Or, "can't we just use more compute?"
Preface
Hi, I’m Rasheed Bustamam.
I’ve been a full-stack engineer since 2015. I’ve worked with and consulted for startups, served as a founding engineer, and been part of multiple successful exits. In many circles, that’s considered startup gold.
But here’s the gap: while I’ve built fast, shipped quickly, and prototyped aggressively, I haven’t had deep exposure to scale.
Not real scale.
What does “scale” even mean?
Is it user volume?
Geographic distribution?
Latency under load?
Operational complexity?
Different companies optimize for different things. And I realized that while I understood how to build features, I didn’t deeply understand how to design systems that hold up under pressure.
The Turning Point
Five years ago, I interviewed at Google and was asked to “design the Google search bar.”
At the time, my mental model was:
“Isn’t it just a text input that calls
GET /api/search?”
Needless to say, I didn’t get the job.
But five years later, I should be able to answer that question.
So I decided to fix that.
The Plan
I started with System Design Interview: An Insider’s Guide by Alex Xu as a structured entry point into systems thinking.
The book is high-level and intentionally generic. It discusses concepts like load balancers, caching, replication, and data partitioning -- but not how to actually implement them in a real environment.
So I’m doing both:
Studying the concepts
Building them myself to solidify the understanding
I’ll experiment with infrastructure, set up load balancers, configure services, and test failure scenarios -- not just talk about them.
I may use AI to help synthesize information, but I won’t rely on AI to implement the systems for me. The goal is understanding, not automation.
Why Write This Publicly?
This series is primarily for me.
But I suspect I’m not alone.
There are many engineers who:
Ship quickly
Build great product experiences
Have deep frontend or application-level expertise
But feel underprepared when conversations shift toward distributed systems and scalability
If that sounds familiar, this series might resonate with you.
What to Expect
Clear breakdowns of system design concepts
Practical implementations
Tradeoffs and failure modes
Reflections on what “scale” actually means in different contexts
Lessons learned from hands-on experiments
No hype. No pretending to be an expert.
Just deliberate, structured growth.
If you have questions, ideas, or critiques -- I’d love to hear them.
Let’s learn this properly.
If you're in, leave a comment and say that you're in!
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