Handling "What Would You Change at 10x?"

1. Why This Question Gets Asked

"What would you change at ten times the scale" is the most common senior follow-up, and it is asked for a specific reason rather than to see whether you know bigger numbers.

It tests three things at once.

• Whether you know where your own design breaks. A candidate who cannot answer has not analyzed the thing they just drew.
• Whether you can distinguish what breaks from what merely gets bigger. Most of a system scales by adding instances. A small part of it does not, and that part is the answer.
• **Whether you over-build