Deep-Dive Pivots

1. What the Pivot Means

At some point the interviewer stops looking at the whole design and points at one box. "Tell me more about how the queue works." "How does the cache stay consistent?" "Walk me through what happens inside the matching service."

That moment is not a change of subject. It is the interview arriving at the part that is actually being assessed, and candidates who treat it as an interruption lose the signal they were building toward.

Three things are happening when an interviewer pivots.

• **They have found the part they can evaluate you on