Logo
Search
Login
Sign Up
Oliver Buchannon
Alex Zajac

Software Engineer II @Amazon Prev. Machine Learning @ Ecole Polytechnique System Design, WebDev and AI enthusiast

Deep Dive

🧠🍔 Why AI Agents Keep Deleting Prod Databases

Dec 11, 2025

•

9 min read

🧠🍔 Why AI Agents Keep Deleting Prod Databases

This needs to stop

Alex Zajac
Alex Zajac

Weekly Digest

🍔🧠 How Pinterest Reduced Clickbait With Just 5K Survey Responses

Dec 8, 2025

•

11 min read

🍔🧠 How Pinterest Reduced Clickbait With Just 5K Survey Responses

PLUS: OpenAI Is In Code Red 🚨, Deep Dive Into Distributed Systems 🌐, Netflix's Write-Ahead Log Architecture 📝

Alex Zajac
Alex Zajac

Weekly Digest

🍔🧠 Lyft ran 1000s of ML jobs on Kubernetes. Then they stopped.

Dec 1, 2025

•

11 min read

🍔🧠 Lyft ran 1000s of ML jobs on Kubernetes. Then they stopped.

PLUS: Twitter System Design 🐦, GraphQL Migration Blueprint 🗺️, OpenAI's Secret Hardware 🔮

Alex Zajac
Alex Zajac

Weekly Digest

🍔🧠 How Uber Predicts Driver Earnings Using Deep Probabilistic Models

Nov 24, 2025

•

11 min read

🍔🧠 How Uber Predicts Driver Earnings Using Deep Probabilistic Models

PLUS: How Stock Exchanges Work 🏛️, Tinder's Architecture 🔥, JWT From 0 To Hero 🎓

Alex Zajac
Alex Zajac

Weekly Digest

🍔🧠 How Datadog Ingests Billions/Sec With Their Unique Database Design

Nov 17, 2025

•

11 min read

🍔🧠 How Datadog Ingests Billions/Sec With Their Unique Database Design

PLUS: Postgres Scaling 101 💾, Frontend Design Principles 🎨, Meta's AI Chief Leaves 🤯

Alex Zajac
Alex Zajac

Weekly Digest

🍔🧠 1,500 PRs: Spotify's Autonomous Coding Agent (Full Architecture)

Nov 10, 2025

•

11 min read

🍔🧠 1,500 PRs: Spotify's Autonomous Coding Agent (Full Architecture)

PLUS: ML at Netflix Revealed 🎬, Rust Rewrite Saves $300K ⚡, URL As Application State 🔗

Alex Zajac
Alex Zajac

Weekly Digest

🍔🧠 How Airbnb Automated Away GraphQL Testing Hell (With LLMs)

Nov 3, 2025

•

11 min read

🍔🧠 How Airbnb Automated Away GraphQL Testing Hell (With LLMs)

PLUS: Understanding RPCs 🔍, Build Your Own Database 🛠️, 10k$ for oral skills 💸

Alex Zajac
Alex Zajac

Weekly Digest

🍔🧠 The Deep Learning Technique Uber Uses To Trust AI Models

Oct 27, 2025

•

11 min read

🍔🧠 The Deep Learning Technique Uber Uses To Trust AI Models

PLUS: PostgreSQL Performance 🎯, SQL Anti-Patterns 😮, Senior Data Engineer Traits 👑

Alex Zajac
Alex Zajac

Weekly Digest

🍔🧠 How Netflix Built A Graph DB That Processes 1M+ Events/Second

Oct 20, 2025

•

11 min read

🍔🧠 How Netflix Built A Graph DB That Processes 1M+ Events/Second

PLUS: Google's Culture 👀, Inside Nvidia GPU Architecture 🎮, Cap Theorem Truth Revealed 💡

Alex Zajac
Alex Zajac

Weekly Digest

🍔🧠 100X Faster: How Netflix's ML Workflow Engine Works

Oct 13, 2025

•

11 min read

🍔🧠 100X Faster: How Netflix's ML Workflow Engine Works

PLUS: Spotify System Design 🎵, Gradient Descent Deep Dive 🧮, Reactive Python ⚡

Alex Zajac
Alex Zajac

Weekly Digest

🍔🧠 How DoorDash Uses LLMs To Predict 10M+ Customer Grocery Lists

Oct 6, 2025

•

11 min read

🍔🧠 How DoorDash Uses LLMs To Predict 10M+ Customer Grocery Lists

PLUS: Google Stack Breakdown 🛠️, S3's Trillion-File System 💾, Compression Algorithms ⚡

Alex Zajac
Alex Zajac

Weekly Digest

🍔🧠 How Uber Upgraded 2M Spark Jobs (Saved $MMs/Year)

Sep 29, 2025

•

11 min read

🍔🧠 How Uber Upgraded 2M Spark Jobs (Saved $MMs/Year)

PLUS: Android Coming To PCs 💻, Handling 10B Messages Daily 🚀, Load Balancer Deep Dive 🔄

Alex Zajac
Alex Zajac

Weekly Digest

🍔🧠 Palantir's Database Index Pattern That Cut Query Times By 85%

Sep 25, 2025

•

10 min read

🍔🧠 Palantir's Database Index Pattern That Cut Query Times By 85%

PLUS: How Claude Code Works 🤖, Master Rate Limiting Patterns 🚦, OS Kernel From Scratch 🏗️

