SDE Path

LinkedIn Connection-Request Throughput

Medium

LinkedIn has 900 million registered users. In any given hour, 1% are active, and each active user processes (accepts/declines) 5 connection requests per hour.

Use: 1 hour = 3,600 sec. Use: 1 day = 86,400 sec ≈ 10^5 sec. Powers of 10: 1 KB = 10^3 B, 1 MB = 10^6 B, 1 GB = 10^9 B, 1 TB = 10^12 B, 1 PB = 10^15 B.

Compute hourly volume, average QPS, and lunch-hour peak.

Back-of-envelope counts: any answer within ±30% of the target is correct, just like a real interview. Suffixes like k, M, B work.