Typical domain knowledge questions look like

• What happened when you open an URL in a browser?
• What is a Virtual DOM?
• What happened when you execute docker run command?
• Explain L4 vs L7 load balancer.

Some companies think that "Domain Knowledge Interview" could test both your depth and breadth of knowledge, but is if effective? I tend to enjoy this kind of question personally because they are just fun to do. Most of the time you are ok to say you don't know to move to the next questions because no one knows everything !!!

Some companies ask rolled-eyes questions which I can confirm is 100% useless.

Again, the key to becoming good at practice is to mix both passive and active learning. This has a lot to do with how our brains work.

Passive Learning

Here are some of the best resources (mostly books) I can find. Not only do they help you to prepare for domain knowledge interviews, but they also help you to become a better software engineer.

• Network: High Performance Browser Networking (free): Chapter 2 ~ 4 are your friends
• Operating System: Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud: Models, Concepts, Architecture of every chapter are your alliance
• Database, Distributed system: Designing Data-Intensive Applications
  • Video course (free)
• Container: Container Security (free)

Active Learning

Unlike system design open-ended discussion, domain knowledge always has at least one answer. Mainly depends on how much you know and how well you could describe. Finding a peer to help you could be helpful as well but most of the time, you know yourself the best, right?

That's why I created a quiz app to help you. I will keep adding features, in case you try it please send me feedback in the last section of the quiz.

FAQ

What are companies that conduct domain knowledge interviews in Japan market?

SmartNews, PayPay, Woven Planet Holdings, ByteDance, Goldman Sachs, Elastic