Alex Zajac
Alex Zajac

Weekly Digest

🍔🧠 This New LinkedIn AI Pipeline Powers 800M Users

Sep 22, 2025

•

11 min read

🍔🧠 This New LinkedIn AI Pipeline Powers 800M Users

PLUS: Claude as Coding Agent 🧠, Migrating 13K Tables in 4 Hours ⏱️, How Linear Scaled Multi-Region 🌍

Alex Zajac
Alex Zajac

Weekly Digest

🍔🧠 How Grab Built An Authentication System for 180+ Million Users

Sep 15, 2025

•

11 min read

🍔🧠 How Grab Built An Authentication System for 180+ Million Users

PLUS: How Browsers Work 🕵️ 15-Year-Old Queue Problem ⏳ Python Debugging Tricks 🐍

Alex Zajac
Alex Zajac

Weekly Digest

🍔🧠 How Dropbox Built AI Search Using RAG and AI Agent Techniques

Sep 8, 2025

•

11 min read

🍔🧠 How Dropbox Built AI Search Using RAG and AI Agent Techniques

PLUS: 7 Best API Practices 🔥, Server Sent Events Explained ⚡, Video Game Blurs? 🎮

Alex Zajac
Alex Zajac

Weekly Digest

🍔🧠 How Salesforce Used AI to Reduce Test Time by 30%

Sep 1, 2025

•

10 min read

🍔🧠 How Salesforce Used AI to Reduce Test Time by 30%

PLUS: 10 System Design Questions 📋, API Design 101 📘, Python to Go 300% Improvement 🐍

Alex Zajac
Alex Zajac

Weekly Digest

🍔🧠 How Reddit Sends 10M+ Notifications/Month (Deep Dive)

Aug 25, 2025

•

10 min read

🍔🧠 How Reddit Sends 10M+ Notifications/Month (Deep Dive)

PLUS: Claude AI Best Practices 📋, LLD Interview Blueprint 📘, CDN Explained 🌍

Alex Zajac
Alex Zajac

Weekly Digest

🍔🧠 Build Your Own 280M-Page Search Engine (Complete Blueprint Inside)

Aug 18, 2025

•

11 min read

🍔🧠 Build Your Own 280M-Page Search Engine (Complete Blueprint Inside)

PLUS: How Webhooks Work ⚙️, Rust Replaces Elasticsearch & MongoDB 🦀, AI Startup Bids $34.5B for Chrome 🚀

Alex Zajac
Alex Zajac

Weekly Digest

🍔🧠 How DropBox Built Multimedia Search for 700M Users

Aug 11, 2025

•

11 min read

🍔🧠 How DropBox Built Multimedia Search for 700M Users

PLUS: Design a Rate Limiter ⏳, What is Cache Warming ♨️, Instagram Staff Career Gold 🏆

Alex Zajac
Alex Zajac

Weekly Digest

🍔🧠 How Amazon S3 Crushed The CAP Theorem (Deep Dive)

Aug 4, 2025

•

10 min read

🍔🧠 How Amazon S3 Crushed The CAP Theorem (Deep Dive)

PLUS: GeoHashing Explained 🌍, AI Cookbook for Devs 📖 , AI Agents In Prod 🤖

Alex Zajac
Alex Zajac

Weekly Digest

🍔🧠 How Grab's Rust Migration Cut Server Costs By 70%

Jul 28, 2025

•

11 min read

🍔🧠 How Grab's Rust Migration Cut Server Costs By 70%

PLUS: Claude Code Goldmine 🐐, Load Balancing Crash Course 👨‍🎓, Work-Life Balance Slows Careers ⚖️

Alex Zajac
Alex Zajac

Weekly Digest

🍔🧠 95% Faster: The Data Pipeline That Saved Airbnb Millions

Jul 21, 2025

•

10 min read

🍔🧠 95% Faster: The Data Pipeline That Saved Airbnb Millions

PLUS: Parsing 1B Rows in 10s with Bun ⚡, Load Balancer vs Proxy vs Gateway ⚖️, 2025’s Hottest Tech Stack Revealed 🔥

Alex Zajac
Alex Zajac

Weekly Digest

🍔🧠 How Spotify Tags 100M Songs Using GenAI (Their Secret ML Pipeline)

Jul 14, 2025

•

11 min read

🍔🧠 How Spotify Tags 100M Songs Using GenAI (Their Secret ML Pipeline)

PLUS: Forward Proxy vs Reverse Proxy ⚡, PACELC Theorem Clearly Explained 📚, How I Build Software Quickly 🏗️

Alex Zajac
Alex Zajac

Weekly Digest

🍔🧠 How Shopify Handles 67M Daily Views (Only 1 Framework)

Jul 7, 2025

•

10 min read

🍔🧠 How Shopify Handles 67M Daily Views (Only 1 Framework)

PLUS: Reddit System Design 🔥, Bloom Filters by Example 🌸, Video Games Graph Theory 🍇

Alex Zajac
Alex Zajac
Load more

Hungry Minds 🍔🧠

The System Design and AI Brief for Engineers

© 2025 Hungry Minds.

Privacy policy

Terms of use

Powered by beehiiv