17.64What not to do in a system-design interview

Avoid immediately diving into syntax:

“I'd add <salesforce:upsert>…”

before discussing requirements.

Avoid pretending everything is synchronous.

Avoid saying:

“I'd retry any failure three times.”

Avoid:

“I'd use Parallel For Each to make everything faster.”

Avoid:

“If the second system fails Mule rolls everything back.”

Avoid:

“We can guarantee no duplicates because the API only sends once.”

Avoid:

“HTTP 200 means Salesforce worked.”

Avoid blindly forcing:

Experience → Process → System

into every architecture.

Those are the traps we've been systematically eliminating.