answer.
What a failing answer looks like under this style
- You design the normal system and then bolt the constraint on at the end. It has to shape the design from Stage 1.
- You forget the constraint halfway through. Proposing a chatty API forty minutes into a "bad network" interview is hard to recover from.
- You treat it as an obstacle to argue with rather than a requirement to design for.
- You fail to notice which of your usual defaults the constraint invalidates.
How to survive them
- Restate the constraint in your own words in Stage 1, and say what it rules out. That shows it has landed.
- Refer back to it explicitly at each decision. "Given the 2G constraint, that means..."
- Identify the standard answer the constraint kills, and say so. That is the insight they are looking for.
- Find what the constraint makes easier, not just harder. Constraints usually close some doors and open others.
Say this
"Given [constraint], the usual answer of [standard approach] is off the table, because [reason]. So instead I would [alternative], which costs me [cost]. The constraint also makes [something] easier, which I would take advantage of."
How they weight the rubric
Same design, graded differently. This is why the archetype changes your score.
Requirements
×1.6
Lifecycle
×1.0
Numbers
×0.8
Design
×1.4
Tradeoffs
×1.3
Defence
×1.0
They reach for:Change the scopeForce the costQuestion the choice
Three-question drill, in their voice
Same rule as everywhere else: you answer before you see anything.
1
Assume every user is on an unreliable 2G connection. Design the read path.
0 / 30 characters
2
No user data may leave its country of origin. Now design it.
0 / 30 characters
3
This must work fully offline for days at a time. Design the write path.
0 / 30 characters